Here's what I came home to on Friday! So beautiful, my favorite kind of flowers....and two glasses sitting out ready to be filled with wine - what a sweet boyfriend. (Note: not a normal occurance - not that it should be).
Finally a chance to use my bamboo steamer!! I've been really wanting to steam something lately - and Derek is actually the one who chose to do so! Here lies two pieces of black cod - fresh from the meat market...on a bed of cabbage...in the bamboo steamer...so peaceful. Just waiting to be steamed - just like going to a spa.
The wine for the evening - a Pinot Grigio - something we NEVER have. I'd say Pinot Grigio is probably my least favorite wine, in general. So boring, watery - and did I mention boring? However, we had tried this one during a wine tasting at our local Italian wine and cheese shop, and at $14/bottle, it's not so bad! It has more complexity than most Pinot Grigios that I am used to...it even had a slight effervescence. It was light enough to not over power the mild fish, but had enough interest to keep me, well, interested!
The actual meal had three components:
1) Steamed black cod, "dotted" with fresh ginger and green onion, topped with a heated up mixture of peanut and sesame sauce (poured directly on the steamed fish), and then topped with a soy sauce based sauce.
I don't know the specific recipe that Derek used, but the following seems to be pretty similar. It calls for a whole fish, which is what Derek tried to get, but had to resort to individual pieces (I was A-OK with that):
1 4-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks (about 1/4 cup)
2 large green onions, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces (about 1/4 cup)
1 medium clove garlic, minced
1 whole 2-pound white fish (such as tilapia, snapper, or trout), cleaned
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1-2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
Chopped green onions, for garnish
1. In a small bowl, combine ginger, 1/4 cup green onions, and garlic. Set aside.
2. Wash fish and pat dry with paper towels. Mix lemon juice with salt and rub into fish inside and out. Cut 3 diagonal slashes, each 1/2- to 3/4-inch deep, into both sides of fish. Using the knife tip, make 1/2-inch-deep cuts along the backbone.
3. Place fish on a glass pie plate or a steamer-safe dinner plate. Rub ginger-garlic mixture along fish skin, then stuff inside slits and cavity. Place plate into or atop a steamer in a pot with 11/2 inches water. Cover and steam until fish flesh is just opaque, 8–10 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, stir together soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil until sugar dissolves. When fish is cooked through, carefully remove plate from steamer and pour soy sauce mixture over fish and inside cavity. Garnish with chopped green onions.
2) Steamed Bok Choy with Hoisin Sauce
For the bok choy, Derek simply added the baby bok choy bunches to the separate layer of the steamer, topped them with a bit of hoisin sauce, and let them steam until tender.
3) Coconut Rice "Pilaf"
A mixture of carrots and peas, and maybe onions too...went into the brown basamati based rice mixture. One thing we learned from a cooking class is to ALWAYS rinse rice - multiple times. This takes off the gluten and other dusty crap surrounding the grain, and leaves you with a pure product to work with. Make sure to "dry" the rice after rinsing by either laying it out on a cookie sheet or lining a salad spinner with paper towels and spinning them dry - you don't want the extra water in there. Derek started by sauteeing bits of carrot and onion (maybe garlic too?) in EVOO. Once tender, he added the rice so it was coated with the oil (same concept as when you cook risotto). Then, using a "just under 2:1" ration, he added 1 cup of coconut milk and just under 1 cup of water to the 2 cups of rice, brought it to a boil, and then let simmer for...ohhh...35 minutes or so. We've had difficulty with rice lately, this, not surprisingly, had a risotto-esque texture. Could be from the beginning method of preparation, or the creaminess of the coconut milk (Derek didn't stir before adding in, so we basically got all of the "coconut cream" in the rice) - healthy! Really tasty though. It wan't the fluffy rice he was hoping for - maybe due to the use to brown rice? Who knows. But the leftovers were not wasted...see next posting...
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