This dish is an inventive crossbreeding of two classic dishes: sole amandine, in which the fish is finished with sautéed sliced almonds, and sole meunière, in which the fish, often whole, is sautéed in browned butter. In my version, I use baby flounder (easier to find in the market here than true sole), lightly coat the fillets with ground almonds, sauté them in browned butter, and serve them with toasted almonds and a sprinkling of parsley (borrowed from the meunière). It's a marriage of equal partners and one that I think would easily win familial approval on both sides of the aisle.
For my money rich tasting, sweet/salt gravlax beats out smoked salmon in the luxurious treat department. The lagniappes here are that gravlax is far less expensive than smoked salmon, and a little goes a long way.
The Mediterranean is rich in mussels, in particular in the rocky coastal regions. They are also abundant in the coastal regions of the United States. Cozze, or mussels, are a very popular dish in Italy, especially around Naples. It seems that just about every Italian American restaurant has some rendition of a mussels dish: alla Posillipo (spicy tomato sauce), alla marinara (mild fresh tomato sauce), and so on. Well, here is a spicy one. Mussels are not an expensive seafood and deliver a lot of flavor if fresh and still briny from the sea. Otherwise, save your San Marzano for another dish.
This is the quintessential Italian pasta dish, especially in Naples and Rome. The clams are the smaller ones — vongole veraci — and they are always cooked in their shells. Once they open, the sauce is done. Here in the States, linguine with clam sauce is made with chopped clams, and I guess this adjustment makes sense, especially since the clams here can be quite large, from littlenecks (small to medium) to topnecks (large) to quahogs or chowder clams (very large). Today, thought, one is ever more likely to find smaller cockles on the market; if you find them, by all means use them.
I love the versatility of asparagus. Here it gets a bit of an Asian treatment with the addition of fresh ginger and garlic. The cod has a nice chewy flake to it and is a good foil for the ginger.
Mackerel is very similar to tuna in flavor, so I thought to try this substitution one day. I loved the results. Serve with a salad for a light lunch or with Pecan Quinoa Pilaf and Sauteed Greens with Orange, Anchovy, and Red Onion for an easy dinner.
The gorgeous simplicity of a classic oyster stew has had a hard time lately. Chefs want to do the multi-ingredient razzle-dazzle with a dish that is perfect when you just leave it be.
There are some table sauces that every nation takes to its heart -- for us it’s probably HP, Heinz ketchup and Colman’s mustard, but in Malawi the market is pretty much sewn up by a brand called Nali, who make a tasty hot sauce with various intonations. My favourite was the ginger one, closely followed by the garlic, and I’ve kind of mixed and matched them together to come up with this recipe.
In America, we don't seem to steam food very much, but it's one of the great techniques of cooking. In Asian cuisines, steaming is very, very important and probably as popular as frying or baking.