Fish Hash

 

What fish hash looks like when I accidentally make it

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? No worries. This is not a recipe for fish hash, at least not in the usual sense. But it is about cooking fish and lessons learned.

My mom was a wonderful cook—except when it came to fish. A child of the landlocked Midwest, she loved seafood and fish, but my Canadian father retained enough of the Brit about him that he wanted a roast of beef or leg of lamb with potatoes. That’s what she cooked. The only fish I remember her cooking was halibut which she poached in milk—you’re right, it’s not my best memory of Mom’s cooking.

I inherited Mom’s taste for fish. We had neighbors who became my adopted aunt and uncle and used to take me to their country club for dinner. Invariably I ordered fish, and she, a devout Catholic, said, “Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that. It’s not Friday.”

So here I am, master of my own kitchen for some sixty years, and I’m still tentative about fish. This does not include canned tuna and salmon, which I fix in a variety of ways all the time. And it does not include salmon that Christian does a masterful job of grilling.

But, fish. Recently I followed a recipe for baked cod. It met with medium success.

Baked cod

I’ve had more luck with sole, which to me is the most delicate, most succulent fish—and it’s reasonably priced. Delicate not only in taste but also in texture—and therein lies the problem. Despite following directions to the letter, sole falls apart in the skillet when I try to sauté it, and we end with fish hash—wonderful flavor, but no eye appeal. And food, Mom always said, is half eaten with the eye. Jordan chose sautéed fish for its crust over the crustless baked, which is easier to do but not as delicious. 

The other night, though, I had medium success sautéing filet of sole. Here’s what I did.

Sautéed filet of sole

1.5 lbs. sole

Butter

Salt and pepper

Flour

White wine

Lemon

Salt and pepper filets to taste. Lightly flour (shake a little flour on them and gently rub it in with your fingers). Here’s the trick: I had been cooking fish on medium low (275)  on my hot plate, because the induction hot plate heats quick and fast. This time I put it on medium (375) and the fish held together better. If you don’t have one, quick get a fish spatula—makes all the difference.

I had to do the fish in two separate batches, which presented a warming problem—if I use hot plate and toaster oven at the same time, I trip a circuit breaker. So I warmed the oven, then sauteed the fish, and kept the first batch in the still-warm toaster oven.

When the fish was all sautéed (and some of it will still be hash) and in the oven, I poured a glug of white wine in the skillet (glug is, I think, Sam Sifton’s measurement from the New York Times cooking columns—the true definition is the gurgling sound liquid makes when poured, which tells you nothing about measurement). I’d say a Tbsp. or two of wine, enough to loosen and scrape up the crusty bits from the skillet. Add a good squeeze of lemon and a dollop or two of butter (you can see how precise this is) and let it all make a sauce. Pour over the fish and serve—and just forget to mention the word hash.

Even the teenager at our house ate this, and Jordan and I enjoyed it the next day for lunch. I will confess we had salmon two days later, and they had just returned from New Orleans where they ate lots of seafood and fish, so the plea was, “No more fish for a while.”

But that sole sure was good.

 

Those retro dishes from your childhood

Jordan and Christian’s friend, Gary, has been waiting all pandemic to come from Dallas for the tuna casserole I’ve promised to make him—a delicacy my resident family won’t touch. We’ve quipped and commented about it on Facebook for a year now, but the date is approaching. Everybody’s vaccinated, and we feel safe to gather. A couple of days ago I mentioned I’d made chicken Divan for son Jamie, and Gary said we’d have to add that to the rotation. At which point, Christian jumped in, said the recipe sounded good to him if we could substitute something for the broccoli; he suggested potatoes, which misses the whole point of the dish. So then I got carried away and said I also have a great recipe for tuna Florentine. Gary is threatening to move west for food. (Do you get those terms mixed up—Divan, Florentine? If it’s Florentine, it’s over spinach; if it’s Divan, it’s over broccoli.)

All this is by way of saying I think I’m finding my cooking niche—at my advanced age. I’ve been advocating American food for some time, although I’m quick to appreciate the food customs of many other countries. Still, these days I find Thai and Indian dishes often too spicy for me and African and Middle Eastern recipes so trendy they’re about to crowd out some old favorites from my childhood—like tuna casserole and chicken Divan. It’s easy to argue that there is no such thing as American food, because our dishes, like our population, are a melting pot. I’ve thought of that this week cooking for Jamie—we had the chicken, then a St. Patrick’s Day corned-beef meal, and, tonight, eggplant Parmigiana. Yes, they are imports, but they are also dinners I remember form the 1960s and before.

One problem cooking older recipes is that packaging has changed. I have recipes that call for a roll of garlic cheese—you can’t buy that in the store anymore. Now I’m wondering if you can buy frozen broccoli spears. I couldn’t find them online at Central Market and settled for fresh flowerets, which worked well. When Patricia McDonald did an updated Helen Corbitt (she of Neiman Marcus fame) cookbook, she worked hard adapting recipes from the Fifties and Sixties to today’s quantities and available ingredients.

On Facebook occasionally you see memes asking, “Does anyone still eat this?” I’ve seen that question about meatloaf and salmon patties; chicken Divan, however, is something I haven’t heard a peep about in years. But one bite, and I remembered how good it is, with a rich wine sauce. So here’s what I did.

Chicken Divan

2 10 oz. pkg. frozen broccoli spears (or use fresh)

½ c. butter

6 Tbsp. flour

½ tsp. salt

Dash of pepper

2 c. chicken broth

½ c. heavy cream

1 Tbsp. white wine

1.5 lb. chicken breast, cooked and diced

½ c. Parmesan or Pecorino

           Cook chicken, cool, and chop; in skillet, melt butter and blend in flour, salt, and pepper. Add chicken broth slowly and cook until mixture thickens and bubbles. Stir in cream and wine. Place broccoli flowerets in 12 x 7 x 2 oven dish. Pour half sauce over. Top with chicken and pour remaining sauce over all. Top with Parmesan.

Bake 350 for 20-30 minutes, until sauce bubbles and Parmesan is lightly browned.

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!

This greenest of holidays all year seems to cry out for an Irish dish. Corned beef and cabbage is the traditional, of course, and I’ll be fixing a pot, though I’ll sauté the cabbage in butter, rather than boil it, and then finish with salt, pepper, and a good dollop of sour cream. And I’ll share it with my younger son, the one who will eat cabbage with me.

Other dishes you might try to mark the day include shepherd’s pie—the English version of this ground meat and mashed potato pie is made with beef and called cottage pie, but the Irish put their own twist on it by using ground lamb and calling it, appropriately enough, shepherd’s pie. Otherwise, not much difference in the two, but if you make it with lamb, be aware there will be quite a bit of grease to pour off the meat.

The Irish are also fond of colcannon, in which boiled cabbage is added to mashed potatoes, along with a bit of sautéed onion. Irish stew is always a good choice—made with lamb rather than beef. The Irish have their version of that universal dish, potato cakes, called boxty and made with grated raw potatoes. And any good Irish meal should have bannock—that flat loaf of quick bread, usually not yeast-rising, that is served in wedges like a pie.

I have a St. Patrick’s Day child—Jordan’s birthday is March 17. Trouble with that is she wants her corned beef in a sandwich, wouldn’t touch cooked cabbage, and thinks shepherd’s pie is often “too heavy.” So what can I serve her? Reuben dip. She and Christian, neither one of whom would eat sauerkraut on a bet, love this dip. I’m working up to trying a Reuben meatloaf on them. Meantime, the dip will do. Note: instead of the mayonnaise, ketchup, horseradish and relish, you could use an equal amount of Thousand Island dressing. I prefer to avoid the prepared version and make my own.

Reuben dip

8 oz. cream cheese

½ cup mayonnaise

2 Tbsp. ketchup

1 Tbsp. bottled horseradish

1 Tbsp. dill relish

2 cups Swiss cheese, grated (about 8 oz.)

2 oz. deli corned beef, chopped

¼ cup sauerkraut, well drained

Grease a baking dish, pie plate, whatever will fit your toaster oven, and spread dip in it. Bake 350° for 20 minutes. Nice to use pumpernickel cocktail bread or rye to dip.

Have some of your homemade Thousand Island dressing left over? Use it to make a Big Mac Salad—crumbled hamburger, a bit of dill pickle, tomato, grated cheese, chopped lettuce. Toss with the leftover dressing for a great lunch salad, because I can almost guarantee you won’t have left-over Reuben dip. You can pretend Big Mac is Irish.

And don’t forget the green beer! It’s simply beer with green food coloring in it, easy to do at home. In my hometown of Chicago, they dye the Chicago River, which runs right through downtown, a bright green at nine in the morning and the color lasts several hours. I don’t like to think about how much food coloring that takes! But sure ‘n it’s a lovely sight.

An Irish proverb:

There are only two kinds of people in the world: the Irish,
And those who wish they were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A retro dinner and a twist on an old recipe

 

tuna casserole

A few years ago, a small group of friends gathered on my front porch for a retro dinner. On the menu: onion soup dip, tuna casserole, and that orange Jell-O with shredded carrots and pineapple that everyone’s mom made in the 1960s. I can’t remember what we had for dessert, but I do remember the guy who had apparently never had onion soup dip before and asked his wife, most seriously, if she could get the recipe. With a grin, she said she thought she could manage it. We also learned that if you make that dip with fat-free sour cream, it’s abominable.

But in advance of dinner, one friend said she seriously considered whether or not she could eat tuna/noodle casserole. Apparently, she had bad memories from childhood. And that’s still true today—folks either love it or hate it. None of my family will touch it, but Christian has a good friend who is itching to come from Dallas for supper, so I’ll make him tuna casserole. And my reluctant friend? She liked it.

The casserole touches on a second culinary problem—do you cook with canned soups or not. Many cooks are purists who claim they would never, ever patronize the Campbell company; others use those soups in everything. I am somewhere in the middle, pretty much a from-scratch cook but with several tried-and-true recipes that call for canned soup. Sometimes I find I get in trouble when I try to substitute for the canned—in fact, that happened recently with tuna casserole. So here’s my recipe, a twist on traditional tuna but not too proud to use cream of mushroom soup:

Tuna casserole

1 c. white wine

Assorted dried herbs—thyme, parsley, oregano, summer savory, tarragon, etc. (avoid Mexican spices like cumin); just throw the spices into the wine

1 small onion, chopped, or three or four green onions

½ c. celery, diced fine

2 Tbsp. butter

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 7½-oz. can water-packed tuna, drained

1 c. carb filler of choice, cooked—noodles or rice

½ c. green peas

1 small can French’s fried onion rings

Boil wine with herbs until the herbs turn black (about five minutes). Remove from heat.

Meanwhile sauté onion and celery in butter. Add to wine, along with soup. Add tuna, drained, or 1 cup diced chicken or turkey, the carb filler, and green peas for color. If there’s not enough liquid for your solid ingredients, add more wine. You can also vary the amount of meat and noodles or rice to suit your taste. Put into casserole dish and top with canned fried onion rings.

The size casserole dish you use will depend on how big you make your casserole, but it’s best to have a shallow dish so that more of the casserole gets fried-onion topping. Also if you’re using a toaster oven, as I do, you want to keep those onions as far from the top heating element as possible, because they burn easily. Maybe put them on for the last ten minutes or so. Bake at 350° until bubbly and onions are brown.

Here's a quickie that I do with tuna when I don’t want to make a casserole for just me—I fix creamed tuna (it makes Jordan run from the room screaming). Amounts here are approximate. Put a hunk of butter (2 Tbsp?) in skillet; sauté onions and celery; sprinkle with flour (1-2 Tbsp?).

Add liquid, a bit at a time, to make a smooth white sauce—you can use milk, but I prefer chicken broth (and you could use cream of mushroom soup and dilute a bit with wine or broth). Add a glug of white wine. Stir in drained, flaked tuna and green peas. At this point, you can call it done, or you can add cheese. Grated cheddar is good—stir it in and let it melt and get cheesy. If you want to top creamed tuna with Parmesan, put it on toast and run the whole thing under the broiler until you get a nice brown topping.

Serve over rye toast or, if you want to get fancy, in puff pastry shells. Enjoy and imagine yourself back in the sixties. Perhaps it takes people of a certain age to appreciate these recipes.