LEARN TO COOK : FISH PROVENCAL
Since you all survived yesterday’s terribly long post, I thought you deserved something a little lighter today! Remember when I said I wanted to cook a Julia Child recipe after watching “Julie & Julia” Sunday night? Well, I kinda did. We had to improvise a bit because it was impossible to find a recipe that we actually both wanted to eat!! Everything either had heavy cream, cheese and butter (Brian despises them all…I know, isn’t that strange? I mean who doesn’t like cheese?), involved bread (it’s my body, not my soul despises gluten…sad but true) or was something along the lines of a Duck-leg mousse (and we both had our limits on how far we would take this Julia Child night). I was not going to give up though, I was dead set on having a French themed dinner night! So we searched the internet for other French recipes and finally found one that didn’t include heavy cream, cheese, gluten or butter (we are so LA with all our food restrictions huh??)- fish Provencal!
With the dish finally settled on we headed to the most magical place on earth…whole foods. Six hundred dollars later….kidding…we were back home with French music playing, a martini (for him), a glass of wine (for me), lots of candles and fish to cook. Some of my favorite evenings spent with Brian are in the kitchen. As much as I enjoy cooking by myself I much prefer making dinner with my partner. It’s the perfect activity to do as a couple- you chat, cook, drink wine, laugh, and then you eat!
The meal was a success! The dish was soooooo good in fact that we ate all of it! Happy to report it was also terribly easy to make and looked pretty impressive on a plate. In case you can’t see from the ridiculous picture above…I’m looking at that fish with love.
My favorite song from the night….
ingredients:
I fennel bulb
1 shallot
4 garlic cloves
4 tomatoes
parsley
1 1/2 cup white wine
1/2 lemon juice
salt & pepper
1 pound of white flaky fish
recipe:
chop garlic/ slice shallots and fennel/boil tomatoes then blanche and peel/heat olive oil (medium heat)/add fennel & shallots & saute for a few minutes until they are soft/ add garlic for 2 min/add wine, turn up heat to medium-high and boil for 3 minutes/add tomatoes & boil for 3 minutes/submerge fillets @ bottom/add salt & pepper to taste/cover, reduce heat to low for 10 minutes until fish easily flakes/add lemon juice, top with parsley and serve
365til30.com 
although restaurants often try hard to please gluten-intolerant clients, wheat is in soysauce and most bottled anything used by restaurant cooks. and mistakes get made that can set you back on your heels (I know because my Irv’s niece–my darling wife–has this same problem). Eating out is a recipe for disaster like planning to go home winners from Vegas. Solution: Get better at cooking and find those really good organic ingredients that are healthier and taste better, from organic pasture butter and celtic sea salt, to home grown vegies. Sorry, restaurant industry, but now we go out only when exhaustion has set in from too long days at tasks.
world’s fastest good cooking school–ready?
1. buy only good ingredients
2. don’t use more than 5 ingredients (except in Indian food).
3. pay attention so you don’t burn it.
Thank you for your blog. I found myself looking forward to it–You Go, Kid!
Thank you so much David! I look forward to your comments and I’m delighted to have you as a reader!
There was a time when you turned pasta into a ball of mush…now I’ll be taking lessons from you. Can’t wait for the Mexican feast!
I admit it, by the end of this 365 days, you be a better Cook than I am. 🙂