Blackened Seasoning

Of all the things I’ve cooked over the years, the one thing I’ve never really done is blackened proteins.  I love the taste of it, but I’ve never made it at home.  I did a lot of research and came up with this recipe…

2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon thyme
couple of grinds of freshly ground pepper (I used mixed)
1/2 teaspoon onion powder

I took an empty spice jar, peeled the label and made a label that said, “blackened seasoning” and taped it to the jar (ok, there’s more on that label, but I was having friends over and I thought it would be funny to add a bad word to the label.  The friend thought it was really funny too, so we all had fun with it).  Combine all the ingredients in the spice jar and shake well.  Now you have blackened seasoning whenever you want. Shake it out and go.  Double, triple, quadruple, quintuple… whatever.

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We sprinkled it on chicken and cooked it in a cast iron skillet, but I could see using it on meat that you’re going to grill or roast or anything.  Just the right amount of heat and super delicious. So much fun!



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Triggerfish

Growing up on Long Island, you get used to having fresh fish whenever you like.  If you’re not catching it yourself, there are plenty of fish markets where you can find almost anything you’re looking for. When I moved to Florida the first time, we moved to Tampa, where you could have fresh, wild caught fish whenever you liked. Living in Ocala has been more of a challenge in that department.  You can get fish at Publix, but most of it is previously frozen, or farmed, or just nothing I would want to eat.  I’ve been searching for a fish market for years and today… I found one.

In Dunnellon, Simply Seafood is a gem!  Immaculately clean, the fish is all on ice and covered and the people couldn’t be friendlier. I opted for a fish I’d never heard of… Triggerfish, which looked like tilapia, or any other white fish, I told the woman helping me (who was the owner, by the way) what I was planning to do with it and she thought that Triggerfish would be a good fit. I bought four filets and brought them home.

Here’s what I did:

8 zucchini quartered and chopped
4 yellow squash quartered and chopped
4 onions peeled and quartered
6 cloves of garlic chopped
2 pints baby portabella mushrooms sliced
56oz. canned diced tomatoes
olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Put all the vegetables in a large roasting pan

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Pour the tomatoes on top, drizzle some olive oil and toss a big pinch of salt and pepper in and combine

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Roast in the oven for at least an hour. There’s so much liquid here that it won’t dry out for days probably.

Get your fish out of the fridge.
look at this.  You should have smelled it, it smelled so fresh, just like the ocean.  I could have eaten it raw.

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Take the veggies out of the oven. Take each filet and gently submerge it in the liquid.

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Put back in the oven and cook another 5-10 minutes.  Check after 5, mine were done in 7.  You do not want to overcook this. When the fish is still moist, but starts to flake off in big pieces when you run a fork over it (gently!), remove the fish from the sauce and set aside. We made big bowls of vegetables and put a filet on top.

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The filets had a light skin on them, which melted into the sauce only making it tastier.  It reminded me of monkfish, or even lobster, but really tender. Delicious.



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Mahi Stir Fry

Let me just warn you.  This has a lot of steps.  None of them are particularly hard and if you prep everything first, you’ll have a much easier time of it. You could add anything you wanted to this, my recipe is really only a guideline.  That being said, there was enough for probably eight reasonable servings.

Halfway through the recipe, I realized that it was going to be way too much for my wok, so I decided to do it in stages – it came out fine. As each stage came out of the wok, I put it in a huge serving bowl.  When everything was in the bowl, I tossed it and served.

Sauce:
1/2 cup vegetable broth
2 Tablespoons Soy sauce
2 Tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 teaspon sesame oil
1 Tablespoon canola oil
3 Tablespoons peeled ginger chopped
1 large clove of garlic peeled and chopped (mine was huge, use more if yours isn’t)
1 big pinch of red pepper flake
Slurry made with 1 tablespoon water and 1 teaspoon corn starch (in a small container, combine water and cornstarch, whisk with a fork until it’s all dissolved, set aside)

Combine everything except the canola oil, garlic and ginger in a mixing bowl, whisk till the sugar is dissolved and set aside.
In a sauce pan, heat the canola oil, when it’s hot, add the garlic and ginger and cook until you can really smell it and it’s starting to get golden brown.
Add the broth mixture, and boil until thick and slightly shiny – about a minute or two. Remove from heat and set aside.

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Stir fry:
1 head of cabbage, sliced
1 red pepper julienned
1 yellow pepper julienned
4 carrots peeled and julienned
1 bunch of snow peas
1 bunch of sugar snap peas
3 scallions chopped
1 can of sliced water chestnuts
4 mahi filets
toasted sesame seeds

Optional:
1 box of noodles – I used whole wheat angel hair, but you could use rice sticks, lomein noodles, anything you like.  Prepare, cool, toss with a little bit of canola oil so that they don’t stick together and set aside.

Prep all your vegetables and fish.  Don’t combine them. If you have a smaller wok and need to do it in stages, put like sturdiness together.  i.e. the carrots and the peppers together, the sugar snap and the snow peas together.

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Don’t I look organized?  ha!

For the fish, rinse and pat dry and slice into cubes

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Believe it or not, this was frozen Mahi Mahi from Publix.  Open the package and leaving the individual packets in tact, put them in cool water and allow to thaw, changing the water every so often.  When you can feel that they’re soft, about a half hour, carefully open the packages, drain, rinse and pat dry.  You can’t believe how good these are.

Heat a wok on high heat, get your serving bowl ready if you’re going to be cooking in batches. Add a squirt of peanut or canola oil to your wok and decided what order you’re going to cook.  I started with the sugar snap and snow peas

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added the peppers carrots and scallion to that

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When they were all “tender crisp” I transferred them to the serving bowl and added the cabbage

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cooked them till tender crisp and transferred them.  Then I added a little more oil and cooked the fish.  When they were almost opaque, I added the water chestnuts just to heat them up. When the fish was opaque I transferred them to the serving bowl.

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I added the noodles to heat them back up (and don’t tell anyone, but I let some of them crunch, I like a few of them crunchy!)

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I added a little bit of the sauce to each batch, but I think next time I’ll just pour it over the bowl before I toss.

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Transfer that to the bowl, toss and serve.  Everything was still super hot and fresh.

We added a little mild chili sauce on the plate, my daughter added a little teriyaki.

Delicious, satisfying and pretty healthy with lots of tender crisp vegetables and super color.  We really enjoyed this.



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Sesame Crusted Tuna with a Soy Balsamic Reduction

This one is a little bit ambitious.  It’s certainly not hard, but there are a lot of steps.

For the Salad:
1 bag mixed greens (I used spring greens and baby spinach)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger root
3/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons honey

Add all the ingredients, except greens to a jar with a screw top lid.  Shake well, set aside.

For the Slaw:
1 head Napa Cabbage cleaned and sliced thin
4 scallions, sliced on the bias
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
handful of sliced almonds, toasted
handful sesame seeds, toasted
couple of pinches of salt
couple of grinds of fresh black pepper

Combine the vinegar, sugar, vegetable oil, salt and pepper in a bowl, whisk well and pour over cabbage and scallion. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

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Toast the sesame seeds and almonds.  In a dry, hot pan, pour the sesame seeds in and allow to brown slightly.  Shake occasionally to get them all toasted.  When they become slightly golden, pour them into a heat safe bowl.

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Wipe the pan out carefully with a clean, dry towel. Put back on the heat and add the slivered almonds.  Allow to cook, shaking occasionally until slightly golden, pour into another heat safe bowl.

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Keep them separated in case you don’t use all of them.  It’s easier to store them separately for separate uses.

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For the fish:
4 (6 ounce) tuna steaks thawed or fresh
salt
fresh ground pepper
toasted sesame seeds
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
4 scallions sliced on the bias
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey

In a small sauce pan, heat up the sesame oil.  Add the garlic and scallions and cook for a minute or two until fragrant.  Add the balsamic, soy sauce and honey and allow to cook and reduce by about half.  Remove from the heat and let stand.

In another pan, heat up the vegetable oil.  Sprinkle salt, pepper and sesame seeds onto one side of the tuna.  Pat into the fish so that it sticks to it.  Place seeded side down to cook in pan.  Salt, pepper and seed other side. My steaks were thick and previously frozen, so it was about 4 minutes on the first side. When I could see that they were halfway cooked through, I checked the first side to make sure that the seeds were very golden brown.  I flipped the fish and cooked on the second side for a couple of minutes.  This is going to vary dependent upon the thickness of your fish. When the second side’s seeds were golden, I put them in a large serving bowl and poured the soy/balsamic reduction over the top.

Serve family style.  Take the slaw out of the fridge and add a handful of sesame seeds and a handful of almonds.

To plate:
Take one large plate and put a handful of greens on. Drizzle dressing over greens. Put a nice size pile of slaw next to the greens.  Put a tuna steak on top and spoon some of the reduction over the entire plate.

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Everyone devoured this.  Really complex and just plain tasty.  Great balance of all flavors.  Just yum.

I’m so happy that I’ve been able to incorporate so much more fish into our diets.  It’s been a goal of mine for a long time and I really have gotten very comfortable.  I never though my family would be having fish at home twice a week, but we are. Yay!



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Roasted Mahi Mahi over Chunky Vegetables

Olive oil
6 cloves of garlic chopped
3 onions chopped
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon dried basil
1/2 tablespoon red pepper flakes (if heat scares you, cut this back or eliminate it altogether)
6 zucchini trimmed and rough chopped
3 yellow (summer) squash trimmed and rough chopped
3 32 oz. cans of diced tomatoes
1 8 oz. can of tomato paste
1 jar of capers
1 can of black olives, drained and rough chopped
2 pints baby portobello mushrooms cleaned, trimmed and thick sliced
4 mahi filets

Heat a heavy bottomed pot on med/high heat. Swirl some olive oil in the bottom of the pan. When it’s hot, add the onion and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes till they’re glossy. Add the oregano, basil and red pepper flake and allow to cook for a minute or two, till it gets really lovely and fragrant.
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Add the tomatoes and paste and cook and stir for a couple of minutes.

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Lower the heat and allow to simmer. After a few minutes, add the capers and olives, stir and allow them to heat up

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and add the mushrooms. Stir in and let simmer some more.

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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Meanwhile, put the zucchini and squash in a large roasting pan. Spread out over the bottom of the pan.

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Carefully ladle the tomato sauce into the roasting pan, gently toss to combine and put into the oven. I started to check my vegetables at 20 minutes, but I let them go for about 40.

At 40 minutes, I took them out of the oven and laid the mahi filets on top,

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put back in the oven for an additional 20 minutes; Until the fish was opaque and flaky.

It tasted like the South of France.  So delicious.

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