More Mexican!

Seared Snapper with Spinach and Creamy Roasted Peppers and

Red Chile Fennel Salad

Yes, that's right, we made another Mexican dish from Rick Bayless's repertoire. Zach and I rarely make fish, so it was a fun treat to make snapper. Rick recommends salmon, but snapper is a better buy at the grocery store. We also made a red chile fennel salad (also from the Bayless cookbook).

The sauce on the snapper was fun to make since we got to roast 2 poblano peppers over open flame (which we got to do with our first Bayless recipe). After roasting and skinning the peppers, we threw it into a blender with some masa harina (ground cornmeal), garlic, and milk, blended until smooth, and simmered in a skillet with spinach. Served on top of the pan-seared snapper, it was delish! Zach liked the taste of the sauce particularly because it retained the roasted poblano flavor and added a lot to the fish. I liked it mostly because I love spinach, and it was a light and creamy sauce. We are thinking we like salmon more than snapper, so next time we will probably splurge on the salmon.

The salad was also really good! We have never made fennel before, so the red chile salad sounded fun. It was super easy. For the red chile dressing, we used dried guajillo chilies (found in our Mexican groceria) browned in olive oil for a minute along with some garlic, put it all in a food processor with some white wine vinegar. Meanwhile, cooked diced fennel bulbs in the oven for 20 minutes with some lime juice, salt, and olive oil. Let all ingredients chill (I stashed it all in the freezer while the fish finished up), and toss dressing and fennel together. It wasn't spicy, and had a fresh flavor. The sharp, vinegary flavor was a great complement to the creamy pepper sauce on the fish.

We rate the snapper dish 3.5/5 stars (salmon probably would have been better) and the salad 4.5/5 stars. It was an unusual dish for us to cook, but really worth it to try something new!

Experiencing new dishes, especially non-American meals, allows us a glimpse into a different culture. We enjoy making meals with ingredients we've never used, and learning new cooking techniques is fascinating. For example, we see that in Indian food, spices are often used to add interesting flavors. Often times, meat is used to add flavor in the US, but since Indian food is often vegetarian, spices take over that role. We went to an authentic Indian restaurant in Artesia, CA with a friend, Yasho, and he told us about food preferences in different provinces in India. We each had a sampler with many different flavors, like Dal, curries, and more. It was fun to try a bunch of things and have a friend there to tell us all about it! So good, thanks Yasho!

Look forward to some postings later this week about more Mexican dishes! You know we love Rick's cookbook, and look forward to what we can make next!