Food Experiments This Week

28 Feb 2010 3 Comments

by madsilence in cooking, Food, Life, Recipes Tags: fish, pasta, pesto, Recipes, teriyaki, yellowtail

February Breakthrough!!  How could I have been living without a food processor for the past 26 years??

Broccolini, walnut and garlic pesto. Wooha!

Wow, this picture makes my amazing pesto look like a leftover from Slimer from the Ghostbusters ::le sigh::  There just ain’t no way to do good food photography at 9pm in the middle of February in Japan under a huge fluorescent light ^^;;;  But that having been said, this pesto was great!  A nice way to get your veg and a little pep into your system.  Be careful not to add too much extra garlic though (as I inevitably do) because this is a raw pesto…

Broccoli Rabe and Walnut Pesto (from Melissa Jacobson over at FoodandWine)

* 1/3 cup(s) walnuts
* 2 tablespoon(s) walnuts, combined with above
* 1/2 pound(s) broccoli rabe, trimmed
* 1 clove(s) garlic
* 1/3 cup(s) extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon(s) extra-virgin olive oil, combined with above
* Pinch of crushed red pepper
* 1/3 cup(s) grated pecorino cheese, plus more for serving
* Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
* 3/4 pound(s) linguine

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the walnuts in a pie plate and toast for 8 minutes, until fragrant and lightly golden; let cool. Chop 2 tablespoons of the walnuts.
2. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the broccoli rabe until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain and let cool under cold water. Squeeze out the excess water and coarsely chop the broccoli rabe.
3. In a food processor, mince the garlic. Add the 1/3 cup of walnuts; pulse until coarsely chopped. Add the broccoli rabe, olive oil, and crushed red pepper and process until the broccoli rabe is very finely chopped. Add the 1/3 cup of pecorino and pulse until just combined. Season with salt and pepper. Scrape the pesto into a large bowl.
4. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the linguine until al dente. Drain, reserving 3/4 cup of the pasta cooking water. Add the linguine to the pesto sauce, then stir in the reserved cooking water and toss until the pasta is well coated with the pesto sauce. Sprinkle with the chopped walnuts and serve at once, passing more pecorino at the table.

Also this week was the (surprisingly late) foray into teriyaki fish.

Teriyaki yellowtail, garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed brussel sprouts.

There couldn’t be an easier way to cook tasty fish in less then 15 minutes.  What I cooked was a nice buri fillet, which I think is called yellowtail or sometimes amberjack in English.  Trust me here people, even if you abhor fish you will like buri.  Number 1: it has no “fishy” smell.  This is the only fish I cook that doesn’t leave me house stinking for 10 hours afterward.  Number 2:  It doesn’t taste like fish.  It doesn’t have that oily sea taste that people don’t like.  The flesh is firm, white, and juicy – but nothing at all like chicken.  It tastes great on its own or with a glaze or (the best!!) as sashimi.

Buri Teryaki from About.com

*Makes 4 servings.
Ingredients:

* 4 fillets buri (yellowtail)
* 2 tbsps sake rice wine
* 1 tbsp soy sauce
* For teriyaki sauce: 2 tsps sugar, 3 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsps mirin

Preparation:
Mix sake and soy sauce in a bowl and marinate fish in the sauce for 5-10 minutes. Wipe the liquid from the fish and set aside. Heat some oil in a frying pan and fry fish until browned. Mix teriyaki sauce ingredients to make teriyaki sauce. Wipe some excess oil in the frying pan with a pager towel. Pour teriyaki sauce over fish in the pan. Simmer the fish for 10 minutes over low heat.

I’ll have to post my brussel sprout recipe one day, I just can’t stand when people think they only way to eat the little buggers is boiled into oblivion ::shakes fingers at imaginary over-cookers::  So what are you all cooking to keep away the February blues?

~MS the Perpetually Hungry

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