Growing fennel is easy and SO worth it for the fronds, flowers, and seeds, even if it is a non-bulbing variety. And it is a host plant for different swallowtail butterfly species, so if you grow fennel, do try to grow enough to share with the caterpillars of these beautiful butterflies.
We planted four bronze fennel plants probably ten years ago and they are still coming back with zero involvement from anyone. Doesn’t get any easier than that.
Local fishmonger had freshly caught pumpkin swordfish, supposedly gets its color from eating shellfish. Grilled and served with artichokes and a salad with a sun dried tomato, shallot, garlic, caper wine vinegar dressing on the fish. It’s not unusual for their local fish whiteboard to show fish that has been caught with an ETA as to when it will arrive.
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That 19 is really a great bottle IMHO, Swordfish looks delicious!
I’ve never been able to make swordfish taste interesting. It just ends up dry.
Even soaking in coconut milk / seasonings only gets it to ‘ok’ on the flavor / taste spectrum.
Is this intrinsic to this? or are you doing anything different/special
I lightly flour the fish and pan sear in a combination of olive oil and butter. Swordfish is not good rare. Just until fully cooked. Some white wine , garlic, shallot lemon juice and more butter capers and parsley finished the sauce
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Try poaching swordfish in olive oil. It turns out buttery, tender, moist. Lots of variations possible, e.g., include garlic or capers/caperberries, fresh rosemary, etc.
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Blazing hot pan with either grapeseed or avocado oil (high smoke point). Sear for 2 minutes, flip for two minutes, continue flipping every minute until done. It makes a huge difference and will be tender as hell.
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About once a year I buy a thick (3-4") swordfish steak from a small loin (about 4" diameter after skin removed), season it, sous vide it in olive oil and ghee, then sear over ripping hot coals on the grill. It’s pretty amazing and serves 2.
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Zucchini Tart with Lemon Ricotta base.
This was a first attempt. There’s a few things I would change to improve this dish…first is salt and dry the zucchini overnight. This would make the final product less wet and allow for browning on top. Second is I would make the lemon ricotta more savory/spicy. Third is I would add more zucchini to make the the presentation look a little tighter.
That said, this was delicious and easy.
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Peak season summer produce is just the best…Last night’s dinner was a grilled summer vegetable and prime New York steak “salad.” Seasoned the steaks with salt, Green and Red Hatch chile pepper flakes (awesome seasoning from Trader Joe’s btw) and herbs de Provence (a pretty standard prep in my house). The produce just got a simple coating of good quality local EVOO, salt and pepper.
I grilled everything on the gas grill at about 350* with the steaks on the upper rack dripping fat down on the produce on the grill grates until the steaks got to ~105*-110* and the veggies were tender and lightly charred. I removed the veggies and set them aside, blasted the grill temp up to ~550* and put the steaks back on to sear them off and went inside for two minutes. When I came back out the fat on the prime steaks had ignited a healthy fire under the steaks that was a little out of hand so I quickly removed them off and saw that they were perfectly tender and had a nice crust (luckily I avoided having them get any of the gross acrid smoke flavor that sometimes happens when they get torched like that). It’s good to be lucky sometimes.
Then we plated our salads in a bowl with some cold butter lettuce leaves on the bottom and added the charred broccolini, mixed summer pepper medley, cherry tomatoes, red onion, some avocado slices and ultimately topped it all off with some pickled red onion slices and dressed it with a lemon juice, olive oil, dijon mustard and chopped up olive mixture that was just perfect on the mixture. I’m getting hungry again just thinking about it all and the entire family was going back for seconds and thirds even.
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Beautiful!
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If it was dry it might be they were overcooked some, I’ve certainly overcooked it before. I’ve started using a wi-fi enabled, multi channel temperature recorder to track my cooks. Looking at the graph for this one, I pulled mine at 123 degrees F, then let the rest for a few minutes tented with foil. I did not track how much the temperature raised during the rest, I aim for a warm center, that’s not fully opaque.
Edited Temperature
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Dang 223 deg
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Fixed, Thanks!
The best part about Raleigh, for sure.
Lol the Durham market is quite a bit better but Locals Seafood at the Raleigh market is very good, and I get to stop at Boulted Bread nearby when I’m there, a critical mass that pulls in that direction.
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