One Dish Haddock Dinner

 I only have 12 more days of employment and then I can start working on the Next Great American Novel…or start begging people for a job. Both sound like viable options. Needless to say you will be seeing some creative dinner ideas from me in the near future since money will be a little tight. The great news is I will finally have time to be creative and come up with some recipes of my own. (My husband is probably reading that sentence right now and cringing.) In lieu of this upcoming event (my unemployment) I decided to spend some money and make a fish dish. The fish was not part of the Salmon Club Pack at Wegmans that I typically gravitate too because it’s inexpensive. No this was actually fresh fish from the seafood counter. I had my husband look through a seafood cookbook and pick out something he would like me to try. His pick was a one dish Haddock Bake (I can’t post a link to the recipe because it was from a cookbook (Seafood Secrets) that is not online anywhere and apparently out of stock on Amazon! But email me and I will send you the recipe!)


The ingredients you will need for this recipe: haddock, onions, mushrooms, new potatoes, dry white wine, water, bay leaf, bread crumbs, melted butter, salt, pepper, and parsley. You are going to put all of the ingredients in one buttered casserole dish. The recipe calls for 4 onions sliced. I thought four onions would be way too many, so I only sliced two onions and that was more than enough. Place the fish on top of the sliced onions and surround the fish with quartered mushrooms and sliced new potatoes. Pour one cup of white wine and one cup of water over the fish, than add a bay leaf. Next sprinkle the fish with bread crumbs and pour melted butter over everything; season with salt and pepper.

Bake this at 350 degrees. It took me an hour to get the potatoes cooked. The recipe suggests that this only takes 30-40 minutes to cook.

Final Product:

I also made Vermicelli rice pilaf from Mark Bittman's book.  I didn't realise how easy it was to make rice pilaf!  Yay! No more of the boxed stuff for me!  All you need is butter, onion, stock, parsley, salt, pepper, and vermicelli or angel hair if you want to make it the way I did.  It only takes about 30 minutes to make.  The only problem I ran into was forgetting that I wanted to add the pasta and I didn't have it broken up.  So I ended up breaking it up right when it needed to go in and the pasta was in all different sizes since I just broke it by hand.  It still tasted really good!  I encourage all of you to try it!

Final Product:

Final Plate:

My thoughts on the haddock: This was a very good recipe! Even though it took longer to cook then I was hoping it would, it turned out very well. The fish was moist, the veggies were good. I’m sure everything having a little butter on it helped with the enjoyment factor. I’m not sure why so many onions are needed, but having two in this recipe was bearable. I can’t imagine what it would have been like using four. You should try this recipe because it was tasty and everything is cooked in one dish. You can’t get much better than that!

Next Up: Andouille Sausage, Collard Greens, and Grits, sounds delicious!

Coriander Crusted Sea Bass and Asparagus over Sweet Potato Puree

I wonder at times where people come up with some of the recipes they create. When I picked out the recipe for our meal Saturday night, I just wanted it to be healthy. So I decided to get a recipe out of Cooking the Real Age Way. This is the second recipe I’ve made from this cookbook. It doesn’t seem to be a great book. The meals are a little weird. I didn’t really think about what I picked out until after I cooked it and Anthony said, “None of this stuff goes together!” I have a feeling that one of the doctors Dr. John La Puma came up with these recipes. He has taught nutrition and cooking classes for people and has a book called Chef MD. Maybe the doctors should leave the cooking to the chefs or at least the creating of recipes.

I made Coriander Crusted Sea Bass and Asparagus over Sweet Potato Puree, but I used haddock instead of sea bass. There was no way I was spending $21.99 a pound for sea bass and I think haddock is just as tasty. I’ve never paid attention to coriander before and didn’t really know what it was. I was also scared to try a whole seed of it, because I didn’t know if I would like the taste. Sometimes I like a flavor when it’s mixed with other things and not own it’s on. Coriander seemed to me like something I wouldn’t like on it’s own and I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I was cooking basically without complaint and feeling good in the kitchen. Once I had everything prepped and the sweet potatoes were cooking it was time for the fish.

I am not good at cooking fish. It always falls apart on me. Fish is healthy and I love it so I will continue to cook it even if I’m ruining it! I sprinkled some of each seasoning on the fish: the ground coriander, salt, cayenne pepper. Then I pressed some coriander seeds into the fish as the recipe suggests. The fish of course immediately stuck to the skillet and started falling apart. Then with Anthony’s help I got the fish flipped over without it breaking too much and threw it in the oven. The asparagus was already in the oven. You just put it in a baking pan and sprinkle it with olive oil. Everything was timed pretty perfectly. I mashed the sweet potatoes and I was done.

Final Product:

My Thoughts? Just look at the plate above. Doesn’t it all seem a little awkward and odd? There was way too much coriander on the fish. I’m not sure if that was my fault or the recipe. It turns out I don’t really care for coriander and neither does Anthony. Or at least not that much coriander! So we tried eating around it on the fish and didn’t bother eating the pieces covered in it. We ate the potatoes and asparagus which were both good. The meal was just too strange to have again. Each would have been individually good (without the coriander), but they really don’t mesh well together.

Next up is Chicken, Gravy, and Dumpling Casserole. I didn’t cook as much as I thought I would last week. This week I will be cooking more often. So stay tuned!