Salt-Baked Whole Fish (p. 364) with Sauce Verte (p. 270)

This was a fun dish to prepare because it's so different from any of the other recipes. It requires a lot of salt that the fish is baked in which creates a crust around it.

Mix the salt with egg whites to create a fairly thick paste.

Layer about a third of this into the bottom of the baking dish.

Next up is the fish -- I used a whole red snapper from the Asian Market.

Cover the entire fish with the rest of the salt, making sure everything is covered and packed in. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

When done, you kind of have to crack the salt crust away from the fish. As it comes up, it takes with it most of the skin, leaving an amazingly moist and tasty meat behind. (Note: mine did not come off neatly at all -- it looked a fright.)

With this, I prepared Sauce Verte, a French green sauce for fish. Basically, it's just a bunch of ingredients processed together -- watercress, spinach leaves, bread that has been soaked in water and drained, capers, anchovies, shallot, parsley, olive oil, and lemon juice.

Process until its a sauce-like consistency and then serve with a little salt and pepper mixed in.

This whole meal was really delicious. I loved the flavor and juiciness of the fish, and the sauce almost tasted like guacamole. I salted mine a little too much, but it was still tasty, and I enjoyed sopping up the remaining sauce with crusty bread.

salt -- $4.47

fish -- $7.69

Total Cost of Salt-Baked Whole Fish: $12.16

($6.08 per serving)

watercress -- $.99

bread -- $1.69

spinach -- $3.69 (plenty left for salads this week)

lemon -- $.69

shallot -- $.40

Total Cost of Sauce Verte: $7.46

($1.24 per serving)

North African Fish Couscous (p. 218)

Do you have a couscousiere (or even know what one is)? I don't. It's kind of needed for this recipe. You can fake it, but I don't think it turns out quite the same.

Start the couscous first, because it takes a while to prep. Mix salt and olive oil into the grains slowly, allowing all the liquid to be absorbed. Repeat this process with hot water. Let this sit for about 45 minutes while you prepare the veggie stew.

Anyway, this is basically a vegetable stew served with couscous and fish. The stew part is pretty easy to make -- just onions and tomatoes stewed together with a spicy element (the recipe calls for harissa but we're fresh out, so I just combined some different hot sauces from my pantry.) Add in chopped potatoes, carrots, salt pepper and some water and continue cooking until the veggies start to soften a bit.

Layer in squash, green peppers, cumin, cooked chickpeas, more water, and whatever other veggies you have in your house.

Bring your stew to a simmer and create the couscousiere -- you can sort of make one with a strainer on top of your stock pot, lined with cheesecloth, in which you put the couscous in a layer to cover the entire bottom of the pan. Wrap dishtowels around the outside of the strainer so that the steam from the lower pot is forced to go through the couscous instead of escaping around the pan. Once the steam is coming through the grains, cook for 20 minutes.

Remove the cousous from the pan and add salted water again, allowing the grains to absorb the liquid before putting them back in the top of the couscousiere for another 20 minutes.

The fish can be steamed quickly on the stove top with a little of the liquid that was reserved from the stew. I kept mine warmed in the oven until it was time to eat.

This was good, but nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be for the amount of time it took to make it.

Maybe if I had a couscousiere, all would have been different. Sigh...

garbonzo beans -- $2.39

tilapia steak -- $4.90

potato -- $1.01

onion -- $.92

CSA tomatoes -- $1.97

CSA squash -- $3.29

Total Cost of North African Fish Couscous: $14.48

($3.62 per serving)

Sardines in a Fennel-Spiked Tomato Sauce (p. 379)

This recipe calls for "impeccably fresh sardines," but I could only find impeccably frozen ones, so I worked with what I had. Also, my only experience with sardines was when my dad and I used to share tinned ones when I was really little. It's probably been over 20 years since I've eaten them, and I was definitely a little nervous about this cooking venture.

The recipe is pretty easy -- it starts with a simple sauce made of onion (sauteed in olive oil), chopped tomatoes with some of their juices, fennel seeds, orange zest, and salt and pepper. Line the bottom of an oven-proof dish with this.

Next up are the sardines.

Mine were, unfortunately, not dressed, so I got the pleasure of slicing them down the belly, removing the entrails (this is as gross as it sounds) and spine, and rinsing them down.

Butterfly the fish and lay them in the sauce, scattering bread crumbs and more cracked fennel across the top, and then pouring in white wine. Dollop the rest of the sauce on top of the fish and cook for twenty minutes.

Around this time my house began to reek of fish. Truly reek. Sardines have a very very strong odor.

I've gotta say, I did not love this at all. The flavor of the sardines isn't quite my style, and even though I had picked over the pieces very carefully, there were a ton of bones to gently eat around. Glad I tried it, but I won't do this one again.

tomatoes -- $.99

orange -- $1.29 (only used for the zest, I'll eat it with my lunch tomorrow)

sardines -- $8.98

Total Cost of Sardines in a Fennel-Spiked Tomato Sauce: $11.26

($1.88 per serving)

Poached Whole Fish (p. 351) with Salsa Romesco (p. 277)

I've been holding off on this poached fish recipe because I don't get to an area with a fish market very often, and Fresh Market doesn't sell whole fish. I finally got a chance to swing by Earps, a long-standing fish market in Raleigh, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. Fresh fish comes in from the coast each morning, and you kind of feel like you're in a little hut at the beach when you're in there.

My recipe calls for a pretty large fish -- a 6 pound salmon or sea bass -- but not only would that be way more fish that we could ever eat, I also don't have the type of pot that I could cook a fish that big in. Instead I chose a white bass that looked like it would feed two nicely.

This preparation would definitely have been easier with the proper pan; a long fish kettle with a removable rack. Instead, I simmered vegetable stock and some water along with dill and parsley and a chopped onion in my regular stock pot and then tossed the fish in whole.

Covered, mine only took about 10 minutes to cook, and then I carefully lifted the fish out (though it still lost its head -- whoops!) and put it on my pretty fish plate. For a little flavor, and to keep the fish from drying out, I spooned a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, dil, and parsley over the fish.

Since the fish is pretty simply prepared, I made Salsa Romesco to jazz things up a bit. It's a Catalan sauce that is supposed to be muy piquante.

It's also easy to toss together -- I made mine earlier in the day and it only took as long as needed to brown each of the ingredients (dried chilies, garlic cloves, almonds, and bread crusts) in some olive oil. These all go into a food processor along with a seeded tomato and some vinegar. Process everything down together into a sort of grainy paste, then serve.

I was surprised that Matt thinks this is a definite candidate for making in the future. I thought it was good, but whole fish is always kind of a pain, what with the bones and all. Still, the fish was really flavorful and we loved the olive oil mixture. Even after the fish was long gone we did a lot of bread dipping in the extra sauce.

The Salsa Romesco was good, but not great. I liked the flavor of almond and the sort of subtle spice, but it was lacking a strong kick that I wanted. We've got a ton left and might try it with eggs for Sunday breakfast.

fish -- $4.87

dill -- $1.99

garlic -- $.59

vegetable stock -- $1.78

Total Cost of Poached Whole Fish: $9.23

($4.62 per serving)

tomato -- $1.70

bread -- $1.99

Total Cost of Salsa Romesco: $3.69

($.46 per serving)

Baked Fish Fillets in a Herb Marinade (p. 382) with Garbonzos kon Spinaka (p. 334)

It seems like it's been a little while since I've done a full dinner -- between the holidays and being out of town and working, the months have been flying by quickly. Luckily, I had a three day weekend this past weekend, so last night I felt rejuvenated and ready to do some real cooking.

I always like fish (or any meats, really) in a marinade and this was no exception. Plus, the marinade was so simple that it only took a couple of minutes to make. Just chop together parsley, a bay leaf, garlic, and a yellow onion very finely. Stir in harissa to create a paste.

This gets spread over the fish and set aside in the fridge for at least an hour.

Cook for 15 minutes and then serve.

This was great, as anything with harissa in it proves to be. It wasn't overpoweringly spicy, it just had a nice heat.


Garbonzos kon Spinaka is Sephardic Spinach with Chickpeas from Greece, and I made it to accompany the fish. Since I didn't soak my chickpeas over night, I decided to do a quick soak method that is recommended in the book. You just cover the dried chickpeas with water in a pan, boil the water for about 2 minutes, cover, and remove the dish from the heat. Then leave the pan, still covered, for a couple of hours.

The actual dish comes together pretty easily -- sauté onions and add the chickpeas and some water.

Simmer for about 40 minutes until the peas are tender. Then just add in spinach and dill and cook until the spinach is tender -- about 10 minutes.

Pour in lemon juice and add salt and pepper.

This was pretty good, though I think I'll go back to soaking my chickpeas overnight instead of quick soaking them. They definitely could have been more tender. The dish is pretty lemony, which made it pair really nicely with the fish.

tilapia -- $6.11

onion -- $.34

Total Cost of Baked Fish Fillets in a Herb Marinade: $6.45

($1.61 per serving)

lemon -- $.58

dill -- $.99 (about half left)

spinach -- $3.09

chickpeas -- $1.69 (it was time to stock up, plenty is left)

Total Cost of Garbonzos kon Spinaka: $6.35

($1.27 per serving)

Oven-Roasted Fish with Vegetables (p. 380) with Turkish Walnut Sauce (p. 272) and Leblebi (p. 143)

This fish recipe is one from Spain and is known for its simplicity and no-fuss preparation. And that's pretty much true. In an oven-safe dish, layer sauteed onion and lightly fried potato slices before adding your fish -- a whole one, and preferably red snapper -- with slashes cut into each side.

Luckily, my asian market had just the thing.

Apologies for my photos this post, they're not super lovely.

On top of the fish, strew strips of pepper (softened in olive oil on the stove top) and slices of tomato. Pour a mixture of saffron, olive oil, and white wine over the fish and top with salt and bread crumbs. Then just bake.

This was pretty good, though the red snapper was a bit of a bear to parse out. The meat basically falls of the bones, but the bones fall of the bones, too. So we had a lot of those on our plate. Still, the flavor was nice and the saffron really shone through.

The winner of the fish course, though, was the sauce I decided to make at the last minute. I slapped Turkish Walnut Sauce for Fish or Vegetables together in about 5 minutes while the fish was resting. You can make the whole thing in the food processor -- it's just fresh bread crumbs, garlic, salt, walnuts, olive oil, white wine vinegar, and water. 

This was super delicious. I'd smother it all over my fish and vegetables every day. And I will, since we have a ton leftover. 

Most of the soups I have left are either bean or chickpea variations, and I'm trying to work through a couple each week. This week's soup, Leblebi, is Tunisian Chickpea Soup, so it's obviously of the chickpea sort, but made exciting by the mere fact that it contains harissa, which I adore. I've made my own before, but finally tracked down some commercially made harissa last week, and was excited to try it. There's a note in my cookbook about using a little less of the commercial type than you would home made because it's much spicier, but I sort of forgot about that.

The soup is super simple; just soften chickpeas (soaked overnight and then drained) in chicken stock, season with cumin, salt, garlic, and harissa, and eventually add in some thinly sliced sauteed onion. I added the amount of harissa that the recipe called for, which was of course too much for the commercial kind.

Luckily, Matt and I love us some spicy food, and thought this soup was a rock star. Mine could actually barely be considered soup since most of the broth was absorbed or cooked off by the time I served it. Soups almost never work out quite right when you halve the recipes. We didn't even care, though, and garnished the chickpeas with crumbled boiled eggs. We loved this, and will totally make it again some day.

green pepper -- $1.69

red snapper -- ARGHhhh. I threw my receipt away. I have no clue how much this cost.

potatoes -- $2.37

onion -- $1.02

Total Cost of Oven-Roasted Fish with Vegetables: $5.08, plus the price of the fish.

Total Cost of Turkish Walnut Sauce for Fish or Vegetables: Free 

I love having all the ingredients I need!

harissa -- $1.39

Total Cost of Leblebi: $1.39

($.46 per serving)

A Seafood Extravaganza with Oranges and Ouzo (p. 385) and Provencal Marinated Fennel (p. 320)

How can you not make a recipe that refers to itself as a seafood extravaganza? It's begging to be cooked. And cook it I did.

The base of the recipe is sliced red onions, garlic, and fennel along with tomato, all cooked in olive oil down into a thick sauce.

Fresh squeezed orange juice, orange zest, and Greek ouzo give the sauce a punch of flavor.

White fish and peeled shrimp cook directly in the sauce. Once thoroughly cooked, stir in pitted green olives, chopped fennel greens, and salt and pepper and serve immediately.

This was quite lovely. The white fish sort of fell apart and made it pretty soup-like, but the flavors were great, and I liked the different textures in the dish. The green olives added a lot of salt, though, so careful on how much extra you add.

With my extravaganza, I cooked up some Provencal Marinated Fennel, which is quick and easy and surprisingly delicious. Trim up your fennel bulbs and cut them into slices. Cook these in a skillet with olive oil, salt and pepper, sliced celery, and crushed garlic. Add in bay leaves and pine nuts and simmer everything together for about 15 minutes.

Toss in some currants, keep over the heat a bit longer, and then serve.

We were both really surprised by how much we liked this. The currant and pine nut topping had a lot of flavor and really complemented the softened fennel.

fennel -- $4.47

shrimp -- $4.63

fish -- $14.42

red onion -- $1.97 (half left)

orange -- $.62 (half left)

tomato -- $1.20 (half left)

olives -- $3.50

Total Cost of A Seafood Extravaganza with Oranges and Ouzo -- $30.81

($7.70 per serving)

fennel --$4.47

Total Cost of Provencal Marinated Fennel: $4.47

($2.24 per serving)

Gratin of Fish and Spinach (p. 376)

I'm starting to run out of regular main course recipes in my cookbook, which is making me nervous. Pretty soon all I'm going to have left are veggies and desserts.

But it hasn't happened yet, and last night I made this lovely gratin which has just a few ingredients -- my perfect recipe!

Sauté freshly-washed spinach using only the water clinging to its leaves.

Separately, sauté garlic and chopped onion in olive oil until they have softened. When the spinach is tender, chop it coarsely and add it to the onion mixture along with salt and pepper and a little bit of Dijon mustard.

Make a little bed of this combination in the bottom of an oven-safe dish and then layer in your fish (I used a beautiful tuna steak.) Top with more of the spinach/onion and bread crumbs, and cook until the fish is done.

I liked the simplicity of this meal and would definitely eat it again. It came together in less than an hour (which is rare for recipes from The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook) so I was a happy camper! More time for bananagrams with Matt.

spinach -- $3.99

tuna steak -- $6.19

Total Cost of Gratin of Fish and Spinach: $10.18

($5.09 per serving)

Aegean Fish Soup with Rice (p. 188) and Gratin of Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce (p. 308)

I had a friend over last night for dinner, and since Matt wasn't joining us it was the perfect time to make some more fish soup (which, as I may have mentioned, he is not fond of.)

Aegean Fish Soup is almost like a porridge -- super thick and rich, and awesome for a rainy day. It does take a while to cook, though, so I started the stock the day before by cooking bay leaves, oregano, pepper, a dried ancho chili, onion, carrots, and tomato in a combination of fish stock and water. 

They cooked until soft and then I ditched the veggies by straining the stock -- they just imparted their flavor into the stock and then apparently had no purpose in the soup any more.

I cooked the fish (tilapia) in the stock quickly -- just a few minutes per side, and then removed it and cooked a chopped potato in the same way until tender. 

The potatoes are set aside with the fish and in goes the rice (pre-soaked overnight) and left until cooked. The rice basically disintegrates into the stock to make it so thick. Then just add the potatoes and fish back into the pot.

Here's where it gets a little interesting; beat an egg and slowly add some of the hot rice-y stock into the egg mixture. Keep adding stock until the egg has heated up enough so that it doesn't scramble, and then add all of it back into the soup. Add salt and pepper and serve nice and steamy hot.

This is really good, but crazy thick. If I were to make it again I might add more stock just to make it a little more soup-like. Still, I really enjoyed this both last night and today again for lunch.

With this, I served a Cauliflower Gratin, which is basically just cooked cauliflower in a gratin dish with breadcrumbs. Cover the veggies with tomato sauce and top with more bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and chopped almonds. Cook for about 15 minutes, until the top is browned and cheesy, and then serve.

Yum, I really enjoyed this as well, and would use this preparation again for any variety of vegetables. It's a simple and fast meal, but also hearty and flavorful.

tilapia -- $8.99

onion -- $1.03

potato -- $.69

carrots -- $1.29

Total Cost of Aegean Fish Soup with Rice: $12.00

($3.00 per serving)

parsley -- $1.69

onion -- $.76

cauliflower -- $4.99

almonds -- $1.44

Total Cost of Gratin of Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce: $8.88

($1.48 per serving)

Herb-Crusted Fish Fillets (p. 375) in Greek Domata Saltsa (p. 267)

I didn't think I'd have time to do any cooking before heading to Asheville for Christmas festivities with my dad, but we ran out of food at the house last night so I searched through my cookbook to find a recipe that wouldn't leave me with left over ingredients that would go bad while we're out of town.

I decided to cut down this fish recipe so that it would just make enough for the two of us to eat for one night, and I already had a bunch of herbs that needed to be finished up anyway, so this recipe was ideal. 

The fish calls for a basic marinara sauce, but the recipe for Greek Domata Saltsa says that it can be used "in any Greek preparation for tomato sauce." I wasn't sure if my fish recipe was Greek but decided to give it a go anyway.

The sauce came together pretty quickly; I put chopped tomatoes through the food mill and then sauteed the pulpy liquid with olive oil and chopped onion, sugar, a cinnamon stick, and a bay leaf. 

After it had simmered for a bit, I poured in red wine along with salt and black pepper and kept it over the heat until it came together in a chunky sauce.

While the sauce was simmering, I started working on the salmon, which was surprisingly simple. Cut the fish into serving size pieces and dip the pieces in flour, then beaten egg, and then a blend of chopped parsley, dill, and basil mixed with bread crumbs. 

(Side note: my coworker Cynthia's chickens starting laying eggs a few weeks back, and I got my first dozen this morning. They're beautiful, and the egg yolk is a really vibrant color that made my end product here look really pretty.)

Once the fillets were completely coated, I sauteed them in a little olive oil for about 4 minutes per side.

Then I just ladled a little of the sauce onto each fillet and served!

We both really enjoyed this and I would totally make it again, or at least the fish part. I liked the lightly fried texture and the flavors of all the herbs. Next time I might serve it with a little green sauce on the side instead.  Or I might even just serve the fish on top of some mixed greens and have a light but filling meal!

canned tomatoes -- $.95

wine -- $2.99 (a small container, with enough left for two glasses of wine -- perfect!)

onion -- $.28

salmon -- 6.08

Total Cost of Herb-Crusted Fish Fillets in Greek Domata Saltsa: $10.30

($5.15 per serving)

Middle Eastern Savory Tarts (p. 188) with Catalan Seafood and Pasta Paella (p. 213) and Nicholas's Favorite Braised Pears in Red Wine (p. 447)

We had our friends Mike and Jenna over for dinner last night so I wanted to make a few different recipes  -- savory tarts as a starter, a seafood paella for the main course, and braised pears for dessert. Luckily, some things could be made in advance (like the pears) and I didn't actually start the paella until our friends arrived because Jenna had offered to help me cook.

I started the Middle Eastern Savory Tarts early in the day (I just had a half day at work) because the dough/pastry part of it needed to rise. For the dough, I used the same one that I had used to make Middle Eastern Pizza back in October. It's got a little extra flavor to it because it's made with yogurt and olive oil.

Once we were about an hour from our guests arriving, I started pre-heating the oven and assembling the tarts. The stuffing for these tarts is mostly spinach that has been cooked down until tender.

The spinach is combined with chopped onion, olive oil, salt, lemon juice, allspice, and pepper. The recipe also uses either feta or pine nuts, but not both. I really wanted both, so I split the spinach mixture in two and put feta in half and pine nuts in the other half.

The dough needs to be rolled out and cut into circles -- I used a drinking glass to cut the pieces out. Put a little bit of the stuffing into the center of the circle and close the dough up around it like a little purse. I had a lot of trouble with this step -- the amount of olive oil in the stuffing made the dough not want to stick and they kept re-opening on the baking dish. I eventually stopped worrying about it and baked them anyway, until they were golden brown.

These were pretty amazing. I liked both flavors equally, and we scarfed down a ton of them. I would totally make these again for a party, they're perfect finger food. And I just re-heated some for my lunch and they were still delicious.

I waited to start the Catalan Seafood and Pasta Paella until Jenna and Mike arrived so that Jenna and I could cook together. Jenna lightly fried shrimp and flounder pieces after dipping them in flour and I cooked the mussels in a little bit of white wine until they opened up.

We cooked onions and garlic as well as our dry spaghetti pieces until the veggies were soft, and then poured in a little more white wine, chopped tomatoes (that were peeled and seeded), and a bay leaf.

Once the tomatoes had created a thick sauce we poured in simmering veggie stock (Fresh Market doesn't carry fish stock, for some reason) and cooked until the liquid had been absorbed by the pasta. We stirred back in all the seafood and put the dish into a very hot oven for about five minutes to crisp it up a little bit before serving.

This was delicious, and also makes a ton of food. We each had seconds and still have a lots leftover. I loved the texture of the skinny pasta with the seafood, and the lightly fried shrimp was amazing. We just ate this with some toasty french bread, and it was perfect.

For dessert, I made Nicholas's Favorite Braised Pears in Red Wine, Nicholas being author Nancy Harmon Jenkins' son. The recipe calls for 6 pears, but since there were just four of us for dinner I paired it down a little (hah! paired down the pears! right?!)

I peeled the pears and placed them in a deep oven proof dish.

Then I put in lemon zest and slices of lemon and poured in a boiling mixture of red wine, water, and sugar.

This cooks in the oven for about 90 minutes, until the pears are very soft.

The red wine needed to be reduced to a syrup, so I put it back on the stovetop with some more sugar and boiled it down until it became a syrup and then spooned it back over the pears.

These were tasty -- we had them with a little vanilla ice cream and the flavor of the wine with the pear was really lovely.

All in all, this was a great meal, and we had a fabulous night with our buds.

yogurt (for the dough) -- $1.89

onion -- $.65

spinach -- $3.99

Total Cost of Middle Eastern Savory Tarts: $6.53

($.54 per serving of two tarts)

onions -- $1.52

tomatoes -- $4.19

pasta -- $2.33 (a quarter of the box is left)

shrimp -- $7.01

flounder -- $7.79

veggie broth -- $3.50

mussels -- $2.23

Total Cost of Catalan Seafood and Pasta Paella: $28.57

($3.57 per serving)

pears -- $3.97

red wine -- $8.49 (about half a bottle left)

lemon -- $.79

Total Cost of Nicholas's Favorite Braised Pears in Red Wine: $13.25

($3.31 per serving)

A filling and delicious three course meal for $7.42 per person!