What Are You Tasting?

Flavor: Light citrus with a white wine reduction
Prep Time: 35 mins
Add to the Rotation?: No, but perhaps with chicken instead of monkfish

Hmm. Well, this diva tried yet another dish from The Silver Spoon, this time the main ingredient was monkfish. I made the Monkfish Stew with Turmeric Rice on page 619. Monkfish is known as the poor-man’s lobster due to its similar meaty consistency. The monkfish that I bought was from Whole Foods at a whooping $12.99 a pound, and this recipe calls for 2 lbs! At that price, this “trash” fish is no longer in the poor-man’s budget. This meaty fish is perfect to standup to the long heating and constant stirring needed for this stew. In addition, monkfish is tasty but it certainly is not a fish with pretty flesh and a dish such as this works well to hide it.

Ingredients (without staples):
2lb monkfish (expensive!)
2/3 dry white wine
zest of orange and lemon (Use a microplane)
1 inch ginger root
1 tomato
1 sprig of parsley

Rice:
11/2 teaspoon turmeric
11/2 rice

As with other The Silver Spoon recipes, this dish is simple and relatively easy to assemble. It seems that the Italian heritage of this recipe might be in question as the technique used to reduce wine and thicken the sauce with flour and butter seem very French. The dish starts out a slow sauté of two diced onions in butter and olive oil. Add in the monkfish, cut into chucks that have been dusted with flour (used in thickening the sauce). Cook the fish and onions for 2 minutes, pour the wine and reduce. After reduction to a thick sauce, toss in the zest, ginger and a dash of Tabasco. For best results, use a microplane to shave the zest finely. No need to worry about chunks of tough zest in your stew. Add chopped tomato and parsley. Lastly, a couple more stirs, add in salt and pepper then spoon over turmeric rice.

The monkfish stew had a nice delicate citrus flavor from the zest with a zing from the white wine reduction. While the dish was attractive and flavorful I feel that it is important to really like monkfish in order to get your money’s worth. I might try this again with chicken in the spring time.

So, I’m still on the hunt for the fabulous recipe in this book and have yet to see it. However, the recipes are short, fun and slightly challenging making cooking on weeknights with my elaborate jewelry on after my day job seem possible.

Stay tune for more cooking from The Silver Spoon cookbook this weekend. And if you are cooking from The Silver Spoon, let me know and perhaps we can cook together via the web.
After all...

What are you tasting?,
Edna