{"id":1880,"date":"2014-08-07T18:53:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T18:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=1880"},"modified":"2014-08-07T18:53:01","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T18:53:01","slug":"grilled-herb-marinated-striped-bass-grilled-eggplant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=1880","title":{"rendered":"grilled herb-marinated striped bass, grilled eggplant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/DSCN0015.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1883\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/DSCN0015.jpg\" alt=\"DSCN0015\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Until fairly recently, when I\u00a0published food\u00a0posts on this blog I preferred to use <a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/2009\/07\/23\/dinner-july-29-2009\/\">images of the food before it was prepared<\/a> (and sometimes even without a meal context), for aesthetic reasons, and a few others. \u00a0I would still prefer to do these posts that way, but, if only for our own reference (much of the reason for the site\u00a0in the first place) when\u00a0composing new meals, a picture of the plated food can be pretty useful, if not very professional in my case. \u00a0Today, partly because I&#8217;ve become so fond of eggplant &#8211; of every kind, and in most every form &#8211;\u00a0I\u00a0decided I could do both, and especially since\u00a0I had become enchanted by the eccentric curves of the last three in Nevia No&#8217;s\u00a0stall at the Greenmarket yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was our anniversary (our\u00a022nd). \u00a0We would normally want to celebrate with a good lunch outside a favorite\u00a0restaurant, but\u00a0the weather didn&#8217;t really welcome the idea of sitting outside, and we didn&#8217;t feel like celebrating closed up inside,\u00a0so we decided to do it up at home, in the evening, in front of the open window, with our roof garden beyond. \u00a0Two elements of the meal I planned\u00a0required heat, but only for a relatively brief time, so the kitchen and the casual\u00a0dining\u00a0area adjoining it remained pretty comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>In preparing the very simple meal I began by\u00a0marinating\u00a0a\u00a0generous one-pound\u00a0fillet of Striped Bass from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bluemoonfish.com\/\">Blue Moon Fish<\/a>. \u00a0I decided\u00a0to prepare the\u00a0beautiful Japanese eggplant from <a href=\"http:\/\/bodhitreefarm.com\/\">Bodhitree, Farm<\/a>\u00a0ahead of time, so after I\u00a0pan-grilled it I turned off the heat and set\u00a0it aside in its\u00a0heavy cast iron\u00a0to\u00a0slowly cool down. \u00a0The idea was to give us both a few minutes with a celebratory half bottle of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perrier-jouet.com\/us-en\/champagne-collection\/grand-brut\">Perrier-Jo\u00ebt\u00a0Grand Blanc<\/a>, and some elegant thin grissini.<\/p>\n<p>The eggplant recipe, &#8220;&#8221;Thousand Ridges Japanese Eggplant&#8221;, \u00a0is one we have enjoyed many times. \u00a0It&#8217;s from &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Italian-Grill-Mario-Batali\/dp\/0061450979\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1225068841&amp;sr=8-2\">Mario Batali Italian Grill<\/a>&#8220;. \u00a0I halved each of the screwy vegetables in the picture at the top, with not too much difficulty, then\u00a0scored and spread them with a mixture of olive oil, garlic and chopped mint, then seasoned them, and placed them on\u00a0a hot iron ribbed pan for a few minutes, flipping them once. \u00a0When it was almost\u00a0time to move the eggplant halves\u00a0to the plate with the fish, I turned the heat\u00a0on\u00a0under the pan, using a very low flame.<\/p>\n<p>For the Striped Bass, a fish with which I was not on really familiar terms, culinary wise, and not wanting to use the oven last night, I turned to the internet. \u00a0There\u00a0I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodandwine.com\/recipes\/grilled-wild-striped-bass-with-fresh-herbs-and-sparkling-wine\">the recipe<\/a> I used, from Food &amp; Wine, only substituting the &#8216;sparking wine&#8217; with white Vermouth, whose virtues\u00a0are more commonly\u00a0appreciated when on\u00a0martini\u00a0\u00a0duty (we hadn&#8217;t popped the champagne yet). \u00a0The fish, divided into two pieces, was marinated in a blend\u00a0of olive oil, lemon zest, vermouth, shallots, chives, parsley, and thyme\u00a0(holding back a\u00a0portion of the\u00a0mixture\u00a0to be spread onto the fish once it was\u00a0on plates). \u00a0I used a medium-hot flame to pan grill the bass until it was cooked through, turning\u00a0the fillets once. \u00a0I finished them on the plate by spooning some of the herb mixture on top.<\/p>\n<p>Our wine was a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marsannay_wine\">C\u00f4te D&#8217;Or ros\u00e9<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.garnetwine.com\/sku157195.html\">Marsannay Rose, Domaine Bart 2013<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/striped_bass_grilled_eggplant.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1884\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/striped_bass_grilled_eggplant.jpg\" alt=\"striped_bass_grilled_eggplant\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Until fairly recently, when I\u00a0published food\u00a0posts on this blog I preferred to use images of the food before it was prepared (and sometimes even without a meal context), for aesthetic reasons, and a few others. \u00a0I would still prefer to do these posts that way, but, if only for our own reference (much of the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meals-at-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}