As mentioned in a previous entry, we have found a good fishmonger in Princeton, and so today (our 2nd anniversary!) we went to get some sea bass to do the 'Chinese Fish Parcels' recipe.
No luck. So I got tilapia instead - a kind of cichlid, apparently (sorry Hendrik). Tilapia struck me as a good idea since it would be neutral, rather like sea bass. The fillets looked pretty good laid out in the kitchen:
I prepared the vegetables: carrot batons (which took forever), thinly sliced leeks, garlic, and chillies. I forgot to get ginger: that would have been thinly sliced too!
Anyway, I then layered the fish fillets (cut in two) with the vegetables, soy sauce, and sesame oil, to make three heaps like this:
Next, I sealed the foil into parcels and put them in the oven for 15 minutes. It was that simple!
The results were amazing. This was a seriously good recipe. The fish was delicate yet strongly scented with the aromatic vegetables, and the jus in the base of the parcels was intense. Served with coconut jasmine rice (as in another previous entry) and spinach. And a 2009 Mersault by Olivier Leflaive.
A true anniversary dinner. As Katherine said, these recipes we are doing are substituting for (not sex but) going to restaurants, which we can't do because of the little one (go to restaurants, I mean).
I can't believe how lucky I am to have this beautiful woman as my wife!
Next up: Wheeler's Fish Cookery. That's not going to be easy - it's another older recipe book (1984) with recipes that don't actually tell you how to cook the food.
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