Soup Therapy

While spending the holidays with family in Ottawa, I made a huge pot of nice soup. It wasn't really anything fancy but for a group of people who would only need a phone to order takeout in place of a kitchen, homemade soup is something of a treat. Plus I was getting sick of eating shitty food.

As one would expect, I started by caramelizing some onions after which I deglazed the pan with about half a glass of merlot. To this I added carrots, celery, garlic, a red pepper, a de-seeded jalapeno pepper, a can of organic chick peas, two boxes of organic chicken stock, a big can of tomato juice, cayenne pepper, celery seeds, bay leaves, salt and black pepper. Surprisingly the soup was really good. Maybe I was just hungry for good food though.

When we got back home, I replicated the recipe with the addition of salmon, halibut and mackeral. I also changed some of the ingredients such as vegetable stock in place of chicken stock and white wine instead of merlot. The results were different but both were pretty good.

Fancy Foibled Fish & Chips

My intentions in the kitchen often do not match the results. I'm getting better at every attempt. But results vary.

The recipe for this particular dish comes from Canada's grill genius, Rob Rainford. As you can see in the above photo and here http://www.foodtv.ca/recipes/recipedetails.aspx?dishid=6585 the idea is to wrap the halibut (which is in season here by the Atlantic) in prosciutto and then wrap that in a layer of very thinly sliced potatoes. Now below you see how it turned out on my own grill. Yes. That's right. The potatoes are no longer wrapped around the fish and cured ham.

The failure is due to the following factor: I did not use my food processor to slice the potatoes thinly. I thought I'd do it by hand but apparently my knife work still needs more practice. The result was still very delicious.

The fresh halibut which we got at the farmer's market is simply dressed in salt, pepper and lemon zest. You then wrap it in a slice of prosciutto. If you can slice your potatoes thinly enough, toss them in melted butter, salt and pepper, arrange on a piece of foil. Wrap the fish in the potatoes (much easier said than done) and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to let the butter set. In a perfect world, you then take the package from the frige, place on a well oiled sheet of foil on the barbecue, cook 5 to 6 minutes on either side and enjoy with tartar sauce or a lemon couli.

If you do not live in a perfect world, you can make little foil packages of sliced and buttered potatoes and cook these apart from the fish. I think this is a much safer idea. But I will attempt to replicate the first photo again. If a professional TV chef can do it, so can I. Or maybe I can't.

Fish Tortillas With Kiwi Salsa

I got the idea (not the recipe) for fish tortillas with a fruit salsa from one of Bobby Flay's shows. Though I usually serve my tortillas with mango salsa like Flay did, I had kiwis on hand and figured I would try it out. Also something different I did was grill the fish instead of lightly coating it in flour, salt and pepper and pan frying it. The result of these changes was that the kiwi didn't stand up to the other flavours (especially those of the salsa) and half the fish flaked off to the bottom of my bbq. With a good splash of fresh lemon juice, the result was good but not as delicious as when I make it with mango salsa.

Anywho, for the salsa, simply combine 1 cubed mango, about half that amount of red onion, a jalapeno or pepper of choice, handful cilantro, a clove of garlic and juice of 1 lime. Use any fish you like and serve with fresh lemon to squeeze.