Something Fishy

Sunday while watching "Triple D" and seeing several fish dishes my wife says to me, "I have a challenge for you. Make some fish that I will actually like." God love her, Karyn hates seafood. Somehow I have always managed to bring women into my life that hate seafood. I forgot to add that line in the screening questionaire. So for the most part of my married life, I do not get to have seafood.
Karyn also loves southwest/Tex-Mex/Mexican foods. So here are the things I knew going in. I needed a mild fish, and some kind of southwest flavors to pull this off. My first plan was to make tuna steaks. To go with it, I decided I wanted to try polenta, and serve it all with a salsa. I found inspiration on the internet in a recipe for pan seared tuna steaks, polents and an avocado mousse. After work on Monday afternoon I headed off to the local grocery store made my way back to the seafood counter, and had a mild stroke. Tuna steaks $19.99 a pound! Really? Filet is not even that much, even for the certified Black Angus.
I scan the counter, and Talapia is only 6.99 a pound, but we have not had luck with talapia in the past. besides I really wanted something a bit more meaty, my exeprience with Talapia is that it falls apart and is very light and flaky with such a mild taste, it really has no taste at all, just what you cook it with.
Finally after scanning the rather small selection of over priced fish I settled on fresh cod fillets which were large, meaty white fish goodness, for 12.99. Oddly, swordfish steaks were only 9.99, and if I were to do it again I would get those, just because I love swordfish.
Another product that I discovered I like a lot when Karyn did her basket was these Kellogg's cornflake crumbs. So i got some of those for a breading. I was concerned because while I knew cod to be a mild fish, I have never seen cod served without a breading, so I felt like I needed to bread it.
Next was the polenta. I found the ground corn meal and got some fat free cheddar cheese, as well as fat free sour cream. I also picked up a nice mango lime salsa to flavor both the fish and the polenta.
Now for those that have never eaten polenta, it is not grits, but winds up being so similar it might as well be. Polenta is made by boiling cornmeal until it turns into mortar which in my case was in about 2.3 seconds. The recipe I had said to "using your left hand whisk the boiling water while pouring the corn meal into the water slowly". With my left hand? Really? I happen to be very right hand dominant. So much so that I am not sure why I was given a left hand. It then went on to say continue boiling and whisking until all of the water was soaked up, as I said that happened right about the time I finished pouring the meal in. Wow it was thick. really thick. If you have ever seen the mortar they use to lay bricks...like that.
Back to the fish. I chose to do a marinade with soy sauce and brown sugar in equal portions, with salt, pepper, cumin and ginger. After the marinade I seasoned flour with salt pepper and cumin, made an egg wash (milk and eggs) and then completed my breading station with the corn flake crumbs. I took out the enormous cast iron skillet I bought for Karyn last Christmas and got it heating with some olive oil, breaded my first huge piece of cod. Into the pan it went and good things were happening. After about 4 minutes it was time to turn my first pieces, and this is where things first started to go wrong. The first piece turned ok, but the second kind of fell apart. Did I overcook it? maybe. As I have said before we do not do fish a lot. So I decided for the rest of the fillets to cut them into spatula sized pieces and bread them to prevent that problem. The smaller pieces worked out and I was able to serve some very nice looking pieces of fish. The breading did not stick to the fish very well though and began falling off some when removed from the pan and plating, which was unfortunate.
The final plating: I took a spoon full of the polenta/cheddar cheese mixture on the plate, topped it with the lime-mango salsa and a dollop of sour cream. I rested a nice piece of fish against the polenta, and to the side of that the avocado mousse which was simply avocado blended into plain greek togurt with salt and pepper. It was not the prettiest plate, but also not ugly, the colors from the polenta, avocado mousse and salsa were very bright and vibrant with the fish. The best part? I made a fish that my fish haters loved. Maybe next time i can get the breading to stick better or maybe skip the breading completely!