Friday, February 22, 2008

A fishy quandry

I love to cook - and I have quite a few signature dishes. I receive rave reviews any time I fix ribs, meatballs, pizza, boxed cereal...no one pours milk like I do!

I cannot cook fish. It is a tragedy really. I do have one good recipe for salmon but that's pretty much it. And I've tried everything. Tonight I had two fabulous pieces of Mahi Mahi tuna. It is fatty and meaty which means its pretty tolerent of fools like myself so if I overcook it, the fish does retain some moisture.

So I gave it a good rinse and dunked it in milk to let it soak. (gets rid of the 'fishy' taste / smell) Any fish that has been wrapped in plastic more than a day gets that fishy smell and its just nasty. I then pulled out my jelly roll pan and greased it up.

Lying out the fish, I lightly coated it in butter then Old Bay seasoning, Louisiana Spice (its a brand) garlic and a dash of salt and pepper. I then sliced an onion very thin and laid that on top along with some thin sweet pepper strips. It looked very pretty - I was quite pleased with myself. (did you notice I forgot the lemon?)

Popped it in the oven and baked it for about 15 minutes - it was smelling good.....and it had little flavor at all. I could taste the garlic and a hint of the butter but that was it. I have no clue what went wrong, am I supposed to coat the fish in seasoning?

Yes ma'am, I'd like some fish with my seasoning...

What gives???

Signed,

Disaster in the Kitchen

1 comment:

Carolan Ivey said...

Mmmm, tuna!

Tuna needs to be as rare as humanly possible. I'd suggest cooking it on a grill or a grill pan on your stove top. Actually you just want to barely sear it, not "cook" it.

Get a good quality teriaki marinade/basting sauce. Coat the rinsed and dried fish in the sauce, then roll it in sesame seeds. A mix of black and white seeds is divine.

Coat the grill or pan with olive oil or cooking spray. Heat it up smokin' hot.

Briefly introduce the fish to the heat. Fish, meet fire. Fire, fish. Don't cook it more than a minute, and even that might be too long if your pan is very hot.

Flip it over, repeat.

Remove it immediately - it'll keep cooking after you take it off the heat, so it's very easy to overcook it even if you think you haven't.

Serve with grilled veggies. :)