Monkfish sous vide with mint and basil

Our garden's overflowing with mint and a friend gave us a bunch of farmers' market basil, so we went with a Thai flavor to cook some monkfish. Since this fish takes a long time to cook, we used sous vide to keep it tender, poaching it in flavored oil in the water bath.

We stemmed the basil and mint, washed and dried, sliced fine, then poached it in some (fairly neutral) coconut oil to push the Thai flavor. We chilled that, with the herbs and the portioned monkfish so it would be solid when we vacuum bagged it: this worked well since the coconut oil sets just below room temperature.

A blog post tried a number of different temperatures and found 48C/118F to be the best so we heated the water bath and dropped the bagged fish and oil into it. Once the oil melted, we timed the cooking for 30 minutes. We use a Igloo Playmate cooler to minimize heat loss.

Meanwhile, Irene made a salad out of Malabar Spinach we'd gotten at the farmers' market. It's a more toothsome green so she dressed it early to allow the leaves to soften a bit. The dressing included lime juice, fish sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, hot chili and sesame oil.

Once the fish was cooked, I strained the oil and seared the fish in cast iron with a bit of the oil.

We'd also gotten the season's first corn on the cob. We've made the grilled corn in the Pok Pok cookbook so we did a riff on that -- first cooking it in its husk in the microwave (our standard approach), then heating a bit more of the oil in a pan with some salt and chile flakes, giving it a little browning, then a lashing of fresh lemon juice.

What Worked, What Didn't

The sous vide was great for the monkfish. Cooking conventionally can dry out and toughen the outer area of the fish during the long cooking it needs, or leave the interior undercooked. This cooked it all the way through without overcooking. The time and temperature seemed fine.   The searing didn't add much texture, and that may be because my oil had a bit of the liquid from the herbs or fish so didn't produce a hard sear.

The oil did provide an attractive perfume to the fish, but not nearly so pronounced as we'd expected.  Afterwards, we chilled the oil so we could separate any herb/fish liquid from it, and plan to use the oil to poach squid -- mint and squid is a surprisingly good combination. The oil was fairly neutral with almost no coconut flavor; this is a good thing in most preps, but here we could have used more Thai stylings.

The corn finished in fat with spices and citrus is something we've taken to recently, and it worked here as well. An assertive coconut-flavored oil would take it in a more Thai-flavored direction.

We've never had this spinach before, but it turned out well. The plants are also said to like hot weather so would grow well in our garden when the rest of our salad greens have bolted or withered.

Next Time...

I'd like a good sear so maybe we could use a little fresh oil to avoid any chance of water-based liquid and also since the heat might be driving off the herbal aromatics. Or finish under the broiler or with our Searzall.

I'd also pre-cut the monkfish into medallions before bagging them in the oil. This should allow better flavor penetration and more surface area to sear.

Daily Dinner #1

Our friend Shannon challenged us to post pictures of a month's of our everyday dinners, not the fancy-pants stuff we sometimes do to challenge ourselves. Instead of a post-per-day, we'll batch them up into weekly collections, or something like it. Here's the first week's daily dinners.

2015-07-12 Sunday

Bavette steak from the excellent Westover Market butcher. We marinaded it in a paste of rosemary and garlic (from the garden), olive oil and shallot overnight, then wiped off the paste and cooked it very hot about a half inch from the coals. We finished the meal with garden courgette (zucchini) and homemade bread, both grilled on the BBQ. Sorry, no pictures of the finished product -- crusty and charred on the outside, pink and juicy in the center.

We had a couple Aviation cocktails while the food cooked: gin, lemon juice, luxardo liqueur, then layered crème de violette and a homemade maraschino cherry.

2015-07-13 Monday

Irene's egg pasta with a sauce she built over a couple days. She started with shallots, our garden tomatoes, garlic, thyme, oregano and cooked it down. Then for service, she added rough chopped fresh raw tomatoes and basil, again from the garden.

2015-07-14 Tuesday

Our roma beans from the garden.

We're overloaded with courgette (zucchini) so irene made a flan in a phyllo crust. Grated, salted and drained courgette, summer savory, garlic, shallot, goat cheese, saffron and eggs.

2015-07-15 Wednesday

I've been working too much and crave the chicken wings they make up the street at Cowboy Cafe. Wednesday is 50-cent wing night, a good deal. Because they move so many, they arrive at the table hot, juicy inside, and crunchy outside; it's not quite upstate NY wings, but they're very very good. To be clear, I should say the "Edgar Style" wings the Cowboy serves are the best: I believe they're dry-rubbed and finished on an open grill.

2015-07-16 Thursday

Home cold-smoked salmon, fresh black eyed peas, and even more giant courgette. When the peas were heated through I tossed in some of our cherry tomatoes and tomatillos, and a bit of cucumber for texture and color.

 2015-07-17 Friday

While we were cooking, I whipped up a variation on a Manhattan cocktail. I used smoky Bowmore single malt whisky and Cocchi Americano, then added a homemade maraschino cherry and a bit of its juice. We liked the deep smokiness rounded out by the Cocchi.

We had cold-smoked some pork loin so grilled it up in bitchin' hot cast iron, along with some grits and steamed filet beans (in the foil) from the garden. 

I finished the beans on the cast iron.

The grits were from a bag we brought back from Edisto GA and had the most intense corn-y taste I've had. Irene made it with water rather than dairy, but threw in some stinky Brie we'd had lurking in the fridge. The searing on cast iron gave the cakes a satisfying crust.

To finish the dinner we served cider that we fermented from juice we got at the farmers market. It had a pleasant funk in the nose and a zing of real apples. The cider's not hard to make: toss in some yeast and let it ferment out, then bottle with a bit of simple syrup to carbonate. 

2015-07-18 Saturday

Cold-smoked trout sauteed in butter and olive oil, stuffed with a couple lemon slices.

First of the season corn from the farmers market. I like cooking it in the husk either on the BBQ or in the microwave oven (2 minutes/ear), then finishing in a bit of fat in a skillet with a splash of lemon or lime juice. 

Trout filet with a bit of arugula pesto, and the pan-finished corn. We had a cucumber salad on the side.

We are overloaded with arugula so we pull big bowls from the garden, strip off the leaves, wash well, then whiz up with nuts (pine, walnuts, almonds, even peanuts), a hard Italian cheese, garlic, oil, and lemon juice and zest. 

Truth be told, the pesto was a bit overpowering for the mildly smoked fish, but it was tasty. The corn, this early in the season, lacked true corn flavor but we can't resist the essence of summer.