Portuguese fish stew

I'm working on a recipe for Mediterranean seafood risotto and I'm in the stage where I'm trying out similar recipes from all my cookbooks and seeing how they turn out. This is Portuguese fish stew from one of my favourites cookbooks — Jill Dupleix's Good Cooking. It tasted really nice. Next, I'm going to try a recipe that uses white wine and peas. I'll post my own take on this dish as soon as I've customized it to my tastes. In the meantime, I just wanted to share the photo!

Sweet mahogany salmon

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I'm sure that like me, you've probably heard at one time or another that salmon from the Pacific Ocean is the best kind to eat — most Pacific salmon are free and wild-caught, whereas most Atlantic salmon are farmed and subjected to more environmental pressures as a result. Unfortunately, wild Pacific salmon are very hard to find and when you do, they are expensive and only available for a short time.

So buying frozen Pacific salmon is one way to circumvent the expense and restricted seasonality of buying fresh. I found a package of four salmon portions at the grocery store and have tried a couple of different ways of cooking them. This method is by far the best so far. Even though the texture of frozen salmons tends toward the dry side, this marinade keeps them nice and moist.

Sweet mahogany salmon

2 fillets of frozen wild Pacific salmon
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp finely grated ginger and its juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place the two salmon portions on a baking sheet. In a bowl, combine the soy sauce, ginger, mustard, honey and olive oil, and mix together with a fork or a whisk to emulsify. Brush the marinade over the salmon.

Bake for 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. The rule of thumb according to the Canadian government when you are cooking fish in the oven is 10 minutes per inch of thickness, plus another five minutes added to the total cooking time if the fish is wrapped in foil or cooked in a sauce, as this one is.

Ootoro, the tenderest of sushis

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If you love tender meats like pork belly, foie gras or duck confit, then you will also fall in love with ootoro, the most melting cut of sushi there is. We ate it for the first time in Hawaii at Sansei restaurant.

Ootoro means "extreme toro" according to S's dad who is Japanese, and from what I can tell this name is a reference to its extreme tenderness. The further down the body of a fish you go, the tenderer and more expensive the cut. Ootoro is taken from the underside of the tuna's belly where there is so much marbling of fat that it literally melts in your mouth.

You can see from the picture that ootoro is very pink, much more so than maguro, a more common cut of tuna found on sushi menus everywhere. Again this is related to the fat content. Maguro is much redder because it is from a much leaner body part, the side of the tuna.

At $17 for a two-piece portion, eating ootoro was a costly education ... but it was a delicious one, too, and so worth it if you love sushi!

Homemade crab melts

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S's dad showed us how to make this beautiful crab melt on baguette.

To prepare the building blocks, we sauteed some spinach, sliced onions and minced garlic in a frying pan on the stovetop, and added a pinch of dried crab stock. We cut the baguette into wide slices and cut the slices in half for open-faced sandwiches. We took the meat from three big frozen crab legs and defrosted it in the microwave. Lastly, we thickly sliced some Swiss cheese.

To build the sandwich, we first added a layer of bruschetta topping (garlic and tomato mixture) from a jar. Then we added a layer of spinach mixture, then the crab meat and lastly the cheese.

We toasted the sandwiches in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until the cheese was bubbly and melted. It was so good and I loved the taste of the real crab we used. The crab was from T&T, and we have one of those in Ottawa now too!


Step one: Add bruschetta topping and spinach mixture.


Step two: Add the crab meat.


Step three: Top with a big thick slice of Swiss cheese before popping in the oven.

How to store clams in a clam bath

Hello everyone, I'm sorry that I have not blogged very much of late. S and I have been travelling and I haven't been near a computer that much. I am going to make it up to you with lots of posts :)

We are in Calgary right now and I learned something very interesting today about how to store live clams. S's dad, who is quite an accomplished cook, has taught us a simple way to keep live clams happy and healthy for many days at a time. We will no longer worry about cooking clams the same day we buy them.

You make a salt solution that approximates the salinity of the ocean at 3.2 per cent and keep the clams in it at room temperature. We put five teaspoons (32 g) of salt in 1 litre of water, mixed it up really well and then put that in a big plastic bowl on the kitchen counter. Then we took our clams (just bought that afternoon from T&T), rinsed them in the sink with fresh water, and put them into the salt water. This amount just covered our batch of 45 or so clams.

Then S's dad pulled out a very rusty vegetable peeler and stuck it in with the clams. The clams don't like the iron and open up and squirt out their sand in protest! So stick something rusty in there about three hours before you want to cook your clams so that they expel their sand.

Our clams opened up right away and stuck out their snouts. Then there was a symphony of squirting clams! One got a good trajectory going and squirted the kitchen window and its curtain. We had to cover the bowl with cellophane to keep things under control.

If you intend to keep your clams overnight, just remember to put the rusty implement in a few hours before you eat the clams. You don't want your clams unhappy for longer than they need to be! Love your seafood and it will love you back in the dish that you create with it. Tonight we are making linguine with clams for S's Dad, who loves seafood.

Have a nice dinner tonight everyone :)

Linguine with clams

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I'm still on a seafood kick, so we made some linguine with clams the other day. It was yummy. Those winey, clammy juices really tasted like the sea. The whole meal reminded me of summer and made me happy that winter is ending.

It seems there are two golden rules when it comes to cooking with clams: Before cooking, throw any out that are open, and after cooking, throw any out that are closed.

We kept our clams in a metal bowl in the fridge, but S's father, an expert cook when it comes to seafood, told us of a better way to store clams. He recommended we put them in salted water, a solution of 3.2 per cent (for example, 32 grams salt per litre of water). Keep them on the counter at room temperature. These conditions mimic their natural environment and they will even put out their little feet and do their thing happily. I will have to try this next time.


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Linguine with clams
Printable version

serves two
prep and cooking time: 30-45 minutes

linguine
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
30 clams (15 per person)
one small onion, finely diced)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried red chilli pepper
1/2 cup white wine
1/3 cup pasta cooking water
handful of fresh parsley, chopped
zest of one lemon
salt and pepper
additional lemon wedges for garnish

substitutions/variations: spaghetti for linguine, olive oil for butter or vice versa, onions and red chillis are optional (but really make it better!), I have also seen this recipe with cherry tomatoes and bacon added

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Cook some linguine until al dente.

While the pasta water comes to a boil, rinse the clams in cold water in the sink. Discard any that have opened.

Wait until you've added the linguine to the pot before cooking the clams because the sauce doesn't take long. While it's cooking, reserve about 1/3 cup of the cooking water.

In your largest, high-sided frying pan, heat the olive oil. Add the diced onions and chilli pepper and saute for two minutes, until the onions are starting to soften. Add the minced garlic and cook for a couple of minutes, taking care not to burn.

Add the clams, half of the chopped parsley and all of the white wine and cover the frying pan until the clams have opened, which will take between two to six minutes. Discard any clams that have stayed shut.

Add the cooked linguine to the clams and the butter and some of the pasta water. Mix gently into the clam mixture until the butter has slicked over the noodles.

Sprinkle over with grated lemon zest and the rest of the chopped parsley. Serve with additional lemon wedges.

Salmon sushi

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We made lovely sushi at home for our Valentine's Day seafood dinner. Big thick slices of salmon on nice pudgy rice balls! They turned out so well. The salmon was from Pelican Grill and tasted very buttery.

S found a sushi rice recipe online: we made rice in the rice cooker and then mixed in some water, sugar, salt and rice wine vinegar. We also put a little strip of wasabi on the top of the rice ball before laying down the salmon.

Oysters on the half shell

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There are two foods on this Earth for which I will stop all conversation.

The first is the harusame salad at Ichibei. Such is my love for it that I have shamelessly stolen bigger bowls of the stuff placed before my friends (sorry Squeaky, but some things can't be helped!) and swapped them for my own smaller portion.

The second is raw oysters on the half shell. Oh my goodness. So so good, I can't talk while I'm eating them.

We bought these raw oysters at Pelican Grill for our belated Valentine's Day dinner. We had never prepared raw oysters before, but S did a wonderful job with our new shuckers, bought just that afternoon at Chef's Paradise. (Yours truly had just come back from getting a manicure with Squeaky and thus had a good excuse to be hands off for the task ;)

We ate them with just a little lemon juice, chopped parsley and seafood cocktail sauce. I closed my eyes and felt so spoiled. Such a decadent treat!


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Belated Valentine's Day seafood feast

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S and I celebrated Valentine's Day a little late this year but our homemade seafood feast was certainly worth the wait. It didn't require much cooking and came together pretty quickly since we shared the prep.

We made edamame infused with Asian spices, fresh oysters on the half shell with parsley, lemon and cocktail sauce, and salmon sushi with soy sauce and wasabi. The only cooking involved was boiling the edamame and pressing a button on a rice cooker!

It was such a delicious meal. Try it and let me know what you think. I'll share the recipes in the coming week.

Treats from the sea at the Pelican Grill

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I was first introduced to the Pelican Grill by my friend Em, who bought sushi-grade fish there for a girls night.Then I sampled some of its wares again at the Ottawa Wine and Food Show. S and I have since checked it out for lunch and cooked fish from its shop, and we have become faithful patrons.

At lunch, I ordered a bowl of chowder for us to share. I am so used to small soup portions in restaurants so I passed up the "cup" portion, but lo and behold the waiter brought out a behemoth of a broth. It was delicious. I cast in my spoon and was rewarded by big catches of salmon pieces.


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Next, I ordered the "The Battle of the Smoked Salmons" (above). The menu describes it perfectly: In the hot corner, we've got a salmon served with crispy potato rosti smothered in crème fraîche. In the cold corner, grilled romaine hearts with crispy capers, aioli and parmesan shavings wait to steal the round. I couldn't resist and filled up on the hot salmony goodness first!

S ordered the halibut and chips, a hefty portion for a one-piecer, and very flavourful and good-looking to boot. I love the newspaper touch, so old-school English.


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Our meal of chowder, the salmon battle, fish and chips, soft drink and coffee cost $41.36 plus tip.

Afterward, we picked up some trout and cod to take home. The Pelican Grill has a fishery attached to the restaurant, with lots of delicious catches of the day. Their labels also indicate whether things are Pacific or Atlantic, and whether they're wild. (I've heard in terms of salmon anyways that wild Pacific is the best, which generally means it's not farmed.)


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The decor is very nice. The restaurant is filled with lots of copper tabletops and on the walls there are beautiful, professional photographs of the staff posing with feature sea creatures. There's even one of Ron Eade, the Ottawa Citizen's food blogger, who is obviously a big fan!


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A Mediterranean Feast: Seafood and Chorizo Paella

Some girlfriends from work came over recently for a Mediterranean feast in the middle of our Canadian winter. It's a tradition I started last year, and once again, it was really nice to have so many happy faces in my tiny apartment :)

I put bright and colourful placemats everywhere and pretended it wasn't snowing outside. We all clustered around some olives, hummus and pita bread triangles to start. For the entrée, I made this yummy seafood paella, adapted from Foodies.ca, although it ended up being more like a risotto because I added a bit too much liquid, I think.

Seafood and Chorizo Paella
serves six

2 chorizo sausages, sliced while partially frozen
olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 leeks, white parts only, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 yellow pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 large tomato, diced
150 ml white wine
1 cup arborio rice, rinsed four times
325 ml chicken stock
pinch of saffron, crushed
18 shrimps, zipperback, uncooked
18 mussels, rinsed, uncooked
60 ml chicken stock
1/2 cup frozen peas
parsley, roughly chopped for garnish (optional)
2 green onions, thinly sliced for garnish (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Keeping the chorizo sausages in the freezer for about half an hour makes them easier to slice and keep their shape. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and caramelize the chorizo slices on both sides until mostly cooked. Drain, pat away the excess oil, and place in a large rice cooker. (If you don't have a rice cooker, use a stock pot.)

Add the saffron to the chicken stock and set aside so that it can infuse for a few minutes before you use it.

Fry the onion, leeks and garlic until soft. Add the peppers and tomatoes, and season with salt and pepper. Fry a few minutes. Add the white wine and cook until reduced by half. Add the rinsed rice, and stock and saffron. Bring to a boil. Then add all these ingredients to the rice cooker. Stir the ingredients in the rice cooker and switch it to "on."

When my rice cooker switched to warm, I transferred everything to my bigger stock pot to finish cooking the dish. If your rice cooker is big enough to add more ingredients at this point, you don't have to use another pan.

Add the shrimp, mussels, remaining 60 ml of stock and the peas to paella. Stir and let cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes, or switch your rice cooker on again. Let the paella rest for five minutes when done and then fluff up with a wooden spoon.

Garnish with spring onions and parsley and serve!