Posts Tagged ‘fish’

The moment summer starts, my boys begin clamoring for their very favorite summer dish: this crunchy, flaky, fresh fish in a luxurious, tangy butter sauce. I have a hard time holding them off til late July, when the stripers are ubiquitous and tomatoes are good and ripe. But once I treat them to it, they wish they could have it every night.

Making the dish is easy, although I typically have to triple the recipe to feed my hulking teens. Grrrrr. The good thing is that striped bass is fairly firm, so it doesn’t fall apart in the pan like more delicate fish, plus it cooks relatively quickly. The key is to keep pieces of similar thickness…


Grilled Fish Tacos

We are completely smitten with grilled seafood tacos this summer, and these are so yummy that they even inspired my sister, who didn’t think she liked fish tacos, to declare that she needed the recipe to make them herself.

First of all, it’s fun for everyone assemble their own tacos. What’s better than a semi-customizable dinner? Second, the components are pretty easy to make, and again, you can customize to your heart’s content. I happen to love radish matchsticks on mine, but there’s nothing to stop you from adding whatever else you like.  And finally, I mean, they’re grilled fish tacos…YUM!

With lots of company over the weekend, I figured it would be an ideal time to try the…


Cedar-Planked Salmon

Yes, I am wayyyyyy behind. There are more than 30 dishes in my queue to write about, but this Cedar Planked Salmon with Lemon-Pepper Rub and Horseradish-Chive Sauce from last night was so scrumptious that it leapfrogged over everything else and jumped to the front of the line!

We’re those crazy variety of New Englanders who love to grill year-round, but there’s nothing more satisfying than firing up the coals on beautiful June weekends when it’s still relatively cool and there’s light in the sky until almost 9:00. And it’s even more fun to share those magical late-spring days kicking back with friends-laughing, gossiping and savoring the season. (When I told Matt we were having friends…


Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade!

But first, I have to back up and tell you a new culinary rule I made up the other night: “do not sip cocktails and then have a soup course before you serve grilled tuna.” Because while you’re slurping soup, the tuna is sitting on a platter on the kitchen counter cooking way beyond an appetizing degree of doneness. (Without the preliminary cocktails, you may possibly have a shot at remembering to slice the tuna before you eat the soup, thereby suspending further cooking and preserving the perfectly seared outside and raw interior.)

The tuna wasn’t horribly inedible or anything, but after a filling bowl of


Striped bass is a family favorite, so when we went to the funky aquaculture fish market at Cranberry Hole and found fresh stripers that had been caught that morning, we bit ““ hook, line and sinker.

Normally we grill it, and I make a topping I created a few years back out of a bounty of ripe tomatoes, onions, mint, parsley and a few other fresh ingredients. But this recipe, with shrimp and mussels, all roasted with a bouillabasse-like sauce in the oven, looked delish. When we found enormous Peruvian heads-on prawns at the store, we knew this recipe was meant to be. And it was also quite befitting that we finally saw Julie & Julia…


Okay, okay, pipe down now. I know this recipe isn’t from one of Ina’s books per se, BUT…it’s from Anna Pump, whom Ina calls her mentor. Anna’s specialty food shop, Loaves and Fishes in Sagaponack, is beloved here in the Hamptons, and her fourth book, “Summer on a Plate,” even has an endorsement on the front from Ina, who says, “No one has inspired me more than Anna Pump…” So that kinda counts, right?

Plus how could I not share the dish that all seven diners (including guest diner Uncle Dan) gave the maximum five stars?

So here’s the scoop. Yesterday afternoon we wound up at the Friday Farmers Market in the Nick & Toni’s parking lot…