Fish, Wine, and Mushrooms = Bliss

Baked fish in mushroom-wine sauce

I’m always ready to cook seafood, especially fish. Today, I visited Vermillionville to watch a somewhat disappointing country Mardi Gras that is supposed to involve costumed revelers on horse back going from house to house begging and dancing for gumbo ingredients that should especially feature a live chicken flying to save its feathers. Instead, this “family friendly” mardi gras featured children scaring costumes, one rubber chicken and a few bags of rice. Not exactly ingredients for anything edible, yet alone a gumbo. During a beignet cooking demonstration, Meagan asks the cook if she has a good recipe for cooking catfish, which she does. That combined with a hope to eat seafood for lunch, made me really want to make some seafood for dinner. One the way home Igrabbed two tilapia filets at Champagne’s and decided to cook tonight. I decided to try out The Frank Davis Seafood Notebook that is half a cookbook and half a book filled with tips on cooking seafood.

Always a fan of cooking with alcohol, I decided to try his Baked fish in mushroom-wine sauce and add a few more vegetables I had in my fridge.

Ingredient list:

5 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
½ cup heavy cream
mushrooms, finely chopped, enough to cover fish filets. (I used Crimini)
lemon juice
6 tablespoons of white wine (per pound of fish)
Fish Filets

Directions:
Preheat Oven to 350

In a frying pan, melt butter, then stir in flour until smooth over low heat. Next, stir in cream. Do not brown. Season filets with salt and pepper. Chop mushrooms and spread over fish in a baking dish. Drizzle Lemon juice and wine. I didn’t have any lemon, but did have lime juice, which I dripped over the filets instead. I also added chopped green onions, Roma tomatoes, and asparagus. Bake for 10 minutes. Then pour butter sauce on fish and cook until tender. It took about 15 more minutes until the filets fell apart when stabbed with a fork. The veggies and fish soak up the wine and butter well, melting not just in the oven, but (clicely) in the mouth too. This is an easy recipe and great use of mushrooms.

Mark