Fried Walleye Pike, Broiled Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Lima Beans and Green Tea
It's 100 degrees out today, and to cook with cast iron I MUST have all my windows open. Did that stop me? Ha!
I got wind that there was some fish market that just opened up by my apartment, so I decided to walk down and check it out. (Again, in 100 degree heat.) I was pretty disappoined by Succulent Seafood. They had a ton of frozen stuff, but their fresh fish counter was smaller than a normal grocery store. The "fishmonger" working there seemed fairly confused when I started asking specific questions. (I have fishmonger in quotes, because calling someone a fishmonger implies they have a certain expertise in the field.)
They did have fresh "exotic" fish, which was kind of cool I suppose. Everything fresh was very expensive, and I didn't want to buy $20 worth of fish and mess is up since I've never cooked something like giant sea bass before. So, I settled with the Walleye Pike filet and went home- since most white fish cooks about the same.
I breaded it in world-famous Panko bread crumbs with a ton of pepper, some salt, and a hint of chili powder and ground red pepper just for fun. I just bought a 14 inch cast iron skillet a few days ago, and have been excited to use it. Everything probably would have cooked a little more even in my hard anodized pans, but that's nowhere near as much fun as filling your apartment with smokey cast iron goodness.
Meanwhile, I used some leftover potatoes and garlic I had sitting around that I were scared were going to go bad soon, so I mashed them up Alton Brown style. He peels the regular potatoes (or in my case, Yukon Golds) for mashing, then keeps red potatoes with the skin on and cut up in to smaller chunks to give the potatoes some texture. The potatoes took way less time to cook than I thought they would, so I experimented with fluffing them with a fork to give them some ridges, then throwing them under the broiler. The fish was still taking longer to cook, so I tossed some mozzarella cheese on top with some parsley flakes and put them back under the broiler.
And just because I'm trying to clear my freezer out of the weird bags of frozen vegetables I bought months ago when they were 10 for $10, I made some lima beans with enough butter to cause two heart attacks.
Oh, and I've been all about every form of green tea possible lately, so I had some iced green tea with my dinner to use up the rest of the lemon.