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)