{"id":3924,"date":"2015-04-04T18:23:15","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T18:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=3924"},"modified":"2015-04-04T18:23:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T18:23:15","slug":"sauteed-herb-marinated-ocean-red-perch-wilted-kale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=3924","title":{"rendered":"saut\u00e9ed herb-marinated red perch; wilted kale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"red-perch_kale_tomato\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note to self: \u00a0a\u00a0delicious\u00a0dish, more so for being easy\u00a0to prepare, adaptable for most white-fleshed fish<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is a Red Perch? \u00a0I think I’ve finally found the answer, but not before I had probably bored too many very smart people with the question while\u00a0at a very happy\u00a0Artsy<\/a>\u00a0happy hour last night.<\/p>\n

I had been\u00a0very attracted to the vibrant appearance of these fillets when I saw them in the Greenmarket that day\u00a0[April 3]. \u00a0I wasn’t certain the I had ever prepared them in my kitchen, and so naturally I was intrigued even more. \u00a0Also,\u00a0and the price was pretty modest. \u00a0I asked Paul, who was standing behind the big ice-filled boxes inside the Pura Vida stall\u00a0and\u00a0offering these gorgeous ‘red perch’ fillets to a local fresh seafood-besotted public, to tell me what he knew about the fish. \u00a0I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I read the fish with my own eyes and put together some connections I heard\u00a0within his narrative. \u00a0A\u00a0few minutes later I was on my way home with four fillets\u00a0(three\u00a0ounces or so each), where I continued my investigation on line later that evening.<\/p>\n

I quickly learned that there was no\u00a0record on this food\u00a0blog of my having ever prepared this fish in the past, so I looked elsewhere,\u00a0still on line, for some indication\u00a0of what kind of fish I had purchased. \u00a0My search however was surprisingly frustrated (there are tons of different ‘red fish’, perhaps just as many ‘red perch’, and, it seems, an equal number of ‘red ocean perch’). Finally, at around 9:30 tonight, in the recipe section of my own totally analog home library, I picked out\u00a0a very thin manila folder which I had once marked,\u00a0 perhaps both optimistically and\u00a0naively, “Ocean Perch”. \u00a0There it was, staring me in the face, a handwritten note which pointed to a real recipe, in a real book, a recipe\u00a0which turned out to be\u00a0both familiar and promising. \u00a0I must have followed it some time in the past, even if I never made the blog, because the scrap of paper\u00a0bore\u00a0the significant notation, actually more of a scribble, “very, very good”.\u00a0\u00a0 A few hours later I was able to confirm that it really was.<\/p>\n

The appearance,\u00a0texture and the flavor of the fish reminded me of the delicious freshwater perch I had enjoyed while growing up around the Great (and smaller) Lakes\u00a0in the Midwest – except for the herb part, and the red part. \u00a0I had even caught a few of them myself when I was\u00a0little more than a toddler (although somebody less squeamish\u00a0dealt with the hooks and the worms).<\/p>\n