Parmesan-Crusted Fish Fillet

MAIN:  FISH DISHES

The Lenten season will kick off tomorrow, Ash Wednesday. Am rounding up again seafood-based recipes I have collected through the years from cookbooks, friends and restaurants.

Following dish is so easy, from prep to serving, definitely less than 30 minutes.  Would serve as a main for family of 4.

The original recipe calls for tilapia.  But with all the flak tilapia is receiving and me not being really sure whether it is farmed or wild (are there wild tilapia even??!?), decided to look for other white, lean and firm fish.  For tomorrow's Ash Wednesday, I used dover sole fillets.  Alternatives would be Alaska pollock, grouper, haddock, Pacific cod, Pacific halibut and striped bass.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup (or more) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley (I reco you use your handy mandolin)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (mandolin along with the parsley)
• 4 fish fillets (about 1 pound)

Process:

1. pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees
2. grease lightly your baking dishes
3. in a shallow dish, combine the cheese, minced garlic, paprika and parsley; season with salt and pepper
4. drizzle the fish with olive oil and dredge in the cheese mixture
5. lay out the fish on your baking dishes; just one layer so all parts will be baked at the same time
6. bake 10-12 minutes until the thickest part of the fish is opaque
7. serve the baked fish with lemon wedges

Grocery-bought dover sole fillet.

Lay out the fillets on your baking dish.  Ensure that they don't over-lap.

Baked parmesan crusted fish fillet.  Remember your lemon wedges!

Bread Pudding and Blackberry Betty

Dessert

My mother never really prepared desserts when I was young.  She usually just served fresh fruits if ever we had dessert.  I don't know what triggered it, maybe there was too much old bread at home. There was a lengthy period that she kept on preparing and improving her bread pudding.  This is a trite word but it was really moist!  She kept on experimenting on the best liqueur to incorporate or best type of stale bread.  She finally settled on rum and pan de sal.  Our poor piano teacher was fed the many bread pudding iterations for weeks on end.

The following recipe is an homage to my mum and her one and only dessert dish.

My anti-dessert mum in our Quezon City home.

BREAD PUDDING

Ingredients/Process to prepare a 10 inch diameter pyrex dish with additional 6 1/2 diameter dish :

• microwave 1 1/2 sticks of salted or unsalted butter for a minute; make sure you cover your container - you don't want the butter splattering inside your micro.  It is best that you slice the butter following the lines on the wrapper so everything will be melted at the same time.
• in a big bowl, whisk lightly 2 lightly beaten eggs, 2 1/2 cups of cream, 1 can of evaporated milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder and 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar. Whisk well to incorporate all ingredients; no need to over beat.
• pour the melted butter in the big bowl with the cream mixture, whisk some more.
• on to your stale bread.  Roughly cut you bread of choice into 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" chunks; no need to be precise. Dunk into the big bowl containing your egg/butter/cream mixture.  Press bread so all bits will be submerged in the mixture.  Set aside.

Like what my mum has discovered, stale pan de sal is fantastic for bread puddings.  I don't know why. Through numerous hits and misses, old potato bread and brioche make great puddings too. Rye and wholewheat, not too much.

• roughly chop a handful of dried fruits and place in a small bowl.  I just buy a bag from the grocery which has a combination of dried apples, apricots, pear and various berries.  Alternatively, you can use raisins, it's just that my boys aren't that keen on raisins.  Pour 2 tablespoons of Cointreau and place just enough water to cover the fruits. Let soak.  
• Back to the soaking bread.  Using your hands or ask one of your kids to do this fun, messy business (just make sure all hands are clean!!!!), lightly squeeze the bread bits.  Swirl it around the bowl so all the bits are squeezed. Let it soak some more while you quickly grease your baking dishes.  I think this was my mum's secret to the creamy, custard-like texture - squeezing the bread bits and soaking for a period of time.
• UPDATE!!!! Thanks to my eldest's suggestion, I have added cooked salted duck eggs to the bread mix.  I scoop from the shell the egg part with a spoon then roughly chop it. I used 3 eggs because I still want the sweetness to come out. Kind of similar to mooncake actually :)
• in a small pot, place a cup of brown sugar plus 1/3 cup water & half a teaspoon vanilla. On high heat, swirl it around until the sugar is melted.  Just eyeball it, this will take about 4 minutes or so.
• pour the syrup into baking dishes
• drain the soaking fruits and add in the bread mixture.  Mix well.
• slowly pour the bread/fruit mixture in the baking dishes with syrup
• to ensure that the bread pudding is cooked with uniform heat around, set up a bain marie or hot water bath. I just use a roasting dish, place the pudding containers then carefully pour hot water around it (not the pudding!!!!)

Bain Marie (ban mah-REE).  Image from theKitchn.

• bake at pre-heated oven, 350 degrees, for 45 minutes until it is firm; do toothpick test and see if it comes off clean. 
• remove from oven and carefully remove your pudding dishes from the roasting pan and let cool
• when cool, place your serving plate over the pudding then invert. Voila, look at the syrup crawling off the sides of the pudding!
• you can serve this pudding at room temperature or warm for a minute in the micro and serve with whipped cream or ice cream on the side.
  
  
  
  

Chicken in Oyster Sauce

Main:  Chicken Dish

This simple sounding dish actually pushed me to finally start this food blog. My husband has been describing this dish to me ever since I started cooking.  How can I cook it if his father never served it to me?  Am just dependent on how my hubby verbally illustrates it, and you do know how very limited males are in this department :-) When I served this last December and has finally passed the memory/standards of my hubby, he had a rejoinder statement which finally made me, after so many years of making excuses, to start MMK.  He said all these failed attempts could have been avoided if his father collated his recipes.  Do I want the same thing to happen to all the recipes I have honed? Gulp.

My father-in-law, Renato H. Bautista (RIP)

As award winning chef +Nadia Santini said, why reinvent
the wheel if we can all learn from tradition? A trained scientist,
Nadia learned the ropes from her mother in law, Bruna.