Sunday, June 20, 2010

Monk Fish



Kismet Inn Maine After a busy day last night I had John and Dominique over for dinner and I had promised them to make a prune, carrot, spinach dish that I remember my aunt use to make except she would make it with chicken in stew form and serve it with rice. Rice seems to be served with everything in my native land along with many different kinds of stew. I often take the ingredients from my childhood dishes and mix them with the dishes I have had at the many different places I have lived. In this case, I decided to use fish instead of kitchen, sweet potato instead of rice and not make it in the form of stew.

At farmers market we have 'Port Clyde Co-op' fishers who bring along their map showing where they catch the fish... the fish is fresh and incredibly tasty. I had bought halibut last weekend which was excellent so I planned to get halibut this weekend but she didn't have any instead she recommended monk fish so I got some monk fish.

First I sauteed some onions in teaspoon of ghee then sliced carrots added it to the onion with a tiny bit of salt and pepper, let it simmer for a few minutes. I sauteed onions in 1/2 teaspoon of ghee added spinach, salt & pepper turned off the stove put the lid on the pot let the spinach cook for couple of minutes with the turned off burner's heat.

I cooked the sweet potato separately for 20 minutes.

I put a teaspoon of ghee in a frying pan, washed the monk fish put it in the pan, added salt, pepper, masala spice let it simmer for 5 minutes then turned it over added more masala spice let it cook for another 5 minutes, squeezed 1/2 fresh lemon juice let it cook for 2 minutes. It was ready to serve.

For salad I picked some fresh greens and herbs from the garden added just olive oil and squeezed half a lemon.

For Cheese I got two kinds of goat cheese from Caitlin 'appleton creamery'
John and Dominique brought a bottle of red wine (sorry can't remember the name of the wine) I am terrible in remembering names.

The fish turned out excellent mixed with prune, carrots and sweet potato, the spinach was just as good. If you cook spinach with just the warmth of the turned off burner it will still have that wonderful green taste. The greens from the garden were so fresh that I didn't need to put any salt or pepper just the olive oil and the lemon and the cheese is always good. The whole dinner took about 45 minutes to make. A note -- I do things very slowly!