I decided to stay in tonight and whip up what I expected to be a mess of a date night dinner. Turns out I proved myself wrong, and that it was actually post-worthy. Delicious, in fact.

It’s one of those days when the groceries are dwindling and I had to dig deep in the back of the freezer to see what reserves were around. Luckily I had a bunch of CSA goodies on hand: onions, my year supply of garlic, peppers, some herbs and tomatillos. The freezer held one lovely Alaskan Halibut fillet from Trader Joes, and the Pantry had various starches leaning around gathering dust. I settled on a container of pre-made cilantro polenta. OK, this was doable.

Meager reserves force you to get resourceful, and resourceful I got.
First I set the frozen halibut still in its shrink wrapped glory in a bowl of cold water in the sink (the surest fire way to defrost quickly when you didn’t have the forethought to plan for the meal) Trader Joes is great for this, because they have such good quality frozen seafood (such as scallops that I made the other night). You can keep them on hand for quite a while (providing you don’t have the same ancient 1970’s freezer that I do- capable of creating freezer burn instantaneously).

Anyway. Fish, Check. Next I unwrapped the polenta and mashed it up with a bit of chicken broth to soften and turn to a mashed potato like texture (They recommend this on the packaging, you can add any kind of liquid to soften). I thought the chicken broth would add a little saltiness and flavor.

While that was all setting up I made some tomatillo salsa. I’ve never made my own salsa of any kind before. I’ve always been sort of… intimidated by it, I guess. I’m not sure if just this recipe is dead easy, but if others can be made in the same fashion I might be having regular homemade salsas around. If you want to up the ante on a mexican themed dinner go for this one:

Take some tomatillos (about a pound’s worth)

They come in these fun little husks, that remind me of japanese lantern flowers and are sticky underneath. You need to remove the husks and wash them off a bit, leaving you with nice green tomatillos.

These you can place in on a baking sheet or in a shallow pan (I used a shallow casserole dish, which I later used for the fish to save on dishes). The original recipe calls for five serrano chiles, but all I had on hand were poblanos (which due to my lack of grocery shopping had already started to turn red). I threw two poblanos to mingle with their green counterparts in the dish along with four unpeeled garlic cloves. As a rule, I generally double the amount of garlic you’re supposed to put into something. You really only need two cloves, but since I love garlic I put in four.

Turn the broiler on and once it’s heated place the pan in the oven for five minutes before turning the peppers and tomatillos over. Broil for another five minutes on the other side, or until the skin pops.

While this pan is doing its thing in the oven, roughly chop a medium sized onion and throw it into a food processor along with half a cup of cilantro leaves. When the timer goes off, pull the stems off the peppers and throw peppers and tomatillos into the processor, as well. Peel the garlic and add those and blend the whole thing up into this magical spicy sweet goodness. Piece of cake!

By now your fish should be defrosted. I lined the same pan I was just using with the polenta and placed the halibut on top in the center. Just a few drops of olive oil and sea salt are all I used to season the fish. Broil for five minutes on each side (or longer depending on how you want it cooked).

Plate the polenta and halibut and top with a generous spoonful of tomatillo salsa.

This meal was so easy I felt like I cheated. It’s probably healthy for you, too. (Not that I pay attention to that sort of thing.)

Filed under: Ingredients, Meal Reports, Random, Recipes

Leave a Reply