What's for dinner?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 8:18PM Panko crusted halibut with mango beurre blanc and brown rice.
"But you don't cook!", they say. I know. I know. First off, it was a recipe. I didn't come up with the idea myself, which is the crux of why I think I am not a cook. But, as anyone who knows me well would say, I can follow a well written list of instructions like nobody's business. Luckily this list was very well written and our dinner turned out perfectly. Perfectly done halibut. Perfectly sauced buerre blanc.
Can I just say that the fish was easy compared to the beurre blanc (as an aside, the coating on the fish to hold the Panko was Thai chili mayo...I could have/should have taken a bath in that!)? Beurre blanc is a pain in ass with all that adding small cubes of butter one at a time while continually whisking. The sauce alone took 45 minutes. The fish took 3 min on each side and then 5 minutes in the oven to finish.
Like I've said before. It's not that I can't, it's just that I don't. Part of the reason why is that I don't usually want to take 1 hour+ to cook dinner. Another part is the cleanup. I thought this was going to be like a Martha Stewart experience: Kitchen spotless the whole time; dishes magically disappear; not a bead of sweat on her brow. Not here boy. I used a ton of dishes. The counters were a mess. Bread crumbs all over the floor (first time I've ever used our food processor). And I was stressed (probably the perfectionist in me). I guess I am missing all of the minions that create the mis en place and then come behind and clean it all up? Thank goodness Michael arrived home to help with pre-cleanup and then took care of everything after.
Here's the recipe if anyone is interested. I can't have nuts, so I just removed the macadamias.
Reader Comments (2)
For the plebians in the audience, beurre blanc is some type of butter sauce (thank you wikipedia). Where is said recipe Chris? Ian made me rock cod with a cornmeal crust last night. Such a sweetie - he doesn't cook either but follows the list as well.
We made this last night. Thanks for posting it. The next time I make it (and it will be a frequent performer), I'm going to experiment with less butter. The sauce seemed to stand up on it's own when it was just mango, lime juice, ginger, wine, sugar and cream (we used a less than heavy cream, too). Essentially, instead of a french butter sauce, we'll use a salsa-like sauce.