What was I thinking?
Last night’s dinner was the epitome of hard dinners and the reason it was hard is because everything was quick cooking. Everything needed to be tended and cooked at the same time, so I had to be very thoughtful about how I did it. Oh, and to compound it, one of the recipes I had to follow is a brand-new recipe.
I found some fresh cod at the store and became inspired to cook it like a fine dining restaurant. So, what I made was a cod sautéed in a pan with a grapefruit sage butter sauce. I made ready-made couscous in a box, which was super easy. I made greens with mushrooms. I made a fresh beet salad with goat cheese and walnuts. So the prompting of this difficult dinner was that I didn’t have much to do on a Sunday night and I went to Bristol Farms to be inspired by something fun.
So, walking in the store the first thing I saw in the vegetable aisle was golden beets and so they’re not as “stainy” (is that a word?) as when you make red beets. I don’t know if this is how you do it, but I peeled them and roasted them because I didn’t want to touch them afterwards to peel them because then your fingers turn all colors. The juice from red beets are a rich burgundy color and they just make a big stain on anything they touch. It’s a beautiful natural food dye actually, or fabric dye, but I digress.
I had saved this fancy sounding recipe and I thought about all the different things and how long they took to cook, so I was very thoughtful about it. Since I was making beets, I needed to get those in the oven first because they take a long time to cook.
To time the cooking of the beets I had to think about that once they come out they’ll be hot and I would like them cooled for the salad. So I thought about what time I wanted to eat dinner and backed it up, actually a little extra. So, I think at 3:30, no, it was four o’clock by the time I peeled them, so they went in the oven at four o’clock. Next, I prepped all my ingredients. For the couscous, I get out a small sauce pan with lid. Since all I have to do is boil some water, add a tablespoon of butter, then throw in the spice mix, then you throw it in I can then can leave it sit on a burner until ready to turn on. So, I got the pan out, I put the water in it, and the butter, I cut open the container took out and added the spice mix and I put it with the stirring spoon and I staged it. One thing done.
The second thing I did was think about my salad and when I was going to serve my it. Are you going to serve it before, are you going to serve it with the meal? It’s important if you are going to be tied to the stove and dinner needs to be served immediately. When are you going to eat your salad if you are serving it before the meal?
Since I’d be stirring everything else, I thought I’d get the salad ready. So, I was going to make arugula as a base for the beets. I made a homemade dressing with some shallots and a little bit of lemon zest and some really good olive oil and some pear raspberry vinaigrette and some honey. So, I had oil, vinegar, honey, a little bit Dijon mustard and the shallots. I made the dressing so that it could sit and incorporate. I got out the walnuts. I got out the little bit of arugula I wanted. The beets were cooking in the oven and I got the goat cheese out and I cut it and put it in a little dish and put that back all back in the fridge.
So, that was all staged. Now I was thinking about my greens. The greens were a mixed bag of spinach, kale, chard and mustard greens. All you do to cook that is to sauté a little shallot or onion, but that only takes a minute. And so, I got out the pan, put in the oil and shallot in. And then I added a little bit of butter because I mix it for flavor. I opened the bags of the greens that I was using. Then I got out a pan to sauté the fish and added oil and butter. So, I got that all staged. Then I thought about all the things I need for my special sauce. How many pots and pans do I have now?
For the sauce, I was going to have to zest a grapefruit, squeeze grapefruit juice, I needed a little chicken stock. I needed a little cream, I needed shallots. (That’s why I put shallots in the dressing and greens, I just cut up a bunch of them. I cut up two large shallots and then I spread that out in lieu of an onion.) So I staged all my stuff and then it was time for the beets to come out of the oven. So, I took them out and them in little squares and I stuck them in the bowl that I was going to make the salad in and then I put them in the fridge so that they could cool off.
In the meantime, I finished prepping all my ingredients, creating my little stations, I had my food ready because it all needs to cook at the same time. Now, It’s go time!
To pull this off I was being very thoughtful and very careful about all of this. And that means everybody stay out of the kitchen and don’t talk to me because I’m trying to think about what I have to do next. Normally that’s not the case when I’m cooking without a recipe, but since I have to follow the recipe and get everything going at the same time don’t get in my way.
So, I washed the fish and I washed it, dried it really good. I got out the little flour that I was supposed to roll the fish in and a dish and set that aside. So now that everything’s going good, I went and checked on my beets, still warm. Next I turned on the water to get the water boiling for the couscous.
Then I turned on the burner under the pan for the greens so I could sauté the mushrooms (did I forget to tell you I was adding mushrooms?) and not burn the shallots. So I’m stirring that. So I have two things lit on the stove right now. Then I’ve got the beets still cooling for the salad and then it’s time to cook the fish. So the thing was, I need to pan fry the fish until it gets to be 145 degrees. I had put olive oil in the pan and I turned that on. Then I dredged the fish in the flour and seasoned it. And then when it was ready, then I put the fish down. So now I have three burners going at one time. I got the couscous bubbling. I have the fish frying and the fish really did splatter, I was surprised at how much it splattered. It was only three tablespoons of oil, so it wasn’t very much.
Plus, I have the mushrooms and the onions cooking. Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir. Don’t mess with the fish until I could see it getting a little crust. You could actually see it because it looks a little translucent and they get solid white. It was cod. So I watched it kind of go halfway up. When it was halfway up, I turned it and it looked perfect. It wasn’t burnt because you got to be concerned with that. So I turned it, I checked the temperature. It totally wasn’t done. It was supposed to be 145. It wasn’t even 80. So they were very thick fillets. Meanwhile, I was a little concerned about the mushrooms are done, but I’m way away from the greens, so I turned the mushrooms off. Checked the couscous, it still wasn’t boiling. Open the fridge, stirred up the beets. EEEKKKKK! The beets were at room temperature, but I wanted them a little chilled.
I had to make the sauce in the pan when the fish came out of it. That’s why I postponed putting the greens in because they cook in 5 minutes. So, waiting for the fish I am standing around because I can’t proceed any further. So, I’m waiting, waiting, I am busy and I am wasting time! I check on the couscous and it looked like it was boiling so I took and poured the box of couscous in there, gave it a stir and covered with the lid, set it aside, that’s off. I don’t have to worry about that until we eat dinner. So then I thought, well, I better put the salad together. Oh yeah. And then my husband comes in and says, “Are you going to chill the plates?” Then I was really mean to him for suggesting it. Can’t he see I’m busy? When did he get so uppity?
So, then I took some plates out and stuck them in the freezer so they would be chilled for the salad. Now I took out the fish out and put on a plate and started the sauce. The sauce needed to reduce for eight minutes. I poured all those ingredients in that needed to reduce. I added in the rest of the butter and the zest and all the other stuff. Now get the greens going.
Remember about now there’s only one of you. You really can’t cook everything at the same time or you shouldn’t. That’s why breakfast is so hard because they’re all quick. You’ve got fried eggs and you’ve got pancakes.
Anyway, I stirred up the sauce, started putting the greens in. All the greens to do is wilt. But you can only add a bunch at a time because it fills up the pan but then it loses so much volume. It takes so much to produce so little. I seasoned them, got the greens completely done, covered them.
My sauce is reducing. I mix up the salad and I put a arugula, some walnuts, the beets, and the goat cheese and my homemade dressing. I tossed it. And then I served it while I was finishing the sauce. So now I’ve got it, the couscous is done, the greens are done, the fish is done and I’m making the special sauce.
I ate half my salad, get up from the table, and put the cold butter and zest in the sauce and plated it all up. I paused and took this picture. And there you go. Done. I’m exhausted.
Dinner was good but was it worth it? You see why it was so stressful. I had so many things going on at the same time and a brand-new recipe, so that was pretty hard. I broke all my rules. I hope you can see by my example to scale back your ambition a little. What am I, an Iron Chef?