Easy Family Dining by TheDevineKitchen
Easy Family Dining
(with a little help from our friends)
A typical dinner at our table is simply prepared fish, colorful vegetables and a starch such as potatoes. We love the Georgian Bay trout available at Willowtree Farms. The delicious pesto slathered over the fish is from Happy Earth Farm. The gorgeous purple potatoes and carrots are from O’Brianview Organic Farm. Both the pesto and vegetables were purchased in town at the Fenelon Falls Farmer’s Market. We finished our meal with an herbed salad from our garden with lots of radishes from our local Mennonite market tossed in homemade vinaigrette.
For the Fish—Preheat oven to 325ºF. You’ll need a piece of parchment paper and a piece of foil large enough to loosely wrap fish. Layer both with parchment on top. Place an approximately 300g fish fillet in the center of parchment (serves 3). Lightly season the flesh side of the fish with fine sea salt. With the back of a spoon, spread pesto evenly over the fish. Enclose parchment around the filet. Then wrap in foil (the role of the parchment is to minimize aluminum exposure. I never expose food to aluminum foil). Bake for about 15 minutes if fresh and longer if frozen, depending on the thickness of your fillet.
FYI, the semi-solid white stuff that surfaces on pink fish as it cooks is a protein (like egg whites) that usually indicates that your fish was cooked either too quickly or for too long. It’s completely fine to eat.
The Potatoes—The secret to perfectly seasoned boiled potatoes is to generously salt the cooking water, until you can taste the salt. This allows the salt to penetrate throughout the potatoes while cooking, eliminating the need to salt at the table.
Cover the potatoes with 2-inches salted water. Bring to a full boil and turn the heat down to medium heat. Vigorously boiling potatoes causes the skins to peel and the potatoes to explode and adsorb too much water, and is not pretty (kind of like cooking fish too aggressively. There is a lesson for us here folks!). Check for tenderness after 10 minutes. Continue to cook until tender all the way through. Drain well, toss in butter or drizzle with olive oil adding lots of fresh chives and fresh cracked pepper.
The Carrots— Refer to the honey Glazed Pan Roasted Carrots recipe, EDITION 253, March 18,2021. Since the carrots I cooked in this image were small, I scrubbed them and left them whole, and substituted fresh dill in place of thyme.
