Roasted Rockfish with Mapo Dofu

Ann asked me to make Rockfish with Mapo Dofu sauce on Monday and so I obliged her, stopping by the store on the way home and getting some tofu and a rockfish.

Roasted Rockfish with Mapo Dofu

My kitchen Spanish was not good enough to keep my fish unmolested when I turned it over to the fish guy to scale with the instructions, "limpio y entero, con cabeza, por favor" and so it came home without fins or tail. Oh well, it would have been worse had I ordered it in English.

The Guest of Honor

I decided to do a vegetarian mapo dofu substituting shiitake mushrooms for ground pork, sautéing them in a bit of sesame oil with lots of garlic and ginger. Then I added pickled mustard stems, spicy bean paste, a sprinkle of freshly ground Sichuan peppercorns (in the spice mill cup), and a splash of soy sauce. After this cooked for a minute, I added a little water and the tofu, thickened the sauce lightly with a touch of corn starch slurry, and adjusted the seasoning, adding a bit more spicy bean sauce because I thought it wasn't spicy enough in the la sense, chile spice. It was plenty spicy in the ma sense, numbing and tingling, from the Sichuan peppercorns.

Mapo Dofu Mise en Place

Chipotle Rockfish with Mojo Black Beans

Chipotle Rockfish with Mojo Black Beans

We had some scraps leftover at the restaurant this weekend: trimmings from two huge Rockfish that I butchered and the tail end of a huge can of black beans. I brought them home for dinner Tuesday night.

I have taken to throwing fish scraps on a sheet tray and roasting them in the oven until done. They're not picturesque, but it seems better than throwing the scraps into a stock pot. These I tossed in a bit of oil, salt, and chipotle adobo before roasting.

For a couple of days, Ann has been talking about mojo. That got me thinking about the black beans. Because it is so warm now, I decided to try a black bean salad with a mojo dressing. It worked really well though I never had any reason to believe that it wouldn't be fantastic.

To the black beans (about a half a gallon) I added a quarter of a yellow onion in small dice, a diced poblano, three small tomatoes in dice, the supremes* from two oranges, and about a half a cup of thinly chiffonaded culantro. The dressing was pretty simple: juice of a lime, the juice from squeezing the remains of the two oranges, a splash of EVOO, cumin, salt, oregano, and a healthy splash of chipotle adobo for heat.

Really simple. Really fresh. Really good. The beans are a keeper.

*supreme is the fancy chef word for seedless and rindless orange sections.

Moqueca Baiana

Moqueca Baiana

We've been plagued with cancellations at the restaurant and last night was no exception. Moreover, it was St. Patrick's Day, a historically robust night for bars and an extremely slow one for restaurants, I decided to take the night off. Ann wanted something nice for dinner last night and I struggled with that. I hadn't planned to make dinner and retty much everything we have on the menu, I don't want to eat because I've seen too much of it. Moreover, I was really tired and didn't want to put a lot of effort into dinner. Finally, it dawned on me that I could put together a shellfish moqueca in no time at all.

At work, I diced some red, yellow, and orange peppers along with a bit of onion, sliced some green onions and fresh tomatoes, minced a bit of garlic, and chopped a bit of cilantro, about three cups in total for three portions.

This dish couldn't be any simpler to make. I heated a soup pan on high flame and sautéed the vegetable sofrito in palm oil, then added a can of coconut milk, juice of a key lime, and a bit of water. Next, in went the clams, followed a minute later by the mussels, and then all at once the scallops, shrimp, and cubes of rockfish. I stirred this and let everything cook another two minutes, then turned it off for two minutes for everything to carry over to doneness. And done.

Rockfish and Asparagus

Last weekend, a bunch of trophy-sized (15 pounds and up) rockfish from the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay were landed and I got a couple of them, one 18 pounds and the other 16 pounds. While all rockfish (what the rest of the world calls Striped Bass) is delicious, I love this size fish because I can take thick, meaty pieces out of it. Pieces this thick take longer to cook, but they look better on the plate and I like the texture better.

After breaking down these beautiful fish, I brought home three pieces, one for each of us, and decided to roast it with asparagus for dinner last evening, a quick dinner that could be put on the table in less than 15 minutes.

Roasted Rockfish and Asparagus

I preheated the oven to very hot with the convection fan on and then while a large pan was heating on high flame, I prepped the asparagus, tossed them in olive oil, salt, and pepper and put them on a sheet tray. Once my pan was very hot, I filmed it with oil, seasoned my fish and put it show-side down in the pan.

The tricks to crispy fish are simple: heavy pan, high flame, and leave it the f*ck alone. Once the fish goes in the pan, resist the urge to mess with it. Leave it be until you can see that beautiful crust forming before you flip it.

Rockfish Arrosé

I decided to go classic French in cooking this fish, basting it in butter while it was searing in the pan. Arroser is a very handy French verb meaning variously to water, to get wet, to toast/drink someone's health, to sprinkle, to drizzle, and if you are a chef, to baste. More particularly, it means to baste with the oil or butter in the pan while sautéing.

While the fish was browning on the show-side, I added several sprigs of fresh thyme and four whole cloves of garlic to the pan to start infusing in the oil. Once the fish had browned and I had flipped it, I added a bit more oil and a couple of tablespoons of butter to the pan and proceeded to baste the fish liberally while the bottom side browned.

After this, the fish went onto the sheet tray with the asparagus and I poured the butter, thyme, and garlic cloves over the top. Into the oven with the sheet tray for six minutes at which point the asparagus was perfect and the fish cooked through. I let everything rest for three minutes before serving.

First Local Mesclun of the Year

While I was cooking the fish, Ann made the salad from the first local greens of the year. This was a wonderful, simple dinner, ready for the table in under 15 minutes.

Cá Nướng

"Something light and Asian." What is "What Ann wants for dinner, Alex."? Actually, just her texted answer to my inevitable Monday question. After the big pork feed on Sunday, we were definitely in the mood for something light, especially with the weather having finally broken after a long, long winter.

Rockfish are running in the Potomac right now and the season won't be open very long, the fish getting ready to spawn and off limits once that gets under way. Rockfish is what everyone around here calls Striped Bass. Try asking for Striped Bass in Virginia and you are likely to get stares. Rock as it is known is what we call this king of American eating fish.

There is no place I can quench my metaphorical thirst for Vietnamese food around here, so I am relegated to doing it myself. Not a problem, but sometimes a guy would like to go out to eat once in a while. Being in a Vietnamese mood, I decided to do my take on grilled or roasted whole fish, Cá Nướng.

Here you see a 3-pound rockfish that I butterflied, rubbed with honey, and coated with lots of ginger, garlic, and lemongrass, all finely minced. I put it in the oven until it was just done then topped it with green onions that I just blanched in hot oil (mỡ hành) and toasted peanuts, a pretty usual garnish for roasted fish.



Roasted Butterflied Rockfish with Peanuts and Oil-Blanched Green Onions


When I do this with whole catfish (awesome by the way), I like to highly caramelize the fish. When I am working with the king of our eating fish, I want the wonderful rockfish to shine through. So I have kept the caramel to a minimum by cooking the fish as little as possible. With catfish, I will often slather the cooked fish with more honey and put in back in the oven or grill to become deliciously brown.



Herbs (cilantro and Thai basil), Lime, and Nước Chấm

We decided to eat the fish rolled with fresh herbs in rice paper (bánh tráng). While the fish was roasting, I prepped a plate of Thai basil and cilantro. If we had decent other herbs at this time of year, I would have used them too, but this was it. I also threw together a quick nước chấm while the fish was in the oven (fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, garlic, and Thai chiles).

All a Roll Needs is a Bowl of Nước Chấm!

Feast of the Seven Fishes

I just cooked my first Feast of the Seven Fishes on Sunday the 23rd. Though I have been to several such feasts, I have never cooked said feast myself until this year. Ann and I started thinking about the menu on her birthday at the beginning of October and really, the only trick was in selecting dishes that would work well on a buffet. Originally, we were going to serve seven separate courses over the course of a long afternoon, but when I got to thinking about it, that seemed like way too much work for me on a rare day off and besides/more importantly, I wanted to spend time eating and talking with our guests, rather than cooking. I spend enough time in the kitchen as it is.

I kept the menu fairly Italian-themed, but since it is an American invention anyway, I didn't go too overboard. Ann wanted me to roast branzini for the main fish dish, but I decided to go with rockfish. Rockfish is running plentifully in the Bay right now with another week to go before the season closes. Because it won't be until March that rockfish opens again, and because rockfish holds up so beautifully for buffet service, I had my fish vendor send me a whole 4-pounder.

The lens for my camera is so slow that I have given up trying to shoot people indoors with it (without flash, and I don't use flash), so no people photos: they're just a waste of bits. With us were Kelley and Marco Due, Amanda and Dimitri, Bob and Mary, Mike and Dennis, Ann and Tom, and of course, Ann, me, and Carter for a nice total of 13 people.

Menu

 

Scallop Crudo with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Lemon Zest, Fennel Fronds, and Fleur de Sel

Baccalà and Potato Cakes with Saffron Aïoli

White Clam Pasta with Pancetta and Parsley

Squid, White Bean, and Arugula Salad

Roasted Rockfish on Fennel Lentils

Octopus in Marinara on Polenta

Mussels Steamed in Salsa Puttanesca

Scallop Crudo

This scallop crudo was the star of the day, without a doubt, and one of the greatest dishes that I have ever made. I sliced each of the super fresh scallops into about seven or eight slices and arranged them on the platter as you see. Then I drizzled them with really awesome Greek olive oil, zested a lemon over them, and sprinkled them with both fleur de sel and fennel fronds from the garden. Light, sweet, ethereal and way more than the sum of its parts. Pat the chef on the back!

Baccalà and Potato Cakes with Saffron Aïoli

Ann wasn't a big fan of these baccalà cakes that I made from fresh cod that I salted and local Yukon Gold potatoes.  I was; I just loved these cakes. My homemade salt cod is so, so much better than anything made commercially. I did notice that Ann wallowed in the gorgeous golden saffron aïoli, so full of garlic she said, that it "stung my lips." This is one of my favorite fish condiments, and so easy to make by pounding garlic, salt, and saffron in the big granite mortar, then making a mayonnaise on top of that.

White Clam Pasta with Pancetta and Parsley

White clam pasta was next up and although I like to use long pasta for this dish, long pasta does not hold up under buffet service, so I went to a short cut, gemelli, whose thickness can withstand sitting warm on the buffet better. Shallots and a good bit of my own Berkshire pork pancetta got rendered and finished with clams, clam broth, white wine, butter, and copious amounts of grated pecorino romano.

Squid, White Bean, and Arugula Salad

Almost as good as the crudo was this phenomenal squid and white bean salad. I made the white bean salad the day before, dressing cooked cannellini with lots of olive oil, lemon juice, minced red onions, and oregano. I also cleaned several squid the day before, sliced them, and poached them for about 5 to 7 seconds. That's it folks. Either you just barely cook squid or you braise it all day. Your pick. I marinated the poached squid overnight in olive oil with a touch of salt, garlic, and oregano. All that was left at service was to toss everything with baby arugula and plate. Truth in advertising: I ripped this dish off from a great restaurant in Richmond and although it is not unique to that restaurant, I learned the seasoning from one of my former sous chefs who used to work there. This is one of my all time favorite dishes.

Chesapeake Bay Rockfish

I have cooked a ton of seafood in my chef career and it may be the thing that I am most known for, so I have learned what fish can and what fish cannot survive buffet and banquet service. And we are most fortunate that this is prime season for rockfish (striped bass elsewhere) locally. Besides being the king of American eating fish, rock also holds up extremely well during restaurant service. I asked my fish vendor for a 4-pounder and this little guy arrived bearing a Maryland tag. Maryland fish from the Potomac have a PRFC tag rather than a Maryland tag. Trivia you need to know. I scaled and gutted it, and removed the pectoral fins so that they wouldn't burn and placed it on a bed of parsley stems and fennel fronds from the garden. You might note that I rubbed it in olive oil and sprinkled it with salt, pepper, and garlic.

Roasted Rockfish on Fennel Lentils

And here is our guy, all roasted and plated on a bed of lentils that I cooked with onion, pancetta, and lots of fennel. Did I mention there's a big shot of Pernod in there too? Ann and her mother Mary got the two pieces of honor, the cheeks. The leftover lentils ended up in soup the next day and they were and continue to be delicious. Am I the only person that loves fish and lentils together??

Octopus in Marinara on Polenta

And here is my least favorite dish of the day, though there was nothing wrong with it. I couldn't get a big octopus, so I settled for a dozen little guys, which after cleaning and cutting up, I braised in marinara for a couple of hours and then served over a big pile of creamy polenta. Nothing spectacular here and nothing wrong with it either; it's just that the octopus got overtaken by the tomatoes. Octopus is at its best grilled or smoked, but neither of those were options given the December weather.

Mussels in Salsa Puttanesca

Finally, I steamed a big bowl of mussels in a puttanesca sauce that I made the day before from tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes, fish sauce, capers, and lots of pitted olives.

Everybody brought a lot of different wine, so much that I couldn't keep track of it especially given that I was busy cooking just as everyone was arriving. I know we started with Prosecco as a cocktail with cranberry juice and with the scallop crudo, but after that things get a little fuzzy. Two of the standouts were wines that Dmitri brought, a deliciously fruity Xinomavro from Alpha Estate and a crisp, ripe, and minerally Assyrtiko that played beautifully with the scallop crudo. Had I not known that I was drinking Assyrtiko, I might have guessed Gavi di Gavi. For the Xinomavro, I might have guessed Dolcetto.

All in all, it was a great celebration with friends and family, but I am not sure that I will do it again next year. I fell asleep at 6:15pm and slept for the next 14 hours: too much work on top of a busy restaurant schedule.

Cioppino—Right Coast Style

Ann had a great idea for dinner last night, after I convinced her that leftovers weren't going to do it for me. I eat leftovers most every night after I get off work. On the rare days that she and I get to dine together, I'd rather have a nice meal. But nice doesn't necessarily mean involved. For some unknown but totally wonderful reason, Ann wanted cioppino for dinner. Me too! Easy and quick to make, delicious and pretty healthy too.

After watching the latest Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol (an almost overwhelming rapid-fire orgy of stunts from start to finish), we stopped by the restaurant and raided the walk-in for ingredients: fennel, onion, tomatoes, saffron, U-10 dry scallops, rockfish, lobster, mussels, and shrimp.

You can see the classic Mediterranean bent my soup has with the fennel and the saffron, things you don't see all the time in Left Coast (San Francisco) Cioppino. Nor will you find lobster, though they use Dungeness crab that we don't have. But the idea is the same: white wine tomato broth with the freshest seafood available. Awesome!

Ed's Style

Here is the latest Wednesday night dinner. I was in the mood for something light given that we are going to feast heavily the entire upcoming Christmas weekend and I just happened to have some Rockfish fresh in from Virginia waters. You can call it Striped Bass wherever you are, but here, we call it Rockfish. Always have, always will.


There is no better preparation for rockfish than Ed's Style, although there are fancier and more elaborate. It is so good that it is the only dish that I have ever put my name on, of the tens of thousands I have cooked in my career. When it goes on the menu at the restaurant, it just flies and with good reason. It is simply fantastic. And I cannot believe that this is the first time (this is our third Christmas together) that Ann has had Rockfish Ed's Style. Now that she has had my best, what will I cook for her?

Ed's Style is about a sauce—in fact, it evolved from a pasta sauce fifteen to twenty years ago, basically a dumbed down putanesca sauce. It still appears on the lunch menu daily in the guise of Ed's Pasta. The sauce's marriage with fish came early on in the history of the restaurant and it appears on the menu with some regularity, most usually corresponding to the various rockfish seasons. This dish tells you all you need to know about what I like to eat: simple, direct, bold food.

A basic sketch. In a roasting pan, caramelize some garlic to light brown in extra virgin olive oil with a generous pinch of pepperoncini (crushed red pepper flakes). Add white wine, diced (skinnned and seeded) tomatoes, artichoke hearts, capers with a little brine, a generous bit of basil chiffonade, and a touch of salt and pepper.

Place in a blazing oven and roast, stirring every so often, until the liquids are almost evaporated and the tomatoes are starting to caramelize. Top with the fish filets rubbed with extra virgin olive oil, red pepper flakes, and salt. Back into the oven until the fish is just done.

In this version, I also threw some mussels onto the roasting pan and served the whole with a bit of sautéed spinach. Don't be afraid of garlic: I used a half a cup of minced garlic in this dish!