Saturday, July 12, 2008

Tropical Dinner


After my friend Nicole and I went to the Sydney Fish Market and made tuna steaks one time, we decided fish dinners should be a more regular event. We didn’t make them quite as often as we'd hoped, but still had a few nice meals. For the second dinner, I wanted to try cooking fish in lemongrass and coconut milk like a recipe I’d seen once. What better to go on the side than pineapple fried rice? Ok, I’d really always wanted to fill a pineapple with something and this was my chance.


I’m not huge on sticking to recipes. I usually look at a bunch of different ones, write down ingredients and a basic plan of what to do with them, then wing it from there. Unless I'm baking, I never know how much of anything I'm supposed to put in. So I can’t tell you exactly what I did with this fish, but I’ll give you the gist. I took some white fish (forget which kind) and marinated it in fresh limejuice, ginger, cilantro, garlic, green onion, chilis and lemongrass (all really cheap at the Paddy's Market in Chinatown). Then I put it in a long deep pan, poured coconut milk over the top, added more lemongrass stalks and baked it till it looked and felt done.

As for the rice, I added broccoli, shredded carrots, sprouts, an egg, probably some onion and fried that up with soy sauce, then tossed in half the pineapple chunks from the hollowed fruit and served it.


Everyone enjoyed the dinner, though I couldn’t help but feel something was missing from the fish. It needed some spice, but we didn’t have any at our disposal. I’ll have to try it again now that I’m home with a well-stocked kitchen. (Also, maybe the lighting will be better than it was in the university apartment.)

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