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!

Beer, Sausages,and Potatoes...Some of My Favorite Things

Hello everyone I'm back!  My classes are done, so I can cook again.  It felt really good to get back into the kitchen.  I might almost say that I even missed it.  Almost.  The expensive grocery bill kind of spoiled my enjoyment of returning.  $181!  Granted it wasn't all food products, but I would say the majority of the bill was food related.   We finally got out to the meat market (Triano's) that is in our town and it was a really good experience.  We got a bunch of chicken, ground beef, and Italian sausages for around $13!  I was impressed and will definitely be going back there.   


For my first foray back into the kitchen I decided to try out a Martha Stewart recipe.  I'm not sure that I've ever actually tried one of her recipes before, so I figured I might as well try it out.  The recipe is Beer-Braised Sausages and Warm Potato Salad.  As I mentioned in the title of this post:  Beer, Sausages, Potatoes these are a few of my favorite things! (And so is the Sound of Music!)


This was an easy recipe to follow, the only issue I ran into was browning all sides of the sausage.  I got the first three sides browned, but the part that curves was really hard to brown.  I ended up breaking one of the sausages a little bit trying to do it, so I finally just gave up. 

Next you add the thinly sliced onion and cook that until it's softened. 

Then you add the beer (12 oz of pale ale), red potatoes (I quartered mine), water, salt, and pepper.  You bring that to a boil and then cover the pan and lower the heat to medium and cook until potatoes are done.

Once the potatoes are done (15 minutes for me) remove the sausages (keep them warm) and take the potatoes out of pan and toss them in a mixture of extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, and parsley. 

The last step is returning the cooking liquid back to a boil and reducing it down to about 1 cup of liquid. 

Once that's reduced put the sausages back in to heat them up and you are finished.  After you put the sausage and potatoes on a plate, drizzle half the sauce on top and serve the other half of the sauce on the side.


Final Product:

My thoughts:  This meal was okay, but not great.  There wasn't anything wrong with the recipe, but we used a beer that was just way too bitter.  I think you can get away with a normal ale.  I'd like to use Yuengling if I make this again.  I also highly suggest adding sourdough bread to this meal.  There was a ton of sauce and using the sourdough to soak up all of the liquid would be super.  Also because the sauce was so bitter you couldn't taste the dressing on the potatoes, which was sad because the tanginess of the vinegar would have gone nicely with the beer. 


It was easy.  It didn't take as long to cook as I thought it would.  It wasn't labor intensive.  So try it out if Beer, Sausages,and Potatoes are some of your favorite things too!


Next up:  My first Mark Bittman recipe, More Vegetable Less Egg Frittata and the Sloppy Joe is back!  This time I think I might have finally found the recipe that my mom used to use when I was little.  Can't wait to try it!