Snapper to it

Ok, that has got to be one of the cheesiest blog entry titles I have ever used, but hey - this entry is about fish.

This weekend I had a "slumber party" with some friends (all of us left around 2 am so we could sleep in our own beds, hence the quotation marks).   In addition to some junk food staples, I decided to bring along stuff to make virgin pina coladas.  I haven't made pina coladas (with or without rum) in a long time so I had to spend some time debating in the latin food section of my store if I should get coconut milk or cream de coconut (Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolia's would be saying "The one is much thicker than the other.)  So I checked to see if either one had a recipe on the can and sure enough the coconut cream had a recipe for pina colada smoothies (uses ice cream - yum!), but what really caught my eye was the recipe on the can for coconut milk.  It was for red snapper in a coconut milk sauce (I've since learned it's a basic Puerto Rican recipe).  So I grabbed a can of both and figured that I would use the cream first and the milk if necessary, but that if I still had the milk at the end of the night then I would make the snapper recipe for my Sunday Sister Supper (sans sister). 

I will say that if I was actually having supper with my sister, this probably would not be a dish we would make together.  My sister doesn't really enjoy Latin food as much as I do.

If you want the recipe you can go here, but here is the gist.  You sautee onions, celery, and garlic together and then add the coconut milk, a bay leaf, tomato and tomato paste to create the sauce.  As the sauce cooks down, you add the fish and you let it cook until the fish is done (flakes easily).  Remove the fish and then you let the sauce cook down to your desired consistency. Then you serve over rice (I used brown rice this time).

While the recipe calls for red snapper, I ended up using mahi mahi because there wasn't any fresh snapper at my grocery store.   If you look at the wikipedia links I've provided, you will see that they are two very different looking fish.  I think snapper tends to be a kind of flaky white fish where mahi mahi has a meatier texture, similar to tuna (although it doesn't taste at all like tuna).  However like tuna, mahi mahi may have a higher mercury target so you don't want to be eating mahi mahi all the time.  But mahi mahi goes well in exotic-inspired like fish dishes (most often Asian inspired) because the fishy taste isn't overwhelming.

The dish was DELISH!  It definitely reminds me of something I would order at a seafood restuarant like Bonefish Grill, but really super easy to make.  On the side I had a few slices of avacado in lime juice(which I wanted to eat before it went bad), but the dish is really super filling so you don't really need a side dish.  The recipe is good for 4-6 servings, but since its just me I halved it and got 3 medium size mahi mahi fillets.  I did not freeze my leftovers because I don't think this is a dish that will freeze well, which means that I will have to finish my leftovers this week.  This won't really be a problem because it was super yum.  I could definitely see myself serving this at a dinner party (given the guests liked fish) because it is so tasty and looks really nice.    So definitely try it out.