StreamingGourmet – The Blog

Pan Seared Halibut

Okay, I’m officially back on a health kick, which is why I’ve been blogging a little less frequently lately. I actually go to the gym now! But, I’m determined to eat delicious, healthy dishes and am eager to share them all with you, so here we go. Today’s installment is a seared halibut with mashed potatoes and kale chips. Now, I didn’t totally skimp on the ingredients here. I use real butter and olive oil and even whole milk in the mashed potatoes – one could substitute skim milk, cooking spray and so on, but my strategy is to eat flavorful foods but be careful with the portions and to choose foods that have tons of vitamins and minerals and aren’t high in bad fat. We’ll see if it works.

The sauce below breaks some rules because I needed to use ingredients that were on hand. The good news is that it turned out great anyway. Normally, I would have used heavy cream and wine and so on, but I didn’t have any of either, so I used chicken stock and whole milk instead and to my delight, the sauce thickened up nicely and was flavorful too. Again this sauce could easily be tweaked. You could take out the mustard and put in sour cream and paprikah instead or you could keep the mustard and also add capers or olives. I just love mustard and leeks, so that’s how I did it.

Pan Seared Halibut with Leek-Dijon Sauce
Serves 4

Ingredients

4 Halibut fillets about 1/2 lb each
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chicken stock or white wine
1/2 cup whole milk
1 Tbsp butter
1 leek, trimmed and finely chopped
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Method

1. Season halibut fillets with salt and pepper and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together mustard, olive oil, chicken stock, and milk. Set aside.

2. Heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil in a large sautée pan over medium-high heat. Add fillets to the pan and sautée on one side for about 3 minutes. Flip carefully and sautée for another 3-5 minutes. If the fillets are very thick, they may take a little longer, but be careful not to overcook them. They should flake with a fork and be just opaque (maybe even a little teeny bit translucent in the very middle depending on your taste). Remove to a warmed plate.

3. Add butter to the same pan. Add leeks and sautée gently until softened, about 2 minutes. Add the milk and mustard mixture. Simmer over medium heat until thickened, about 5 minutes. Grate lemon zest over the sauce and squeeze about a Tbsp of lemon juice into the sauce. Stir to mix. Spoon sauce over fish (and mashed potatoes) and serve immediately.

Creamy Leek Mashed Potatoes
Serves 4

Ingredients

4 Yukon Gold Potatoes
Salt and pepper
1 leek trimmed and chopped finely
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup whole milk or more

Method

1. Peel potatoes and cut into one-inch pieces. Boil for about 15 minutes or until fork tender. In the meantime, melt butter over medium heat in a medium sautée pan. Add leeks and sautée until softened and slightly browned, about 4-5 minutes. Spoon into large bowl. Drain potatoes into same bowl. Add milk and mash either with hand masher or electric hand mixer. Season with salt and pepper.

Kale Chips
Serves 4

Ingredients

4 large leaves of Dino Kale (curly leaf kale can work too)
1 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt to taste

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400˚F or use your convection setting and preheat it to 375˚F.

2. Wash and dry kale leaves. I left the stems on mine, but it really is better to remove them, because they remain tough and stringy while the rest of the pieces of kale becomes paper thin and crispy. Remove a stem by folding the kale in half and cutting away the stem.

3. Brush kale leaves with olive oil and season with fresh ground sea salt. Lay them side by side on a cookie sheet and bake for about 5 minutes. Flip them over and bake for another 5-7 minutes or until leaves are slightly browned, paper thin and crispy. Serve immediately as garnish over the fish.

Pan Seared Halibut

Pumpkin Ale Battered Fish & Chips

I’m seeing the world through pumpkin-tinted glasses these days, so when my eyes settled on the Buffalo Bill Pumpkin Ale display at the market the other day, I just knew I had to cook something with it. You see, it’s day 14 of 31 Days of Pumpkin and time for something completely different.

A beer batter video came across my desk while working on my other project, StreamingGourmet: Where You are the Food TV Star (join today!) and I knew just what to do. I’ve always wanted to master deep frying with batter and today, I think I have. In the past, I’ve struggled with keeping the coating on the food and having it crisp up just right. Well I’m not exactly sure what went right today, whether it was the consistency of the batter, the high temperature of the oil, or the fact the oil was the right depth, but I got perfectly fried fish every time and it was a cinch. I ate the fried calamari too quickly to photograph it. Sorry.

Beer-battered fish

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Garlic Ginger Basil Salmon from Foodwishes

I’ve been happily eating lighter dishes of late and last night, I even bought fish at the grocery store: wild caught Coho salmon for $14.99/lb. I searched StreamingGourmet for a salmon recipe and decided to use Chef John’s Garlic, Ginger, Basil Salmon video recipe. Chef John has the most comprehensive collection of video recipes on the web. Catch them on StreamingGourmet, but for complete recipes and the entire collection, please visit Foodwishes.blogspot.com. Chef John’s complete Garlic Ginger Basil Salmon blog post is here.

Wild Coho Salmon

The recipe is super easy. In short, you brown the salmon in some olive oil for about 4 minutes (depending on the thickness). Then after you flip it, pour in a prepared sauce that has minced garlic, minced ginger, brown sugar, vinegar, chili sauce and water. It bubbles up and starts to evaporate. Sprinkle on the basil, and then as the sauce cooks down, it thickens just as the fish is ready. I enjoyed sautéed Brussels sprouts with mine. I spooned some of the sauce over the Brussels sprouts while they were cooking too.

Sauce cooking down

Garlic Ginger Basil Salmon Video

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Salmon-Dill Quiche

I’ve been having a salmon craving lately so I decided to satisfy it with a quiche. One could substitute canned salmon in this recipe, but I decided to go all out and use fresh. I was going for a really creamy kind of quiche, which is why I used sour cream and half & half in my egg mixture. To get it even creamier, you might add some shredded cheese, like a Gruyère. I was hesitant, because I didn’t want to overpower the salmon and the dill with a sharp cheese, but you might give it a try anyway. Another creamy melted cheese that words well in quiche is Monterrey Jack. Since it’s a little less powerful than a Gruyère, it might be a good alternative.

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