Have I got a story for you!
Saturday, my husband and I went our separate ways for the afternoon – he went fishing with the boys, and I stayed home painting pots with my sister. Well, Sis and I are in the garage with the door up painting our flower pots, when all of a sudden, the bottom falls out – I mean some
serious rain! We, of course were fine because we were still inside, but my thoughts immediately went to my husband! Out there fishing in the rain!
I gave him a call to see how things were going. He said that they were soaking wet, but the fish were biting like crazy! He was so excited (he doesn’t really get to go fishing a lot, and typically when he does, he finds it rather dull…so this was a good thing for him).
Well, a couple hours later, he comes dripping in the door with a smelly Target bag of fish – he’d kept 4 of them! And brought them into my house! I was like “What are you doing?!”
“Do you know how to clean these?”
Like I’m supposed to know how! So he makes a few phone calls to some of his other fishing buddies to find out what he needs to do with them. And the whole time I’m thinking, where did you get these fish? Where is this lake? Are you sure we can just up and eat these things? Well, he finally decides that he is going to freeze them until he has time to clean and fillet them. So, he throws the whole Target bag into my freezer!! And for the next few days I’m trying to dodge this bag of WHOLE FISH that is sitting front and center in the freezer!
Well, he finally got around to cleaning those little guys and we fried them up last night! He was so proud that he was able to go out and catch dinner with his bare hands. Providing for his family in the truest since of the term! And I was proud of him (although I will admit that I was a little disgusted at first, but once he handed me the fillets, they looked just like the ones that I bought at the store just the other day…so I was fine).
I sautéed them with this fabulous recipe that I found on the website I was telling you about the other day. Cilantro Lime Sea Bass! It was delicious! Although I did alter the recipe a tad. I first salt and peppered the fillets. And despite the title of the recipe, it did not call for lime. ??? I really liked the idea of lime, so I just squeezed some over the top of the fish right before they were finished cooking. Also, when I was done there were a lot of brown bits still left in the pan, so before I look the tomatoes out, I deglazed the pan with some chicken stock to make a sauce. Then we just poured that down over the fish. I served it with some brown rice (seasoned with oregano, crushed red pepper flakes, garlic salt, fresh ground black pepper, one bay leaf, and some roasted bell peppers) and steamed broccoli. It was delicious, and it looked beautiful! If you’ve never tried this deglazing technique, I would highly recommend it! Click on the link for instructions.
Good luck!
