Filling and sable: simple, sumptuous, and satisfying. This is a bowl to warm the soul, and the sablefish, also known as black cod, is rich with natural oils.
Poached Smoked Sablefish
4 cups (1 L) milk
4 5-oz (150-g) pieces wild
sablefish (black cod)
2 Tbsp (30 mL) parsley, finely chopped
Fish Velouté Sauce
16 Savoy cabbage leaves
1 large carrot, cut into sticks
1 1/2 oz (45 g) butter
1 Tbsp (15 mL) flour
1 cup (250 mL) fish stock
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 Tbsp (15 mL) grainy mustard
20 clams
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
Juice of 1 lemon
Bacon Garnish
12 thin strips of bacon
Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C). Place bacon between 2 sheets of parchment paper on baking sheet. Top with a second baking sheet and bake in oven until bacon is crisp, about 7 to 10 minutes. Set aside.
For fish velouté sauce, fill large saucepan with water, add salt to taste, and bring to boil. Add cabbage and carrot and boil until just cooked, about 3 to 5 minutes. Set aside.
Melt butter, stir in flour, and cook over low heat until mixture browns slightly. Gradually add fish stock and blend until smooth. Bring to boil, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens. Simmer 10 minutes and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Place cabbage and carrots in medium saucepan with fish velout sauce and mustard. Add clams, thyme, and bay leaf and cook over low heat, simmering until clams open. Remove clams and vegetables and set them aside. Continue to cook sauce until reduced by half and it coats back of spoon. Season with lemon juice.
To poach sablefish, in a separate saucepan, bring milk to simmer over medium-high heat. Add sablefish and cook until fish flakes with a fork, about 7 minutes.
Arrange vegetables on a plate and top with sablefish. Drizzle with sauce and garnish with parsley and crisp bacon. Serves 4.
source: "This February, Go West", alive #380, 2006
Yogurt completely transforms the texture of these chicken thighs, making them tender and flavourful with bright notes of lemon and cilantro. Ideal for a day trip, these can be marinated in the morning and cooked in the evening, but they also work well when cooked in advance and packed for a picnic to be eaten cold. Marinade mentions Marinate chicken thighs for anywhere between 4 and 24 hours. Discard excess marinade that has been in contact with raw chicken. It should not be consumed uncooked.
Citrusy and slightly sour sumac and a touch of maple syrup enliven pickled onions in a perfect complement to this salad. Kale and Napa cabbage stand up for hours to the sweet and puckery dressing, and hearty farro will keep you going while on the road. This salad is sure to be a favourite for picnics, backyard potlucks, or road trip lunch stops. Dressing for dinner This salad stands up well, even while dressed, for up to 4 hours. (Truth be told, I’ve often happily eaten it the next day.) In fact, time helps kale to soften up and become even more delicious. If you’re travelling for a longer period, make the pickled onion dressing as described above: let it stand for about 20 minutes, and then add all the oil and pack it into a separate container so you can finish the salad when you arrive at your destination. The pickled onions are also great with steaks or chicken.
These wraps are perfect for an overnight journey when you want to have something quick and satisfying the next day. Sweet smoked paprika adds just a hint of smoky flavour to sweet potatoes, which join with spinach and red pepper to dress up eggs in a pleasing way. Make these wraps anytime and stick them in the freezer for your next excursion. Pack them frozen and they’ll have time to thaw on the journey, or put them in the fridge the night before you travel so you have something convenient and tasty to eat before you set off. Leave the ketchup bottle behind, and serve them with your own smoky red pepper sauce. Freeze with ease While foil is convenient for freezing and reheating these wraps, to cut down on waste, freeze wraps in a single freezer-proof container. Insert a small piece of parchment between each wrap so they don’t stick together. This will allow you to remove individual wraps easily when you need them.
While sablefish’s texture and fat content stand up admirably to the heat of the grill, this firm fish is also delicious poached. For this recipe, sablefish’s luxurious taste is combined with a light fragrant broth of lemongrass and ginger punctuated with the heat of Thai chili. Sustainability status Sablefish, also known as butterfish or black cod, is a rich and satisfying fish, plentiful in omega-3s and sourced sustainably from the Pacific Northwest. Skin and bones Sablefish has large pin bones. Ideally, your fishmonger will remove them, but if not, before you begin, locate them along the fish’s centreline and, using a pair of needle nose pliers, grasp them firmly to remove. You can leave the skin on for this recipe, which may help the fish hold together a little better while cooking, but it can be tricky to peel the skin away from the cooked fish and discard before plating. I opted to remove the skin first and simply keep a close eye on the cooking time, being careful to remove the fish from the poaching liquid before it flakes apart.