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Red Snapper Livornese

Red Snapper Livornese
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Red Snapper Livornese

This is a well known and delicious Italian recipe. It is light and easy to make.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian
Keyword italian fish and tomatoes, italian snapper, red snapper livornese
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings 4
Author misangela

Ingredients

  • 4 filets Red snapper or other firm white fish sub: Grouper or striped bass WITH SKIN
  • 1 can 14 oz can diced san marzanos flame roasted diced is a good sub
  • olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp capers
  • ¼ cup pitted oil cured olives pitted kalamata or gaetta olives can sub
  • ½ medium white onion thinly sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • ½ cup thinly sliced fennel
  • ½ cup dry white wine or sherry
  • 2 Tbl flat leaf parsley chopped
  • S/P to taste

Instructions

  • Prep all your ingredients first. "Mise en place" will greatly enhance your cooking.
  • Heat a nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Put in several turns of olive oil. Put fish into pan skin side down and saute for 3-5 minutes (depending on the thickness of the filets). The fish should be about halfway done when you turn it over. Cook for half as much time on the flesh side. Remove to a plate and hold.
  • In the same pan, add a couple more turns of olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, fennel and garlic, and saute for a minute or two. Add tomatoes, olives and capers, stir. Add wine, stir and bring to a slow simmer until the sauce gets as thick as you want it. Check seasoning.
  • Serve sauce over fish and garnish with parsley.

Notes

This dish is excellent over rice or perhaps a small pasta. 
This dish is best with a thinner filet of fish, such as snapper, grouper or even striped bass would be nice. Thick filets without skin will not be as light or tasty here. 
 
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Confetti Cauliflower

image courtesy Food Network
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Confetti Cauliflower

I saw this recipe on Rachel Ray's show and decided to make it myself. It is very good and vegan! My recipe is slightly different than the original in that I roast everything rather than use a skillet.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine Mediterranean
Keyword cauliflower, mediterranean cauliflower, roasted veg
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings 4
Author misangela

Ingredients

  • 1 head Cauliflower cut into 1" florets
  • ½ cup jarred roasted red pepper or one flame roasted pepper, 1" dice
  • ½ cup pitted oil cured black olives OR pitted kalamatas
  • 1/3 cup diced flat leaf parsley
  • ½ tsp red pepper flakes or more to taste
  • S/P to taste
  • olive oil

Instructions

  • Prep all your veg first to make your cooking go faster. It is called "mise en place" and it really helps make cooking easier.
  • Preheat oven to 425°F. On a half sheet pan (you can cover with foil to make cleanup FAST), toss everything EXCEPT parsley with enough olive oil to coat. Season with about 1-2 tsp salt and pepper - go lightly, you can check again at the end of cooking.
  • Put sheet pan on center rack and let veg roast for about 15-20 minutes. If the veg is getting brown before it gets cooked, turn down the heat and let it go longer. Cauliflower should be soft and browned.
  • When cauliflower is done, pull from oven, toss again and let stand 5 minutes. Toss in parsley and check seasoning. Serve warm.

Notes

This recipe can be cooked in a skillet, but I prefer roasting for best flavour. If you want to speed up the roasting, you may blanch the cauliflower before tossing with other ingredients. 
Image from Food Network site on the original Ray recipe. 
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Friday at the Homestead

Today has been very nice for me. I got up, drank coffee, read the paper and then went to forage for food.

We had an absolutely delicious dinner – just us – that I made while watching Andromeda and Enterprise. Here’s the menu:
Tomato, cucumber and feta salad
Steamed Green Mussels
Crabcakes
Steamed tiny asparagus with lime
Confetti Cauliflower (recipe in the recipe entry)
Rice
Red Snapper Livornese (recipe in recipe entry)

GodDAMN this was one tasty dinner! I love it when I’m in the mood to cook! I have to thank Rachel Ray for the cauliflower and snapper dishes! RAWK!

We feasted on this then watched Neil Gaiman’s short film: A Short Film About John Bolton. Kinda weird, but good. The art alone is worth a watch.

Now, we’re off to watch The Terminal.

I’ll post my opinions about these and the Lemony Snicket film we watched last night over at the Books and Movies forum. I have some books for that, too.

Go read the Forum. Join if you have something to add. We really enjoy having others’ opinions!

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Ha-HA! Ha, I say!!

Well, I can’t help but gloat a little, as I sit here with my fat ass in stretchy pants…

It appears that the oh-so-fit really WILL die younger than those of us who are, shall we say, a bit more robust.

Read this gleeful NYT article that was in the AJC on Wednesday.

It is the moment when we realize that Mother Nature — unlike Ivy League admissions committees — doesn’t like suck-ups. -David Brooks, from “Living Longer is the Best Revenge”

Tee Hee!!

Now read this one from a few days before. This one is not as gleeful, but it is still a jab at the thin and fit.

Har!

Andy and I knew this long ago: we fatties will be the last to starve.

Hope you hardbodies will tenderize well with mojo…

:-)

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Nurture

It’s hard for people to understand me, I get that. Maybe this post will help. I’ve modified it a bit [edited 2015], but the message is the same.

My family totally ignores me, my opinions, my life. They have always ignored how I felt and what I said as well as demean my opinions as silly. This is where my “attitude” and my tenacity about my opinions comes from.

My parents told me a lot of bullshit when I was small. I’d ask a question and they’d give me some folklore crap as the answer and I’d believe them. Then I’d turn around and tell someone else this crap and get laughed at. Scorpios do not like to be laughed at. Especially Scorpio children. So I suffered quite a bit at the hands of my ignorant family. Here’s one example of how my lovely family treated me:

When I was in first grade (at the age of 7 because my mother couldn’t be bothered to enroll me “early” due to my November birthday), I had a “Yankee” teacher from Indianapolis. She had an accent, naturally, so I picked up on it. My family was at KFC and I said the word slaw. I pronounced it with the midwest accent, so it was “slah”. My father ridiculed me for this right there in front of everyone working the counter and made me repeat after him as he said it the Tennessee way: slaaaaw. I remember feeling so stupid and so angry that he’d treat me that way. He treated me like I was an idiot because I simply used the accent that I was hearing all day at school. This was (and is) how my family treats children – or anyone different from them. Everyone else has an accent, but NOT THEM. I love to point out that everyone has an accent, period. They tell me I’m stupid. ::sigh::

This led me to become extremely militant about looking up answers for myself and NOT believing anything I’m told without some sort of proof. I’m still this way. I am accused often of having a ‘know it all’ attitude, but I really truly do not, I’m just not going to believe anything unless it can be backed up with some sort of facts. I’m also perceived as a very obstinate, opinionated person who won’t change my mind EVER. That is also totally incorrect. I will change my mind. No one believes this, but I will and I have on numerous occasions. I also DO hear what is said to me. It may not appear that I do, but believe me, I hear and I REMEMBER. I have an almost photographic memory.

The thing is, that this issue is a hot button for me. When I am challenged, I usually fall right into that family-caused reaction: DEFENSE. I really truly try not to do this, but it happens all the time.

This [conversation I had that triggered this post] was a light bulb moment for me because I finally felt the intellectual part of me and the visceral part of me connect. Intellectually, I’ve known that I do this, but emotionally I couldn’t stop it. Now I feel that perhaps I can nip my reaction in the bud before I act like an asshole. My emotions have finally caught up with my intellect – at least for this one thing.

Considering the other gazillion character flaws that need to be addressed, hell, I’ll take every little bit of growth I can get! Of course I know I’ll fuck up and wear the asshat again, but hopefully, it’ll be a while – and it’ll be for some other issue other than my “I’m Not An Idiot Just Because My Family Says I Am” issue. :-)