I said to myself, "I need to do something with that leftover smoked trout."

"What about something like a tuna melt?"

"Yeah, I don't like tuna melts."

"I know I know. Something like a tuna melt. But with trout."

"But I don't really ... I don't like tuna melts."

"It's like a tuna melt except for everything else."

"Everything else what?"

"Everything but the tuna."

"The tuna is trout!"

"Soooo... we're good."

Instead of canned tuna and mayo and cheese and bread under a broiler: smoked trout, a little creamy curry sauce, mozzarella, and a medium-boiled egg (as for curry, cf earlier post), in pizza dough, deep-fried, with chutneys. Sounds busy, but there's not much curry sauce in there - just enough to moisten the smoked trout and complement the chutneys.

o sole miso

Sole fillet rubbed with red miso and marinated overnight; plantain rounds; edamame stir-fried with ginger, garlic, and turmeric.

There's not much to say about it, I ... just wanted to use the title.

up against the wall, motherfucker

I had hot-smoked snapper for dinner last night (in a taco with salsa and fried potatoes), so lunch today was a snapper melt with the leftover fish: seeded rye bread toasted on both sides and buttered on the outside, flaked snapper, red miso + mayonnaise, grilled onions, mozzarella + aged Mahon.

Pepper Relish Lay's on the side.  (Imagine salt and vinegar chips, a little sweeter, with the flavor of fresh pepper and onion.  They're pretty good.)

Fish definitely makes meatlessness easier.  So does being a week away from St Patricks Day, a Reuben, and corned beef hash.  What I miss most from the meat counter: hamburgers, Buffalo wings, duck breast, roast chicken, unctuous pork bits (tails, feet, etc).  Even Buffalo wings depend on the collagen-richness of chicken wings.  That lip-smackingness, you dig, that's always missing from "boneless Buffalo wings," because the collagen in this case is all in the skin.  Unctuousness -- the almost-gooeyness of collagen-rich parts like oxtails, spareribs, pig tails, etc -- is something neither fish nor flora can provide.  

Similarly, I find that without meat as a palette for it, I have not much interest in tanginess -- the sweet-sour-sharp of barbecue sauce, for instance, or mustard glaze, or Filipino adobo.  Peppadews or pickled cherry peppers on a steak sandwich.  The contrast between a hot dog and sauerkraut.  I'm not sure I miss it yet, but it's one of my favorite counterpoints for meat, which means it's a well I'm used to going to often.  I would certainly miss it in the long run.

(Interestingly, one of my favorite fish dishes, Platonic fish, is a tangy dish -- I just haven't got round to making it yet.)

bahaha

Fish tacos, I thought, when I put this Lent plan together.  I'll figure out how to make fish tacos.

See, fish tacos are totally outside the Mexican cuisine I'm familiar with.  A fairly recent product of Baja California cuisine, they've been popular in San Diego since the 80s, but Bajan cuisine is as distinct as, say, Oaxacan, and hasn't spread through the US nearly as much as other regional Mexican cuisines have.  So I know of them, but I'd never had one -- I don't think I've even seen a classic Baja-style fish taco on a menu.

But the idea is pretty simple.  You fry some firm white fish -- I used cod -- and wrap it in a tortilla with several sauces.  Cabbage is a traditional topping -- I used sunflower greens instead because I happened to have some, and they're very good but haven't got a long shelf life.

The sauces: sriracha; spicy avocado sauce (avocado, lime juice, Tabasco pepper; more lime juice than guacamole, and thinner/tangier); mayonesa sauce (half mayo, half yogurt, with lime juice, green onion, and dill pollen).

of course of course

Horseradish and Brussels sprouts are two of those ingredients that people think of as having strong, overpowering flavors, but which can be mellowed quite a lot by cooking.  In fact, horseradish can piss you off that way -- if you've ever made a roast beef with a fresh horseradish crust, you may have been disappointed to discover that it wasn't the western beef-based equivalent of a wasabi pea.

But it also makes these ingredients more widely usable.  Making Brussels sprouts inoffensive to people who don't like the cabbagey-ness of the sprouts is simple: separate the leaves and cook them quickly, whether by roasting or frying, until they start to brown.  The flavor is sweet, a little nutty, and nothing like the cruciferous flavor of boiled cabbage.

Horseradish, once it's mellowed by cooking, can nearly disappear next to other strong flavors, but can also blend with them to give you this nice flavor, sharp but not acrid or pungent, right in the middle.  

Some examples:

"Special sauce" for a hamburger: a mayonnaise made with bacon fat for the fat component and Tabasco sauce for the acid.  Grated horseradish was cooked in the hot bacon fat and then mixed in along with some of the crumbled bacon.

Trout and sprouts.  The trout was sprinkled with water and then dredged through freshly grated horseradish and a sprinkle of cornmeal, and fried in bacon fat.  The Brussels sprouts were sauteed in the same fat with a little horseradish and topped with a few bits of bacon.

Lamb chops (they're small) with sumac, over sauteed Brussels sprouts with a very simple vinaigrette (malt vinegar, preserved lemon olive oil, sumac, thyme) and Kopanisti ...

... which brings us to Kopanisti.  This is basically Greek pimento cheese, using feta.  I'm not clear on whether or not there's a more traditional cheese used for it in Greece -- I've seen conflicting statements in blogs, and I am far from an expert on Greek food, much less Greek cheese.  All I know is it certainly works well with feta: feta, roasted red peppers, a little bit of hot pepper (I used hot peppadews), and garlic, blended together.  Because feta is so much wetter than Cheddar, this is a dip rather than a spread like pimento cheese -- it's pourable, really.  It's also tasty and tangy, with a little heat and a lot of pepper flavor.

The Kopanisti also made a good sandwich, on pita bread with a few strips of roasted piquillo peppers, feta, and a handful of pea shoots for sweetness and crunch.