A Fish Story

From sea to shining sea, our world’s waterways are teeming with fish, and it’s a good thing when you ponder the recommendation that everyone consumes three servings of fish per week, that’s a lot of fish in our plates!

The reason for this mass consumption of fish is simple: fish is heart healthy.  One serving of fish, even the fattier specimens, contains less cholesterol than one serving of red meat.  To boot, fatty fish including salmon and tuna are loaded with Omega3 fatty acids.  These fats are your friends, going to battle against harmful cholesterol in your body and also contributing their fair share of work in the antioxidant category.  Eating more fish is a win-win … well, except for the fish whose destiny is a date with your dinner plate.

There are numerous ways to enjoy fish.  Whether pan-fried, roasted, baked, poached, grilled or broiled, a fish fillet or steak can stand in as a starring entrée of any dinner, regardless of the menu’s culinary ethnicity.  In the French style Nicoise salad platter, the starring grilled tuna steak is surrounded by a variety of costars such as green beans, new potatoes, tomatoes, olives and hard-boiled eggs.  This is one of my personal summertime favorites.  When it comes to Asian appreciation, I must regularly frequent a Japanese eatery to feast on sushi and sashimi.  There is something blissfully carnal about savoring a cold, raw, deeply colored bite-sized slab of raw salmon or yellow fin tuna as it tantalizes the warm palate.  Okay, I’ll admit it.  If I’m preparing salmon or tuna at home for the grill or roasting pan, I have been known to slice off one of those bite-sized slivers for my personal enjoyment.  Classic French sole meuniere is among my home cooking repertoire, as is panko crusted salmon and seafood chowder.  Mexican fish tacos are all the rage these days, and Brian has perfected his recipe for them.  One of the most natural pairing of flavors is that of tuna and avocado, as with the tuna tartar that I made for a holiday appetizer.  Many Asian restaurants offer plates of alternating thin slices of tuna and avocado served atop a bed of seaweed salad.

For those who shy away from fish because they have an aversion to strong, fishy flavors, you can still get in your weekly quota of good health.  Stick with whiter fish varieties and season them with flavors that you do enjoy.  The combination of milder fish that is smothered with the flavors of tomato sauce, salsa, pesto or chili seasonings will make the meal enjoyable to your palate.

Be sure to make friends with your fishmonger; become a regular customer and they will sway you from fish that’s less than fresh, debone your fish and toss an extra shrimp or two on the pile for your cat.  I am fortunate to have a local fish market where the employees all know me and they have been in business for many, many years.  Of course, it helps that I am also fortunate to live on Long Island.  Surrounded by water, fish here is plentiful.  Over the next month, Long Islanders will be returning their boats to the water for the season.  Many of these boaters are avid fishermen who take to the ocean, the sound, the bays and the inlets in pursuit of our abundant fish, mollusks and crustaceans.  For the zoologically challenged, lobsters and shrimp comprise the crustaceans and clams, mussels, oysters and scallops fall into your mollusk category.

Cooking fish is easy and quick, so much so that is can easily be considered a home cooked fast food item.  Tuna steaks grill for about four minutes per side.  That’s eight minutes for my fellow math-challenged friends.  A salmon fillet roasts for twenty minutes in a 450-degree oven.  Pan-frying a fish requires just two minutes of your time per side.  As for the simplicity, always have some homemade sauces or jars of good salsa on hand.  A jar of salsa can be freshened up by stirring in a chopped tomato, some chopped fresh cilantro and a chopped fruit such as a mango, peach or pineapple.  Pour the salsa over a salmon fillet in a roasting pan and pop it into the oven.  One of my favorite dinner-in-a-hurry options is to generously smear homemade pesto over a fillet of Chilean sea bass and roast that.  It’s so simple and yet so flavorful.  To pan-fry sole, scrod, red snapper or other thin fish fillet, mix up a seasoned flour with flour, salt, pepper and a spice or two of your choice.  Dredge the fillets into the flour and then lay them in the hot olive oil or butter in a frying pan.  The fish will become golden brown and slightly crusty.

 

Are you ready to kick off your healthy dose of fish consumption?  This fish story has a happy and unexaggerated ending of three tasty ways to enjoy these creatures of the sea.  From the ocean waters to your table, enjoy!

Panko-Crusted Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Ingredients:

1 pound salmon filet

3/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

4 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

8 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped

Grated zest of 1 lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 450-degrees.  Place the salmon fillet, skin side down, on a baking sheet or in a shallow roasting pan.  In a mixing bowl, gently mix the panko, pepper, salt, garlic, parsley, sun-dried tomatoes and lemon zest until everything is combined.  Cover the entire surface of the salmon with the panko mixture.  Very lightly drizzle olive oil over the top.  Roast in the oven for 20 minutes and serve.  Serves two.

Serving suggestion: roast asparagus in the oven at the same time.  After grating the lemon zest for the above panko mixture, squeeze the juice from the lemon into a glass measuring cup.  Whisk in an equal amount of olive oil or walnut oil, add ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper and then pour the mixture over the asparagus before roasting.  Why not roast the entire meal in that oven?  Start roasting a pan of new potatoes fifteen minutes before adding the salmon and asparagus into the oven.  A sauvignon blanc would be ideal to sip with this dinner.

Wasabi-crusted Tuna Steak

Ingredients:

2 tuna steaks

1 cup dried wasabi peas

½ teaspoon black sesame seeds

½ teaspoon white sesame seeds

1 teaspoon grated ginger

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons thinly sliced scallions

Preheat oven to 450-degrees.  Place the wasabi peas in a food processor and process until coarsely ground.  Set aside.  Place the sesame seeds in a frying pan and toast over medium heat until the white seeds start to turn golden.  Remove from heat and transfer the toasted seeds to a glass measuring cup.  Add the ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil to the cup and set aside.  Place the tuna steaks in a baking pan.  Firmly press the ground wasabi peas into the tuna so that they adhere, covering the entire surface.  Whisk the ingredients in the measuring cup thoroughly until combined, and then lightly drizzle the mixture evenly over the tuna steaks.  Place the tuna in the oven for 10-15 minutes.  Remove from the oven, sprinkle with the scallions and serve.  Serves two.

Serving suggestions: brown rice, lightly sautéed snow peas and a good craft beer.

Fish Tacos

Ingredients:

1 pound firm white fish such as scrod, monkfish or halibut

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small red bell pepper, cut into matchstick strips

1 small green bell pepper, cut into matchstick strips

1 onion, thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoon lime juice

3 teaspoons chopped cilantro

½ teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder

2 garlic cloves, minced

Flour tortillas

Sour cream

Tomato salsa

Cut the fish into small bite-sized chunks.  Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Stir-fry the peppers and onions until the onions are translucent and the peppers are crisp tender.  Add the garlic and sauté for another minute.  Stir in the fish, lime juice, cilantro, cumin and chili powder.  Cook and stir until everything is combined and the fish is opaque and cooked through.   Serve with flour tortillas for filling, along with sour cream and salsa for condiments. Serves two.

Serving suggestions: accompany with margaritas and guacamole dip with tortilla chips.  For a salad idea, try tossing tomato wedges with thinly sliced red onion, avocado wedges and diced jicama.

Food For Thought

Long Island’s waters are home to a diverse variety of fish and seafood, and fisherman have put in years of laborious work aboard their fishing vessels.  From Little Neck clams to Blue Point oysters, our fishing territory is also abundant with mussels, crabs, lobsters, tuna, striped bass, bluefish, flounder, cod and much, much more.  Long Islanders know seafood, perhaps better than anyone else in the continental U.S.  Chefs in restaurants from Manhattan to Greenport, and everyplace in between, have been experimenting with new recipes and conjuring up some amazing presentations for these jewels of the sea.  Visit one of the numerous seafood restaurants on your next dinner outing and savor one of your three weekly servings of fish.  Try the Lobster Roll North in Baiting Hollow, the Seafood Barge in Southold, the Sea Basin in Rocky Point, the Soundview in Greenport or Land and Sea in Mount Sinai for my favorite picks.  Land and Sea also has a complete fish market, so be sure to go home with some fish to cook up your second serving for the week.

 

Savor the Summer Seashore

Summer is fast approaching, a season that is heartily embraced by those of us fortunate enough to live along the coast here in the northeast.  Boat owners eagerly set out on their first expeditions.  Sun-worshippers make pilgrimages en masse to the shorelines.  Fisherman cast their first lines.  Best of all, it’s shellfish season.  Coastal living means a steady diet of fresh locally caught fish and seafood for four to five months.

As with any developed nation, there are regions within the United States who boast their culinary gems.  Southern states retain bragging rights to fried foods and barbecue fare.  The southwest may produce the best in Mexican delights this side of the border.  Rivalry does reign, however, between Chicago and New York when it comes to the best pizza.  As a New Yorker, I’ll go down fighting to the bitter end for my home state.  Here in the northeast, no food group better defines our specialties than that of seafood.

From appetizer plates of Maryland crab cakes to warming bowls of thick and creamy New England clam chowder, evening ocean side clam bakes to complete Maine lobster dinners and everything in between dominates the epicurean scene from Maryland, New Jersey and New York, across Long Island and all the way up throughout the six New England states. 

Fresh shellfish is even appreciated in the simplest form known as the bucket of steamers.  A great opener to a fish repast, a bucket of mussels, for example, is simply a bucket, pot or large bowl that gets plopped down in the middle of the table.  The vessel is piled high with steamed mussels (this is also made with clams) that have steamed in a pot, often with garlic and butter and perhaps white wine and herbs.  These additional ingredients are all poured, along with the nectar from the mussels or clams, over the shellfish before presented to the table.  A second, empty bowl is also strategically placed on the table to serve as the shell receptacle.  Then diners around the table simply dig in and let the good times roll.

The Maine lobster dinner is simple as well, and it has summer written all over it.  The entrée consists of a whole cooked lobster, accompanied by steamed mussels, boiled corn on the cob and small potatoes.  In this northern-most state, lobster is the pride of Maine.  On the to-do list of every tourist who sojourns there is to consume at least one of these native crustaceans.

Clam chowder originated in New England as a thick and chunky cream-based soup loaded with clams and potatoes, plus the usual ingredients of celery and onions.  Then New Yorkers had to get their hands in and substituted a tomato-based broth for the thick cream component and dubbed their recreation as Manhattan clam chowder.  Well I guess Long Island felt left out of the conjuring pot, but they took the easy way out in creating their Long Island clam chowder: the soup is merely a combination of Manhattan clam chowder and New England clam chowder – a best of both worlds concept.  As much as I enjoy all three of these incarnations, when it comes to seafood soups I still prefer lobster corn chowder and lobster bisque.  The best lobster bisque I ever ate was at the Carltun Restaurant in Eisenhower Park.  Its texture was the smoothest, silkiest and creamiest, the flavor was the magic of a chef who did not in any way hold back on his use of butter, it was the most blissful ecstasy I have ever experienced in a soup.

For those who love fried foods, restaurant that reigns supreme is called the Lobster Roll, with locations on both of the twin forks of Long Island.  From their fried blowfish “puffers” to their pub style fish & chips to a full compliment of various fried gems of the sea on one platter, their fried fish is superb.  What is a lobster roll anyway, you inner landlubbers ask?  Essentially, a lobster roll is a lobster salad (think tuna salad but swap out the tuna for shredded lobster meat) served in a long roll.

Fine Italian restaurants take full advantage of the fresh shellfish that becomes available.  Remember, Italy is a boot kicking out into the Mediterranean, surrounded on three sides by water, and thus the prevalence of fish and seafood entrees in Italian cooking.  Pastas with pesce, such as succulent shrimps and scallops, whole clams and mussels and rings of calamari, are always a first choice of mine when ordering in any Italian trattoria. 

On that note, here is an easy recipe for linguine with clams.  It is quick and easy enough to generate a weekday meal, yet elegant enough to serve for an occasion meal as well.  Keep a box of linguine, a bottle of white wine reserved for cooking, crushed red pepper flakes in your spice rack and a jar of sun-dried tomatoes on hand and all you’ll need to buy on the way home from your busy day are the clams and some parsley.  Add to the shopping list some fresh Italian bread, the makings for a quick salad and a bottle of Italian pinot grigio and dinner’s ready to prepare.

Linguine with Clams

Ingredients:

4 ounces dried linguine

3 dozen fresh little neck clams

1/2 cup chopped onion

4 garlic cloves, minced

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup white wine

1 8-ounce bottle clam juice

½ cup oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, chopped

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Cook the linguine in a large pot of boiling water until tender.

Rinse off the clams and scrub any particles of sand off of the shells.

In a stockpot, cook the onion in olive oil over medium-high heat until translucent.  Add the garlic and the red pepper flakes, sautee and cook for two minutes.  Add the wine and clam juice and bring to a boil. Continue to boil until reduced by 30%.  Stir in the sun-dried tomatoes.  Place the clams into the pot, cover and continue to boil, steaming the clams, for about 5 minutes or until the clam shells have opened.  Drain the linguine and place into a large serving bowl.  Begin removing the opened clams from the pot and arranging them over the pasta.  Discard any clams that remain closed after another five minutes.  Pour the contents of the pot over the clams and pasta, sprinkle with the parsley and serve.  Makes 2 servings.

 If you live in a coastal region and are looking for a couple of fun ideas to try this summer, all to the end of savoring a seafood dinner with a few friends, here are a couple of plans to contemplate.  One is a bit labor intensive, but going in with the right attitude of having fun and a few laughs and having the day’s activity culminate in a reward of freshly caught clams cooked in any manner you desire makes clam digging a unique experience that everyone should try once.  Have everyone attending produce one of their favorite recipes that calls for clams.  Another idea, my preferred of the two because I’m always ready for a party with a fun atmosphere, is the clambake.  Find a beach that will permit the activity, as a campfire for cooking will be required.  Plan an evening for this activity, ask each guest to contribute one shellfish.  Add to that a few other items for the fire, such as corn, some salads to accompany, a few blankets, some music and some beverages and you’ve got a party at which to celebrate your region’s pride, its cherished ingredient in the cooking world, seafood.