Fish Wednesday

On Top of Spaghetti

When it’s dark and rainy (even in the middle of summer) there’s something reassuring about a big bowl of spaghetti with red sauce. We make up a batch of what we call “schaumgummi red sauce” every few weeks - enough to have some for dinner and the rest, to stow in the freezer for, you guessed it, a rainy day. I have gradually been trying to rotate out the white flour pasta for the mixed grain varieties from Trader Joe’s - so far the flax is the most popular, with the rice flour pasta being awful and gummy and the whole wheat too crunchy for the likes of some people. But there are times when you just want old school spaghetti.

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From the archives:
The Jackson Strret Crawl IV

With the days getting longer, soon we’ll be walking down Jackson for our Friday night feasts. This is a good thing because I know that I, for one, could use the exercise and that after the kind of extensive dining we did this Friday at Sichuan Cuisine, a little post dinner walk could make the difference between carrying those noodles home that evening in a full belly or carrying them around as a couple of extra pounds for the rest of the summer.

Sichuan Cuisine is a little too big for a hole in the wall; I guess you’d call it a greasy spoon. It’s got two or three family style tables and maybe ten smaller tables. I’ve been there when people are lined up on the sidewalk waiting for you to finish your green beans and get the hell out so they can order their own. They’re best known for their dumplings, which you should order pronto, right when you get in the door, because the service, while cheerful, can be slow. (The dumplings don’t come in a true vegitarian option, just FYI. ) “90% vegetable,” said our waitress, when asked. The dumplings - get them steamed or fried, your choice - come with a chili dipping sauce. I love these things and can eat a mountain of them, but they got passed over as too plain by some of our eaters.

Once you’ve ordered your dumplings, you can turn your attention to the rest of your meal. The green beans, mentioned above, are outstanding. Also first rate, the eggplant and the shrimp chow mein. For the sake of culinary adventure, we ordered something called deep cooked potato, which I can’t recommend though some at the table did like it. It’s shredded potato - cut sort of like a skinny french fry - slightly undercooked, it seemed, and served with hot chilis and a nondescript sauce. We also ordered mushu, veggie style with tofu. I thought it was lacking something, but it went over okay with others at the table.

Sichuan Cuisne is cheap, cheap, cheap - we had six dishes, which was plenty of food for the five of us - at 11 dollars a head. Go early or be prepared to wait, this is a popular little place and food that’s this good and this cheap keeps the tables full.

We give Sichuan Cuisine a big collective thumbs up. I’ve been to Sichuan Cuisine before and I’ll go there again. It’s a winner.

Sichuan Cuisine is at 1048 S. Jackson St.

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Observations on Grilling and Birdwatching

In these mild summer evenings, we love to eat dinner outside while hummingbirds do the same at the backyard feeder. We are obsessively trying to photograph the pair of Roufus birds that we think have set up house in a very spiky tree that hangs over the low fence between our yard and the neighbors’. We can hear the little guys cheeping away, their odd little hummingbird conversation spilling out of the branches into the yard before one of the pair swoops up to the feeder.

They won’t land when I have the grill on, it makes sense that they wouldn’t like the smoke, but they don’t care if we sit at the table and talk about them. As soon as the going back and forth to the kitchen, the slamming of the screen door, the scraping of plates and silverware has stopped and the grill is off, they resume their post.

I am trying to eat less food and enjoy it more (if that’s possible, I do love to eat). I recently read a piece in Bon Apetit on how a food critic eats - she recently decided she didn’t need to eat every last thing on her plate. There’s little more enjoyable than eating a well grilled piece of fish in one’s own backyard, but admittedly, I am finding myself a little peckish about an hour after dinner. This won’t do.

I sauteed the red onions for a very long time in olive and sesame oil and then added chopped kale and a little water to help cook the greens. The fish I slathered with O’Plum Sesame Sauce a gift from recent house guest Mausi. Note to travelers and future house guests: Anything food related goes down big here. It probably would where you’re going, too. The sauce left a nice sweet glaze on the fish with just a little of that burnt sugar taste - good stuff on the meaty tuna steak.

Here are a few things I have learned from this summer of grilling.

1. Coat the grill with a nice light coat of oil to keep your food from sticking.
2. Grill the fish on a very hot grill on each side for a minute or two, then turn the heat down, close the lid, and walk away.
3. If you must peak, baste while doing so.
4. The fish is done when the fat starts to set up on the outside.
5. It takes about 10 minutes to cook fish. 5 minutes more for a very thick cut.
6. If you make a lot of weird noises, the hummingbird will spook and fly off.

Eat your fish. It refines your powers of observation.

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The First Tomato

We ate it with lettuce also from the garden. Wow.

I listen to a lot of vintage radio podcasts and I’m often struck by the difference in our current philosophy about how civilian populations should respond to war. The light comedy is woven with calls for conservation, commentary about shortages, and how Americans should be proud and willing to sacrifice for the war effort. I like to think of a victory garden as victory over our current administration. Hey, if I’m going to be deluded, please let me be that way while eating awesome tomatoes.

Here’s a nice blog about modern victory gardens.

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Salmon and Basil Sandwiches

The nice thing about having a gas grill is you can walk outside, grill yourself up a little something, then wander back inside and, you know, eat it with very little fuss. There’s no planning, no charcoal chimney, no fretting about if the kindling is too wet or the wind will take out the flame. I love the convenience of it. I get that there are arguments for charcoal and I’ll concede whatever points you like to make, but I love the gas grill and I am not going back, you can’t make me.

I am growing two bunches of basil in pots in my backyard. It’s leafy enough to pull some off for sandwiches but it’s not quite a pesto making bumper crop. That’s okay, It’s making enough leaves to lay across grilled salmon after you mash it onto a nice grainy bread with a scattering of capers and a bit of Dijon mustard for bite.

Freshly grilled salmon sandwiches are proof either that simple food truly is the best or that god exists, you decide. Certainly a salmon sandwich is kosher, so if your god happens to be Jewish, you’re heading in the right direction for a better life. Even if your god isn’t of the tribe, a salmon sandwich is a damn fine thing to have for lunch.

Eat your fish, it’s good for your soul.

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Contrary Fish Politics

There’s a great read on Crosscut about a writer who may or may not be setting his salmon eating policies around personal publicity.

Praising, and then panning, Alaskan salmon

Here at Fish Wednesday, we don’t buy farmed Atlantic salmon, and when we can afford it, we love love love a good salmon feed.

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Fish Wednesday, Island Style

Fess up. Which one of you told me to grill mangoes? You are an evil genius. Now, I’m not sure I’m going to want to eat anything else. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, grilled mangoes. Good lord. Whew. You can scoop the mango out of the skin with a spoon after you’ve grilled it, and the places where it’s charred are crispy and the places where it’s not are like hot mango pudding in the best possible way. Oh my. A-hem.

Once I’d settled on mahi mahi, I decided to go island style with my chow. We had some pineapple leftover from earlier in the week, cleaned and peeled, and some Thai brown jasmine rice and big ripe mangoes were on sale just over there from the seafood case at our local supermarket. I basted the pineapple with sweet chili sauce. Then I used another 1/4 cup of sweet chili sauce and about the same amount of mashed very ripe mango to coat the fish. The mango - we cut big pieces off it along the pit, coated them with olive oil, and placed cut side down on the grill. The fish cooked for about 10 minutes on each side - I mashed more mango with sweet chili sauce on it every time I turned it over.

It was freaking incredible. No, really.

Sweet chili sauce is an essential kitchen item at my house. It’s great for marinating chicken, it’s perfect on fish, and hey, you can even toss tofu in it. The sauce is sugar, chili, vinegar, and some random stuff, nothing chemical or weird, no high fructose corn syrup, even, so I feel just fine about slathering it on, oh, anything that I’m going to put on the grill. If you haven’t eaten fresh pineapple grilled with sweet chili sauce, you should get right on that - I’m not sure why you’re still reading unless you’re standing at your kitchen counter cleaning a pineapple. You really should be watching this guy instead of reading me, he’s got a perfectly fine little video about on how to cut a pineapple.

The trick to good grilling, I am learning, is using plenty of oil on the grill. Yes, I know, it’s as though I have gone on an all fried diet but those Italians, you know the ones, they live forever and they eat plenty of olive oil and still stay trim enough to buzz around on the back of a Vespa in a tailored Armani suit. Whatever with Italy, though, our meal was all Hawaii, a place where Fish Wednesday, Island Style, could happen every day with almost no effort.

We were on the docks at Lahaina and there was a tremendous catch of mahi mahi lying on the pier. “Hey, what’s going to happen to them?” I asked. “Oh, we’ll try to sell them to the restaurants in town and then give what’s left to the crew.” Sport fishing, it’s a big tourism deal in Hawaii. When I have my restaurant in Hawaii - a casual place in Huloaloa on the Big Island, just down from the uke gallery - it will be called Fish Wednesday. I’m funding it out of the money I make off also island based and wildly popular Aloha Oy bagel chain.

I’m pretty sure grilled mango has hallucinogenic properties.

Eat your fish and your fruit, it’s good for your imagination.

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Swiss Chard, Salmon, and Sparrows

We have sparrow issues. The little brown birds have found my swiss chard and they will not get out of it. It’s like a salad bar to them. Do they care if I chase them off? No. Do they care if I am sitting right there? No? They give me the stink eye and then, they just help themselves. They have punched holes in half of my gorgeous swiss chard. I pulled up and tossed out an entire plant, so transformed from swiss chard to swiss cheese it was. I have to build a scare-sparrow.

The sockeye are running - we were up at the Fish Ladder the other day and the numbers were small but the fish were big and gorgeous. There’s also fresh sockeye at Costco for 7.99/pound - a good price. I could eat salmon every day, I think, so we were fine with buying a Costco sized package. In addition to swiss chard, we have a lot of peas and I love peas and salmon on pasta. Because we have enough salmon, that’s on the menu for either lunch today or tomorrow, and yes, I will grill the salmon again.

The chard, I sautéed in olive oil - stems first, they take a little longer - and then tossed in a can of organic tomatoes. This is one of my favorite ways to eat swiss chard. The fish, I tossed in a little olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and tossed a few capers on top. All that went on a very hot grill. Simple, no fuss.

Eat your fish, it’s good for you.

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Summer Eating

It’s about a year now since I reconnected with two old friends from art school. Every six weeks or so, we get together for dinner, rotating locations between our respective houses. The last meal, I hosted and though I feel like I did very little work, everything added up to one of the finest meals I’ve eaten anywhere for a while.

G. brought a huge salad of mixed greens with spring onions and plenty of avocado and a big bowl of snap peas. We talked about sautéing the peas for just a minute or two in butter, but ended up eating them raw out of the bowl - I kept dipping mine into the goat cheese.

I provided some snacky things (including that goat cheese that went so well with the peas) and grilled up some chicken marinated in olive oil, wine, mustard, and sage leaves. Oh, and we drank beer. We’re not fancy.

T made a frozen peach semifreddo. I’d not had semifreddo before, it’s sort of like an ice cream cake, but that doesn’t do it justice. It was on an amaretti crust with almond praline. You’re supposed to serve it with some kind of peach sauce, but I’m hopped up on grilling lately, so rather than reduce the peaches, I just grilled them for a few minutes. Hot peaches charred from the grill with the mostly frozen desert? Spectacular. We washed that down with a little ice cold dessert wine.

What was it that made for such an exceptional feed? It’s the brightness of those summer flavors, I think. And while the semifreddo is a complicated dessert, there was a simplicity in the meal that made everything belong together.

Yesterday, we pulled all the peas off the vines in our backyard and shelled them. We have a shocking amount of swiss chard that needs eating. We picked all the strawberries a few days ago, washing the fruit and  eating them in the backyard. All this is our first real crop at the new house. The modest success of this year’s garden (three small raised beds and a patch of strawberries) has motivated me to expand a little for next year. It’s the immediate freshness of all that food that made for such excellent chow - and hey, if it can come from right outside your door, it doesn’t get any fresher than that.

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Basil & Orange Halibut

Don’t pay extra for halibut fillets; fish is expensive enough as it is. If you cook it properly the fish comes right off the bone, it’s super moist and delicious, you won’t miss the fancy cut.

Marinate the steaks for as long as you feel like - mine sat for about an hour. Brush the grill with olive oil and then, get it good and hot. Cook the fish for about 10 minutes on each side - it’s done when it’s just starting to fall apart.  I brushed plenty of extra marinde on the fish every couple of minutes dumping lots on just before I turned it. Be generous with the oil on the grill or the fish will stick - mine did a little, but it was fine.

We ate this with swiss chard braised with olive oil and grilled orange slices. The crispy basil and bitter orange peel are a really nice combination of flavors. If, like me, you used basil that you grew in your garden, you might taste a tiny bit of extra smugness, enhanced by the deliciousness of a perfectly cooked piece of halibut eaten outdoors on a lovely summer evening.

For the marinade, mix together:
1/4c. orange juice
1/4c. white wine
1/4c. olive oil
3-4 tbsp. finely diced orange peel
3-4 tbsp. fresh minced basil
1/4 tsp salt
splash chili oil (optional)

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Other Seafood Lovers We Appreciate

• Two weekends back, we were delighted to get a visit from Fish Wednesday fan Lola Akinmade. Lola is our type exactly, making her living in nerdier pursuits while doing creative stuff and jetting around the planet to exotic places (including her native Nigeria and whoa, Stockholm, could you pick a place more opposite?) We collected her from her hotel and promptly made her join us for two things we love - French baking and Pike Place Market. She took some lovely pictures, they’re on this honorary Fish Wednesday post on her blog. Lola! Come back when you can stay longer!
• Let’s give a big hallelujah chorus to No Impact Man who’s got a fine post up about eating sustainable seafood.
• We really do love to meet our fellow bloggers in person  (see above) so we were psyched to head up to, you guessed it, the French bakery to talk food and blogging with the fine folks of Foodista. Barnaby and Sheri live sort of in our hood, close enough to be considered neighbors. We’d be making plans to invite them over for dinner, but we’re a little intimidated by their food cred. Once we get up the nerve, we’ll probably go with some old standby, like grilled halibut. Which, by the way, is what we’re making tonight.
• We had some house guests last weekend, wedding strays who were in town for the marriage of our mutual friends. K+K took us out to dinner as thanks and we feasted but good on big plates of, you guessed it, seafood down at Endolyne Joe’s. Joe’s was doing a Hawaii menu, we had ono and scallops and shrimp and oh, the dessert was a good one, tangerine and ginger sorbet that a person kinda wants to try to make at home. Thanks, guys, for being such lovely house guests.

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