Becca Schlaff Dorade oil on canvas 36″ x 60″

 

I forgot to put the SD card back in the camera after uploading the last batch of my pictures to the computer, so unfortunately there are no photo images of his meal.  Instead I’ve located the painting above as a stand-in for the main focus of the meal, and I managed to save some phone images of some of the vegetables while they were still at the Greenmarket.

Dolphinfish, perhaps the males especially, with their prominent square foreheads, are among the most spectacular-looking finned creatures in the sea.  In addition, they are apparently among the most plentiful, at least among fish of their size.  They are also absolutely delicious, which brings them to this blog.

Maybe it’s the New England in me, but I don’t like using the name, ‘mahi-mahi’ on this side of the continent, so I will continue to refer to this creature as a ‘dolphinfish’, or ‘dolphin’ (or, in cookery, as ‘dorade’, or ‘dorado’, the name by which online sources say Europeans have come to know it, at least in their kitchens and on their dining tables).

After writing all of that, I will confess that I remain confused about the freedom with which the name ‘dorade’ seems to be thrown about on the other side of the Atlantic, at least according to the Wikipedia entry for ‘mahi-mahi’.  In Europe, Dorade actually seems to be a form of bream, and not the ‘common dogfish‘.

All of which reflects the fact that, like most fish species, dolphinfish are both blessed with, and easily confused through, the use of many names.  Today most people in the western hemisphere know it as mahi-mahi, a rather cute-sounding Hawaiian name (meaning ‘strong-strong’, possibly an allusion to the fish’s sturdy appearance as much as its fighting spirit when hooked). That tag was apparently broadcast beyond the central Pacific by merchandisers who wished to avoid the common confusion of the sport and commercial fish with a beloved mammal [yeah, you’d thnk..].   They share the name because, it is said, both creatures have a habit of swimming alongside boats.

Finally, when it comes to the word, ‘dolphin’, my imagination is never very far from the graceful creatures that appear so frequently in classical design and architecture. I mentioned this in my first Food Blog post about preparing dolphinfish.  But of course I would love them for that alone.

• exactly one pound of dorade fillet from Pura Vida Fisheries, dry-marinated with more than half a tablespoon of lemon zest, an equal amount of thyme leaves from Keith’s Farm, salt, and pepper, set aside for 20 minutes or so, then seared in a hot pan for about 3 minutes, carefully turned over and that side seared for 3-4 minutes, the heat lowered and the pan loosely covered for a few minutes (depending on thickness), with aluminum foil if no other cover is available, during which time some bruised fresh ramp fruit from Berried Treasures and thinly-sliced shallots from Keith’s Farm were introduced and briefly sautéed with the fish before it was removed and put onto two plates, and the pan juices poured over

• minutina from Norwich Meadows Farm, washed, drained, then wilted very slightly in low-to-medium-hot olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper

• a salsa of halved tiny golden cherry tomatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm and a smaller amount of delicious little [about an inch-and-a-half-round] lemon cucumbers from Berried Treasures, sliced, together dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper, a bit of white balsamic vinegar, and chopped copper fennel from Berried Treasures
• The wine was an Argentinian white, Jelu Estate Torrontes 2014, from San Juan
• the music was Lully’s ‘Amadis’, Clavecin et direction par Christophe Rousset

 

[image at the top is from the website of Becca Schlaff]

Okay, this may not be easy to explain.  I’ve never actually cooked dolphin before, and in fact I didn’t cook ‘dolphin’ tonight.  What I prepared was  dolphinfish, which is not a mammal by any stretch of the imagination: Think of all those curvaceous creatures which were used to decorate classical furniture, architectural features, and garden ornaments (I’m not absolutely certain, but I believe they were inspired, not by the mammal, but by the fish seen as the beautiful, tanned, blue-haired youth’s catch seen in this Minoan fresco from 3600 years ago.

When I visited PE & DD Seafood in the Greenmarket today I saw a relatively uncommon name marked on the board at the back of the stall, and wanting to take something home I hadn’t prepared before, more or less on an impulse I asked for some of what I saw labelled as “mahi-mahi’.  I think I had always ignored the fish in the past because of the, well, …, *exotic* name always attached to it, and Hawaii sort of doesn’t fit anywhere into my personal aesthetic.  My thoughts went something like this:  Anything which went around calling itself  ‘mahi-mahi’ was certainly not something to be taken seriously, at least not as a respectable local fish or something which might be appropriate for a more-or-less Italian table.

Wade and Jan, the fisherman/owner Phil Karlin’s son and his sister-in-law, set me straight, explaining that mahi-mahi was in fact an Atlantic fish caught off eastern Long Island, and that it was also known as dorado, or dolphinfish (a name easily confused with young Sandy’s charming and intelligent friend, ‘Flipper’ – which probably explains the alias). Now the fillets began to look like something I could work with, so I asked for a piece weighing just under a pound.  I figured I’d easily be able to come up with suggestions for its preparations once I got home, but in fact, even after searching through my food library, I still had no idea how I would cook it.   Eventually, largely with Barry’s input, I decided dolphin would lend itself to the kind of treatment I usually reserve for mackerel or bluefish.  My recipe was an adaptation of one from Marcella Hazan; I obtained it elsewhere, but this is a version which appears on line now.

• very-thinly-sliced German Butterball potatoes from Berried Treasures tossed with olive oil, sliced garlic from Garden of Spices Farm, salt and pepper, roasted in a pan for fifteen minutes in a very hot oven, then covered with a seasoned dolphin fillet from PE & DD Seafood covered with a mixture of sliced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and chopped parsley from Paffenroth Gardens, with two sliced heirloom tomatoes from Berried Treasures and a dozen halved Kalamata olives from Whole Foods scattered over the potatoes, the whole roasted for another fifteen minutes, everything then garnished with more chopped parsley
• the wine was a California white, Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc 2013

This is the dish resting on top of the oven, moments after it came out (I love one-pot meals, even when they don’t look like that’s what they really are).

 

[the second image is from HistoryWiz]

Dinner was a cinch.

I really went pretty basic with the scallops this time, the tomato was almost as minimal, and the puntarelle have almost become something I could do in my sleep.

But I did manage to include a tiny (edible) bouquet on the plate (a last minute inspiration).

• eleven sea scallops (14 ounces total) from P.E. & D.D. Seafood Company, rinsed, dried very thoroughly with paper towels then placed in a paper plate to prevent condensation, seasoned with local Long Island sea salt from P.E. & D.D. Seafood and freshly-ground black pepper, grilled briefly (90 seconds on each side) in a very hot full size square enameled cast iron pan, finished with a squeeze of juice from an organic California lemon from Chelsea Whole Foods Market and a drizzle of Whole Foods Market house Portuguese olive oil, arranged on the plates with a sprinkling of scissored bronze fennel, flowers and buds, from Rise & Root Farm
• slices of a baguette from She Wolf Bakery in the Union Square Greenmarket
• one small heirloom tomato from Norwich Meadows Farm, halved, sprinkled on the cut side with sea salt and black pepper, scattered with chopped leaves of pericón (Mexican tarragon) from Quarton Farm, heated gently on bot sides inside a small copper skillet, arranged on the plates with tiny sprigs of pericón flowers planted on top
• the only real central sections that remained from the puntarelle I had bought last week, and last included in a meal on Friday, prepared from scratch as described in this post, and tossed with a freshly assembled anchovy sauce (they were still delicious)
• the wine was a California (Clarksburg) white, Miriam Alexandra California Chenin Blanc 2018, from Naked Wines
• the music was Rossini’s beautiful 1821-1822 melodramma giocoso (opera semiseria) ‘Matilde di Shabran’, Riccardo Frizza conducting the Orquesta Sinfonica di Galicia, with Annick Massis and the incredibly beautiful voice of Juan Diego Florez

We’ve enjoyed some sea creatures lately that I hadn’t seen in the market for a while (fish have seasons too). On Saturday we will be having dolphinfish, but Friday night’s entrée was pretty special too: John Dory (aka  Peter’s Fish, Saint-Pierre, San-Pierre, Petersfisch, Pez de san Pedro, and Pesce san Pietro, just for starters)

The fish was gleaming, but the vegetables were absolutely vivid.

• two seven-and-a-half-ounce John Dory Fillets from American Seafood Company in the Union Square Greenmarket, marinated inside the refrigerator for about 30 minutes in a mix of an inch of a spring garlic stem, sliced, from Berried Treasures, a teaspoon of chopped fresh oregano from Neversink Farm, the zest from much of one mandarin from Whole Foods Market (the original recipe specifies orange zest, but I had always used lemon until now), more than half of a teaspoon of La Tourangelle walnut oil, sea salt, and freshly-ground black pepper, removed from the refrigerator and allowed to come to room temperature for about 15 minutes or more, placed skin-side down inside a large (17″) seasoned vintage oval steel pan (scroll down for the image) that had been heated over medium-high heat with enough olive oil to coat the surface, the heat immediately reduced slightly, flipped after 3 minutes and cooked for just about 2 minutes more, removed and arranged on warm plates, whatever juices remained in the pan poured over the fillets, garnished with some chervil from Campo Rosso Farm
• slices of an organic multigrain baguette from Bread Alone
• 20 small ripe, very sweet grape tomatoes from Kernan Farms, each punctured once with a small metal trussing pin to prevent it from exploding when using a fork to pick them up on the plate, rolled in a small bit of olive oil inside a small vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pan until they had begun to soften, sprinkled with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and chopped flowering sage, arranged on the plates, a few blossoms sprinkled on top
• a stash of Campo Rosso Farm’s broccolini (a hybrid cross between broccoli and Gai Lan, aka Chinese broccoli), washed and drained a couple times in fresh cold water, chopped roughly, sautéed/wilted over a low flame by gradually adding them to a heavy large antique copper pot in which a good size section of the same spring garlic stem used in the fish mariande, sliced, had first been heated until it had begun to soften, seasoned with sea slat and freshly-ground black pepper
• the wine was a California (Sonoma) white, Scott Peterson Rumpus California Chardonnay 2016, from Naked Wines
• the music, bearing in mind that it was the Friday before Memorial Day, which is virtually the opening ceremony for the summer insect free-for-all, was David Rothenberg’s ‘Bug Music’

Duck: Fish or fowl? Sometimes it’s been both.

The image above is from Pompei, and while I don’t mean to suggest that the Romans confused waterfowl and seafish, I find it amusing that some later Europeans did.

We’ve been feasting on a lot of fish lately, and even on Wednesday, the night following this meal featuring pan-fried duck breast, when I had a night away from the kitchen, there was seafood. As almost always, it came from New York waters; as almost never, we sat at a long communal table, outside, at dusk, just a block from the Hudson. The venue was Michael Anthony‘s restaurant, Untitled, the dish, cioppino, the terrific main course of a farmer’s dinner which otherwise almost exclusively featured the very fine vegetables of Alewife Farm.

On Tuesday, the day before, we had enjoyed an entrée of duck breast at home, which means I did not prepare seafood. But wait! In some circles duck is considered fish, or at least that was the case during a time when the consumption of fish was a weighty concern through much of the Western world.

Medieval catholics would often really stretch the definition of ‘fish’ in order to be able to enjoy more of their favorite foods on Fridays or fast days, and the duck was considered to be in that category, as was other aquatic life such as geese, puffins, dolphins, and whales. As late as the 17th century, at least in Quebec, the Church officially declared that the beaver, as an aquatic animal and a skilled swimmer, was actually a fish [apparently arguing from “..the ‘Summa Theologica‘ of Thomas Aquinas, which bases animal classification as much on habit as anatomy.“].

I could go on, and, because I had been a Catholic as a child, and have always been interested in every aspect of food, I will. Young rabbits were considered fish and not meat (I do not know why), as were frogs, snakes, and (as of a Louisiana 2010 episcopal decree) alligators.

So we had duck. It didn’t seem at all like fish. It definitely didn’t feel like a fast day.

• one 13-ounce duck breast from Hudson Valley Duck Farm, the fatty side scored in tight cross hatching with a very sharp knife, the entire breast then sprinkled top and bottom with a mixture of sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and a little turbinado sugar, left standing for about 40 minutes before it was pan-fried inside a small oval enameled cast iron pan over medium heat, the fatty side down first, for a total of 8 or 9 minutes, turning once, draining the oil part of the way through [to be strained and used in cooking later, if desired], removed when medium rare (cutting it into 2 portions to confirm that the center was of the right doneness), left to sit for several minutes before being finished with a drizzle of juice from an organic lemon from Whole Foods Market, then a little chopped rosemary from Phillips Farm and a drizzle of olive oil
• three halved heirloom tomatoes from Tamarack Hollow Farm, brushed with dried Sicilian oregano and fresh thyme from Stokes Farm, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and olive oil, then pan grilled, arranged on two plates, lemon peppercress scattered around the edges
• cavalo nero (or lacinato or Tuscan cabbage) from Paffenroth Farms, wilted briefly in olive oil in which one clove of Rocambole garlic from Keith’s Farm had first been heated until pungent, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, drizzled with a little more oil
• the wine was a California (Sonoma) red, Ana Diogo-Draper Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County 2015, from Naked wines
• the music was the album, ‘Wassenaer: 6 Concerti Armonici‘, Richard Jenkinson conducting the Innovation Chamber Ensemble in music of the Dutch diplomat, composer and governing official,  Unico Graf Van Wassenaer, composed in 1740

[the image at the top is from the Milan Museum Guide]