The winds calmed down along the coast this week, so I received another flounder this Thursday from Walking Fish. I also picked up a small bag of arugula from the farmer's market Saturday morning. This evening's task was to figure out a way to combine the two. It rained all day in Durham, so I didn't want to stand over a grill. Recipes for flounder are hard to come by in my Italian cookbooks, so I called an old friend who grew up fishing in the ocean. He recommended I fillet it, then season it with bread crumbs and pan fry it.
In order to take his advice, I had to first learn how to fillet a flounder, so I turned to YouTube and viewed two how-to videos - one crude but informative clip and another that was more thorough but less entertaining.
The two narrators give essentially the same directions, so I tried it myself. A few minutes later I proved I'm not quite ready to try it on while bobbing up and down on a boat, fighting the wind and holding the still-flapping fish steady, but I did manage to get rid of the bones and skin and still keep most of the meat.
After sprinkling salt and pepper on each side of the fillets, Shefali dusted them with flour and pan fried them in butter and oregano while I boiled a pound of pasta and tossed it with a simple sauce of garlic, olive oil, crushed red pepper, white wine, lemon juice and the arugula.
In all, the fish turned out great, but pairing it with spaghetti wasn't the best decision. The pasta stretched the arugula pretty effectively, and would work well on its own or with a grilled meat, but if I were to do this one again I'd likely use the greens in a salad.
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