baked pollock, capers, chervil; grilled celery; potato, savory

This is an absolutely terrific fish, and I did particularly well by it on Monday night, thanks to a wonderful recipe I’ve used often, with some variations, but whose origin I no longer remember.

  • *one 20-ounce fillet of pollock from P.E.&D.D. Seafood, rinsed, dried, halved, and seasoned on both sides with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, placed skin side down inside a buttered an oval tin-lined copper gratin pan, spread with a mixture of softened unsalted Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’ mixed with zest from most of an organic Whole Foods Market lemon, a very little chopped Rocambole garlic from Keith’s Farm, slices of part of one Japanese scallion from Norwich Meadows Farm, and part of a piece of a  crushed orange/gold home-dried Habanada pepper from Norwich Meadows Farm (harvested fresh last fall), the fish baked for about 15-17 minutes at 350º, removed to 2 plates, the cooking juices poured over the top, and a teaspoon or so of Sicilian salted capers, which had first been rinsed, drained, dried and heated briefly inside a small antique enameled cast iron porringer in a bit of olive oil, scattered over the fillets, with that oil, the pollock finished with a garnish of micro chervil from Two Guys from Woodbridge
  • *Nicola potatoes from Tamarack Hollow Farm, boiled with a generous amount of salt until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried while still inside the large still-warm vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, tossed with 2 tablespoons of rich Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’, sprinkled with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and then some chopped winter savory from Stokes Farm