What foodie among us doesn’t love watching the Food Network? Who among us doesn’t salivate over the gastronomic creations and, even more so, the gleaming, decked-out kitchens, the ease with which the stars whip up their homey, yet inventive meals, and the stress-free environment in which they serve them to their guests.

I love watching the Food Network’s porcelain-perfect cooking, and, in particular, Everyday Italian with Giada DeLaurentis. She is perfectly made up, coiffed, and dressed, and her football-field-sized kitchen is immaculate and stylish. Not only that, but the woman features mascarpone, whipped cream, and crème fraiche in nearly every show, which makes me feel like we are culinary kindred spirits. Word, Giada, word.

However, the bliss with which I watch this perfect landscape can’t help but be pierced by reality as it was last week when I watched Giada assemble pot-pie veggie pizzas in a snow-white, long-sleeved, finely-knit sweater. She looked wonderful, but as I watched her ladle tomato sauce into each ramekin, I shrank with apprehension, fearful that she would get a dot of tomato sauce on her sweater.

Naturally, she didn’t. But this fact is as much based in reality as the size, scope, and cleanliness of the kitchen and ease with which she prepares the food. Back in the real world, I like to take certain precautions against adorning my favorite Vince sweater with splattered grease, tomato sauce, batter, and the like.

If I’m cooking alone, I like to don my version of scrubs – some $2 Gap t-shirts that I bought on clearance 6 years ago and my black Wes pajama pants.

However, if I have company coming and have to be dressed for their arrival, I like to wear a cute, stylish apron. I know, it seems like a contradiction… aprons are matronly, practical, a relic of generations past, when women seemed more chained to their kitchens than inspired by them, but I’ve done a little digging and found a bunch of aprons at Anthropologie that are as cute as their clothes.

I’ve had one for many years, and no matter how mercilessly I subject it to the onslaught of spills and splatters, it comes out of the wash beautifully bright and ready for another round.

*Food photography in this post from the Food Network. Apron photography from Anthropologie.

Being a food writer(ish) comes with its privileges. My darling, thoughtful, and generous friend, Dez, got me a pass for Taste of the Nation in Boston a couple of weeks ago. The irony of this event is that attendees glut themselves to an extreme rarely seen outside of a Roman vomitorium in an effort to bring awareness to and alleviate childhood hunger.

Irony (and attending guilt) aside, it was a flawlessly executed event, with over 100 Boston restaurants, wineries, and food purveyors offering their fare for attendees to nibble (read: gorge) on. And, the best part is the proceeds go to Share Our Strength and combat childhood hunger.

Now, before you start to do the math in your head… non-profit + charitable event + restaurant sponsors = bland fare that tastes like leftovers, just know that every restaurant we sampled pulled out all the stops. There was an 8 foot long oyster bar from Neptune’s, choice Rosemary pate from EVOO, a mesmerizing deconstructed tiramisu from L’Espalier, and, our unanimous favorite, Truffle soup with potato foam and bee pollen from Gargoyle’s on the Square. I haven’t eaten so well since… well, probably Iceland, but this had the notable advantage of being state-side and working for the benefit of hungry children.

Neptune's Oyster Bar... PURRRRR

Just as an FYI, Taste of the Nation is not limited to Boston and holds events all over the country. Check out their schedule here to see when they’re coming to your area.

Below are a few choice photos from the event….

Smoked gouda empanada covered in Mexican chocolate sauce from Masa in the South End.

Fat, juicy, salty, and briny... just the way I like them.

Rosemary pate from EVOO, topped with Concord Grape jelly and a pickle.

Homemade sausages and pates from Sel de la Terre, my new favorite restaurant in Boston.

Our unanimous favorite - truffle soup with potato foam and bee pollen from Gargoyle's On the Square

 And for dessert…. 

Tons of cannolis….

Cupcakes….

And a deconstructed tiramisu from L’Espalier…

I can’t wait to go back next year!

I have a confession to make…. I started Besotted with more than just the goal of jotting down my favorite recipes and rambling about my culinary experiences. I desperately want to get people back into the kitchen, and for them to do more than peel back the plastic on a microwaveable meal or ‘add water’ to make a meal magically puff up before their eyes.

It’s an absurd quest in our multi-tasking, over-taxed, over-stressed world, but I’m taking it on, and if there’s one recipe in my arsenal to battle the delivery-guy, grocery-store-prepared-foods, and the like, it’s this one, because it takes 15 minutes from grocery bag to table. Not only is it easy and quick, but the flavors – fresh chilis, ginger, garlic, and lemon – will instantly remind you why fresh always tastes best.

Toss in a few large shrimp and some olive oil-soaked toast, and you have a pretty spectacular meal that you can be eating before the pizza delivery guy has even put on his hat.

Start with big, fat shrimp (16-20 count). They're the focus of the meal and should be generously sized.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Shrimp, Chilis & Ginger, Serves 2

Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef

Ingredients:

3 Tbls. Olive Oil

2 Tsp Fresh Ginger, peeled and finely chopped

3 Cloves of Garlic, peeled and finely chopped

3 Fresh Chilis (Habanero, Jalapeno, etc. according to your taste), deseeded* and rough chopped

2/3lb. Large shrimp (16-20 count), tails and shells removed

Juice from 1 Lemon

½ Cup of Fresh Flat-leaf Parsley, rough chopped

3 Tbls. Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

6 Slices of French Baguette, toasted

Sea Salt and Fresh Pepper to taste

Preparation:

Plate your toasted French baguette, 3 slices per person and set aside.

Heat a saute pan over medium-medium-high heat until nicely hot. Add the olive oil, ginger, chilis, garlic, and shrimp. Cook, stirring constantly for 90 seconds; turn the shrimp onto the uncooked side and cook for another 90 seconds.

Cooking takes a whopping 3 minutes

Turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the lemon juice, parsley, and extra-virgin olive oil. Stir for 30 seconds and remove from the heat.

Pour the shrimp and sauce over the plated toasted baguettes. Season to taste and serve.

Deseeded, chilis provide flavorful heat, but be very careful of the seeds - they burn sensitive areas, like under the nail bed and nostrils.

*Please take extra care with deseeding chilis. The last thing you want to do is get the seeds under your nails or near your nail bed, nor do you want to touch your face after handling the seeds. If you’re new to this, rubber gloves are your best defense. If you want to live dangerously, wield a paring knife (small and easy to manage), split the chili in half lengthwise, and flick the offending seeds into the sink or garbage, taking care not to touch them.

I don’t want to bore you to death with details of our wonderful trip to Spain, but a web log of some of the more interesting dining experiences does seem warranted, or will at least allow me to justify the 10 pounds I packed on there.

I had studied in Spain a number of years ago, and, while excited to return, speak the language (i.e. show-off in front of PT), and re-visit a number of my favorite sites and cities, I was apprehensive about the gastronomic experience. As a poor student, I had subsisted on low-quality, hastily prepared chicken croquetas (essentially, chicken fingers with cream of chicken, instead of whole meat), tortilla espanola, and ooey-gooey pastries. The last two were quite good, but not exactly a well-rounded diet for 10 days.

However, since my stay there, Spain has undergone a culinary revolution, and is now arguably challenging France as Europe’s country of avant-garde cuisine. Led by Adrian Ferra, Spanish cities now proudly boast restaurants that I would technically deem “fancy-shmancy,” meaning that not only would it be a good idea to break out the cocktail dress and heels, but that your meal will consist of more than potatoes, egg, and olive oil, and the preparation will be inventive, eye-appealing, and delicious.

The following are a number of lush and luscious photos of some of our favorite meals and snacks from the trip. For those of you thinking about traveling to Spain, I’d be happy to furnish restaurant and cafe details for any of the photos – just e-mail me at jessica@besottedgourmet.com or post a comment with your question, and I’ll happily respond.

Naranja Amarga

Life is short… eat dessert first. PT and I did not skimp on desserts and pastries throughout our stay, but this remains my favorite. Naranja Amarga – a rich, orange-flavored crème anglaise, baked in a tart shell, with chocolate and a candied orange piece on top. Rich, not too sweet, with an adult bite from the tangy Sevilla oranges.

Served with a glass of vino tinto, these are the perfect mid-afternoon snack.

Olives were are most-oft ordered snack. These aren’t your typical jarred cocktail accompaniment. Juicy, meaty, and full of flavor, Spanish olives are as fresh as you can get.

The fish being prepared right next to our table.

PT and I ordered a whole fish, baked in salt. Little did we know that the waiter would bring the aforementioned fish to our table for our inspection prior to cooking, and that ‘baked in salt’ literally meant buried in salt. The cooked fish was deboned and filleted next to our table, and the resulting meat was moist, light, and surprisingly unsalty, considering the 10 pounds of salt it had been cooked in.

A pastry or candy shop greets you on every corner of every Spanish city. You can watch calories later, indulge here while the profusion of excellent sweets and treats is so readily available.

White Bean Gazpacho - This may look simple, but it's had me in a tizzy ever since I took the first cool, luscious bite.

This braised ox tail was incredibly tender, rich, and flavorful.

Soft & sweet cinnamon flan and icy smooth lemon gelato

The Tasting Menu we had in Cordoba will go down as one of the best meals of my life. I’ve become obsessed with our first course of white bean gazpacho, and the intoxication only increased from there. We had eight luscious courses, culminating in the orange gelato in olive oil that I featured as an excellent dessert for entertaining.

This is as good as it looks, and the best part is, it's considered breakfast in Spain. What a great country!

The Berlinesa was our breakfast of choice for quite a few days (yes, I know, it looks like dessert, but we were on vacation!). It’s the lightest, freshest doughnut, filled with custard, and rolled in sugar. You really can’t argue with the Spanish bakers when it comes to the superiority of their pastries – they are in a class all their own.

Everything but the kitchen sink in a spicy, garlicky broth.

Sopa Espanola is a classic Spanish dish in the tradition of the French cassoulet and Italian Minestrone – essentially, a dish without a set recipe that can contain any number of variations of meats and vegetables that are in season or otherwise readily available. This version included chorizo, ham, carrots, garbanzo beans, grean beans, and potatoes in a spicy, rich tomato, garlic broth.

Tender, juicy suckling pig.

This hunk o’ meat is suckling pig, served at the oldest known restaurant, and one of Hemingway’s favorite haunts.

Last, but not least, PT and I found the best bakery cafe in Sevilla and visited them daily. The desserts were out-of-this-world… just beyond beautiful to look at and better to eat. We enjoyed this pomegranate topped orange-soaked poundcake after a delicious meal.

So, I’ve received just a tiny bit of flack for featuring a veggie dish that contained prosciutto in the Veggie Dinners post and sought to rectify the situation. In my defense, the second recipe was strictly vegetarian, but I understand that there is a ‘truth-in-advertising’ issue with a post titled “Veggie Dinners” that features prosciutto. Lest I invoke the wrath of any more vegetarians, I will own that the base of this soup is a chicken stock – because that is what I always have on hand – but vegetable stock could easily be used as a substitute.

Tuscan White Bean Soup is a recipe that is both categorically healthy – carrots, white beans, and kale constitute its base – and all succor, warmth, and comfort. It is not every recipe that can soothe both the spirit and the body, but this recipe does so perfectly.

This is a lazy, rainy Sunday dish – while it takes a few hours from start to finish, few of the stages require more than the most perfunctory of efforts. There is no vigor with this soup – it is all calm, whiling away the hours, watching rain run down windows, perusing DVD collections, and wrapping-up in a blanket.

This particular recipe is a mix of two separate recipes that I came across. I liked the ingredient list in From Our House to Yours, which features the recipe from Janet Fletcher’s Fresh From the Farmers’ Market, but the preparation was just a tad too tedious for me (and would have turned it into a Lazy Week recipe), so I incorporated a few of the steps from Italian Classics that would help to speed the process up a bit. The result is an easy recipe that can be started late morning and enjoyed early to mid-afternoon.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Tuscan White Bean Soup with Kale

Ingredients:

1lb. Dried Cannellini Beans

10 Cups Water

1 Tbls. + 2 Tsp. Salt

¼ Cup Olive Oil

2 Onions; 1 chopped, 1 separated into layers

2 Carrots, diced into ½ inch pieces

4 Garlic Cloves, minced

3 Tbls. Fresh Flat-Leaf Parsley, minced

2 Bay Leaves

4 Cups Chicken Stock, preferably homemade (or substitute veggie stock)

1 Cup Kale, rough chopped

Freshly Grated Parmesan, Salt & Pepper, to taste

Preparation:

Put the dried cannellini beans, 2 Tsp. of salt, and the onion with layers separated into a large stock pot. Cover with the 10 cups of water. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low and let simmer for 1 hour.

Remove the pot from the heat and allow the beans to rest in the oniony liquid for another 30 minutes.

Strain the beans and onions and reserve the simmering liquid for use later.

Heat the ¼ cup of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the uncooked onion, carrots, garlic, parsley, and bay leaves and saute for 10 minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften.

Mushy veggies

Add the drained beans and onions, chicken stock, and 2 cups of the oniony simmer liquid to the pot. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Bring to a light boil over medium-high heat, cover the pot, and turn the heat down to medium-low. Cook the soup, stirring occasionally for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

A few mindless stirs is all the attention this soup will need for the next hour.

Remove the bay leaves from the soup. Take 4 cups of the soup from pot and process in a blender or food processor until pureed. Return the puree to the pot and incorporate well and continue to cook over medium-low heat.

This veggie bean mush will give a hearty substance to the soup.

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add the 1 Tbls. of salt. Add the roughly chopped kale to the pot and boil for 2-3 minutes. Drain the kale and add to the soup.

If the soup is too thick, you can always add in a bit more of the oniony simmering liquid to thin it out, but I tend to like my soup thick.

When you’re ready to serve, add a little bit of freshly grated parmesan, salt & pepper.

What is it about human nature that makes us willfully engage in activities that we are certain will have disastrous outcomes? That extra martini? Probably not going to make getting home (or remembering your bag) any easier. That cute guy reeking of Axe Body Spray? Probably not going to call you back. That inky black Prada bag with butter-soft leather that you simply couldn’t leave, because it felt like a baby being snatched from a mother’s arms? Probably going to feel like a bulldozer landed on your head when you see your credit card bill.

For whatever reason, the complicated and mysterious workings of our minds make it such that we do things we know are wrong with willful ardor. Such was my situation baking a long-forgotten favorite treat, Sticky Cinnamon Twists, over the weekend.

Looking through the ingredient list, the only one I didn’t have on hand was bread flour – which was unfortunate timing, because I just cleared my pantry of most of my outdated, rarely-used flours. Boston was a balmy -2° that day, which made the choice to go to my lesser corner-store, rather than walk 15 minutes to Whole Foods, an easy decision. Unfortunately, DeLuca’s didn’t have bread flour – they had All-Purpose, Cake Flour, and some new concoction that included a variety of other ingredients, which I immediately distrusted, but no bread flour. Now, my rational mind said, “Either go to Whole Foods and get the bread flour, or just use all All-Purpose in the recipe.” The sadistic, curious, and much more persuasive little imp of my imagination said “I wonder what would happen with Cake flour?” The imp won.

Now, back in my feverish bread-baking days, I could have lectured endlessly on the distinctions of the different types of flours – protein content, interactions with yeast, what kind of crumb different combinations would yield. I was rather prolific in the field of bread-baking. But, then I started working, and acquired a deeper knowledge of API integrations than of how to produce the perfect crumb and crust, which, in my opinion, is a rather sad state of affairs.

You can see the dough straining to hold in the luscious sugar-butter-raisin filling

Anyhow, the point is, I should have known better, and was really not at all surprised at the outcome. The cake flour is far too fine to produce the desired chewy and stickiness that the title suggests. Moreover, the filling of the twists – copious amounts of raisins, sugar, sour cherries, butter, and cinnamon – were far too heavy for the fine dough that the cake flour produced. You can see the raw twists almost weeping with strain to contain the filling.

I haven’t included the recipe here, as I’d like a few more turns at it to at least get it down properly, but I did want to offer a slightly different perspective on the rule that baking and its measurements must be exact. Ingredients and measurements in baking must be exact if you want precisely the same outcome that the recipe author intended. However, I would venture, that it is rather difficult to make loads of butter, sugar, cinnamon, flour, and a little yeast not taste good – in fairness, the Sticky Cinnamon Twists were still delicious, even if the results was not the intended form.

In other words, the paradox of baking is such that it requires a fair amount of precision to make a perfect recipe, but almost no precision to make something that tastes good. So, the moral of the story is to be fearless, make your bad decisions, even with baking, because, while the outcome may not look picture-perfect, it, like the martini, cute guy, and Prada bag, will still be delicious.

Crispy, peppery, and deliciously salty homemade potato chips

I am not one of those people that is capable of restraining themselves in all areas of their life at once. I never could, and wouldn’t expect myself to, pinch my pennies, watch what I eat, hit the gym every day, log in extra hours at the office, and be kind to strangers, all at the same time. It simply can not happen.

With the recession in full-swing, and having imposed a temporary ban on shopping at Barney’s, I feel fully justified… nee, compelled to assuage my spirit with a little culinary over-indulgence.

Potato chips are one of my greatest weaknesses. I may wax poetic about farm-fresh eggs, local butchers, and in-season produce, but put a bag of Doritos or Lays in front of me, and all of that Organivore/Localvore dogma goes right out the window, and I get downright gluttonous.

Happily, and not surprisingly, I’ve come up with a fantastic recipe (if you can call it that) for making russet potato chips at home, and they are phenomenal. Case in point, I brought them out at a party a few months ago, laid them on the table, went to the kitchen to retrieve something, came back, and they were all gone. An entire bowl of them was devoured in minutes, they are that good.

A Microplane grater makes quick work of slicing potatoes.

Certainly play around with any flavors that you like, but I love these with crisp, fried sage leaves, sea salt and pepper.

Click here for the printable version of the recipe

Homemade Potato Chips

Ingredients:

3 Russet Potatoes, sliced or grated thin

1/3 Cup Bacon Fat (substitute vegetable oil if you must, but if possible, use the bacon fat)

Sea Salt

Pepper

1 Tbls. Sage

Preparation:

Heat the bacon fat in a medium-large saute pan over medium heat; there should be about ½ inch of melted fat in the pan.

While the fat is heating, prepare a dish covered with paper towels to drain the sage. Add the sage to the pan and let fry for 30 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on the paper towels.

Turn the heat up a bit to medium-high. Prepare another paper-towel covered plate. Add the potato slices to the pan. Cook for 2 minutes each side, until they are a deep orangey-brown. Remove with the slotted spoon and drain on the paper towels.

Once you start to see the russet color extend up the side of the chip, you're nearly ready to flip them.

Almost ready and oh-so-tasty

Cover the chips in sea salt, the fried sage, and pepper, and enjoy.

Perfect Spanish olives make perfect Spanish olive oil

For those that didn’t read it in the previous post, PT and I recently went to Spain for a little get-away. We each prepared for the vacation by scouting activities that we wanted to do – The Prado and olive oil tours for me, bull-fighting and Real Madrid game for him – we are nothing if not predictable.

There is a little town in northern Andalucia (the southern-most region of Spain) called Baena, and it is best known for producing tremendous olive oil. Driving out of Madrid and into Andalucia,

Those are all olive trees, extending for miles, and this was just one small snippet of a 300 mile drive.

we were struck by the enormity of the olive oil tree fields – hundreds of thousands of trees for miles and miles blanketed the landscape. We arrived in the sleepy little town of Baena (and I mean that quite literally, the town was taking its siesta), and immediately found the charming, yet slightly out-of-the-way Museum of Olive Oil.

The little museum, on a side street on the outskirts of a tiny town, is exactly what you would expect of a museum honoring the livelihood of over half of a ferociously proud population. The space was well-tended and comfortable, the information was expansive and interesting, but the best part was that they had a full turbine olive-oil press machine set-up in the first room. The physics-buff that he is, PT was awestruck by the enormity and ingenuity of the machinery.

Moving on, we took a self-guided tour of easily the prettiest “plant” I’ve ever seen – how many industrial plants in the United States have pots of geraniums along the side of white-washed walls? And, for that matter, how many plant managers would allow a pair of tourists to meander around while his workers were on siesta? Not many, I’m guessing, but Spain is entirely different in that, and many other ways.

Have you ever seen a prettier processing plant?

The important thing that we noted about this plant was that, while the modern horizontal centrifuge has been introduced, it is reserved for the lesser quality olives. The older method of extraction, which involves two massive stone wheels grinding the olives into a liquidy paste, which is then crushed beneath dozens of straw mats to squeeze out the oil and strain the pulp, is still in use for the highest quality olives to produce the best olive oils.

The best quality olives are still crushed by massive millstones, in the same way they were hundreds of years ago.

Dozens of heavy straw mats squeeze and strain the oil from the olive mash.

Modern technology hasn’t found a way to produce a finer tasting olive oil than two giant millstones, crushing the juice out of ripened olives, which gives us a good indication of the sensitivity and artisanal nature of the process…. a process that yields liquid gold.

I picked up a couple bottles of Nunez de Prado olive oil, the largest, and perhaps only, producer located in Baena. I was loathe to break the red wax cap that seals the cork of this delicious, artisanal olive oil, but my curiosity and hunger got the best of me, and I’ve been greedily dipping homemade French bread into pools of the liquid gold for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not surprisingly, I’m utterly besotted.

Strange but delicious.... Blood orange gelato in a pool of extra-virgin olive oil with mint.

I am not a huge fan of fusion… or, rather, I think it has its limits. For those masochistic souls who, like me, have read the inimitable American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis, you will recall the intentional absurdities of the characters’ dinner menus. An integral attraction in the mad carnival that Ellis creates is the nightly $300 supper of increasingly absurd food pairings, culminating in my favorite, the Cilantro Cheesecake. For those of us foodies with a wicked sense of humor, the cache of these unappetizing meals lent a bit of levity to an otherwise grizzly novel.

But, as usual, I digress… the point is that it didn’t take the macabre humor of American Psycho to turn me off of fusion. I’m just a bit too traditional for all of the new-fangled stuff that kids these days are coming out with.

However, on our recent trip to Spain, PT and I enjoyed an exquisite Tasting Menu in Cordoba, and the dessert tray included a perfectly rounded ball of Sevilla Orange gelato, sitting in a pool of Andalucian olive oil. I like both of the components very much and PT assured me that it was sensational, but still, I eyed this combination warily as I tucked into the cinnamon flan.

Finally, I dug in, and it was magnificent. It was smooth, tart, and had a light aroma of the best quality olive oil. The taste was mild, with just a hint of the sharpness of the Sevilla oranges, but the texture was what one me over – perfect gelato smoothed by silken olive oil. Delicious.

And, the best part, is that it fits perfectly into the Entertaining Holy Trinity as a perfectly arranged dessert. Just drop a bit of olive oil into some shallow dishes, scoop in a citrusy gelato (or sherbert – I would avoid ice cream), add a few sprigs of mint, and you have a sophisticated, delicious, and unique dessert, and it’ll never cause you to break a sweat.

The one caveat of this dish is that all of the ingredients (save maybe the mint) have to be the absolute best quality, and don’t even think of using regular olive oil – it has to be extra virgin or nothing.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Blood Orange Gelato in Olive Oil with Mint, Serves 1 (Multiple according to your guest list)

Ingredients:

3 Tbls. Best Quality Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

1 Scoop Blood Orange Gelato

3 Mint Leaves

Preparation:

Pour the extra-virgin olive oil into shallow bowls.

Place the scoop of gelato in the center.

Stick the ends of the mint underneath the gelato bowl and fan out.

Serve.

It's not the prettiest dish, but it smells and tastes fantastic.

I am not a fan of ‘cooking-lite.’ If I’m going to do something, I want to do it right, even if it means carrying around a little extra junk in my admittedly full trunk.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I have a total disregard for health or that I’m cramming slices of bacon and hunks of cheese into my mouth all day long. Quite the opposite, it’s just that I would prefer a smaller portion of something that tastes fantastic than a heaping plate of something that tastes so-so.

That being said, scrolling through Besotted, I did notice that there were an awful lot of bacon-y, cream-laden, cheesy, and chocolate-y recipes. At the same time, the seasonal winter-weight-gain has had my pants fitting a bit snugly, and I thought it was time to include a completely healthy, but still rock-your-world delicious Weeknight Dinner recipe.

This Oven-Poached Halibut is an adaptation from a lesser-known cookbook that has been a staple in my kitchen for several years. Caprial’s Bistro-Style Cuisine has a decidedly Northwest flavor (not surprisingly, since the restaurant is located in Portland, Oregon) with lots of fresh fish, shallots, mustard, cherries, and fennel incorporated into the recipes.

I made a couple substitutions and added a bit of kale, because I do like to get dark greens into my diet whenever I can, and I ended up with a spectacular dinner that takes less than 30 minutes, grocery-bag to dinner plate.

One note, halibut is expensive, and these are not the times for splurging on a Weeknight Dinner. Substitute with any white fish (cod, haddock, etc.), and the results will be much the same, for a fraction of the price.

Click here for a printable version of the recipe

Oven-poached Halibut in an Orange Marsala Sauce, Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 6oz. Pieces of Halibut, Haddock, or Cod

1 Onion, julienned

2 Cloves Garlic, rough chop

1 Fennel Bulb, julienned

Fronds from Fennel Bulb, rough chopped

2 Tbls. Olive Oil

Salt

Pepper

1 Tbls. Butter

½ Cup Marsala Wine

1 Orange, juiced and zested

1 Cup Kale, rough chopped

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Season the pieces of halibut with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the olive oil in an oven-proof saute pan that with a lid over medium-high heat. Once hot, saute the onion and garlic for 2 minutes. Add the fennel and saute for another 2 minutes.

The size of the chop is important here because they're being cooked on high heat. A julienne or any medium sized chop will let the pieces cook evenly.

Add the seasoned fish to the pan. Pour the orange juice and marsala over the fish. Add the orange zest, butter, kale, and chopped fronds from the fennel bulb to the pan, and stir together, making sure that the liquid covers all of the ingredients.

Cover the pan with the lid and cook in the oven for 8-10 minutes.

Once cooked, plate the pieces of fish and pour the orange marsala sauce over them, and serve.