A Feast of Ice and Fire cookbook review, Part III: Almond Crusted Trout

Fish is a very tricky food to prepare, at least for me.  For starters, I only have a limited selection of edible fish (while I don't consider bass to be poison, it is not something I like), with catfish being my preferred fish species for cooking purposes.  When I do prepare fish, I usually coat it with corn meal, corn flour combined with pepper and occasionally garlic salt, or cracker meal, dip it in melted butter, and bake at 400° for nearly an hour before removing it.

So I thought that I would try a slightly-altered version of the Almond Crusted Trout found in Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer's A Feast of Ice and Fire cookbook, since my local grocery store did not have trout on sale when I bought the ingredients yesterday.  It certainly was very different to the simple (and perhaps relatively bland) approach to fish cooking, as there were several herbs that went into making the coating.  In a blender, I chopped almonds, fresh parsley and dill, shallots, and bread crumbs before adding garlic, an egg, and lemon juice.  The mixture looked rather unappetizing, being a faint yellow-green in color, and the smell was an odd combination of herbs, garlic, and citrus.  So with some trepidation, I first coated the fish in flour and then spread this mixture over it (it was sticky, so I used a butter knife to coat both sides) and then set it in the oven to bake for a little over an hour at 350°.

Below is an image of the two fish after I removed it from the oven:

The flavor is hard to describe.  At first, I noticed the crunchiness that would be expected with almonds and bread crumbs forming the coat base.  Then there were the alternating hints of the herbs, shallots, and garlic, yet none of them dominated.  Somehow, they all blended together to create something that had elements of tanginess and herbs, yet the taste of the catfish itself was not overpowered by this.  Yet for some time afterward, perhaps because I am unused to using shallots or dill in cooking, there was this faint aftertaste that, while not exactly unpleasant, was noticeable for at least an hour after I finished eating.

Almond-crusted fish is something that I might want to try again, but with some modifications to avoid that above-mentioned aftertaste.  I think adding butter and taking away the fresh dill and shallots might make for a meal that is a bit lighter in taste while still having the crunchy qualities that this meal provides.  This is not a negative critique of this recipe but rather a thought of how later to incorporate elements of this recipe into preparing one of my favorite meals with elements that I have used for years.

A Feast of Ice and Fire Cookbook review, Part II: Honeyed Chicken; Oatcakes

After the success I had in making the honey biscuits (cookies), I thought I would try two more recipes from the A Feast of Ice and Fire cookbook.  The first recipe I tried was for Honeyed Chicken, which involved taking a chicken (I substituted a single breast with skin for a whole chicken and reduced the ingredient portions to 1/3 of the listed measures as a result), rubbing it with melted butter and salt, and baking it for nearly 1 hour (I baked at 410°F instead of the recipe's 450° due to the size of the breast).  In the meantime, I mixed together in a saucepan and set at simmer honey, apple cider vinegar, butter, mint (or rather 1/4 teaspoon of mint extract), and raisins.  The recipe called for this to go roughly 30 minutes, or until the dried fruit (I had no currants on hand) began to fill out. 

The problem I ran into, and this is more a matter of reduction of ingredients to 1/3 portions, is that in less than 15 minutes at simmer, the mixture began to carmelize.  Although I added enough water to rescue the mixture, you can see in the photo that the sauce turned out to be much darker and thicker.  Despite this, the mixture of sweet and sour did make the chicken breast taste delicious.  Knowing the perils of the reduced mixture simmering, I think the next time I try to make it that it'll be set at a slightly lower setting, but I certainly will try it again in the near future as even with the problems detailed above, the taste was good enough for me to want to have it again.  I just wished the raisins hadn't carmelized in the process, as I do love eating raisins from time to time.

The second recipe I made, Oatcakes, went much better.  I have made oatmeal cookies numerous times in the past, but never had I had to take a mixture of butter, ginger, cinnamon, brown sugar, vanilla extract, flour, and oats and roll it out (after chilling it as two flattened disks for an hour) as if I were making biscuits.  After doing that and making 28 halves, I experimented some and made almost half of the 14 sandwich wholes with a chopped pine nut/olive oil paste (as suggested in the recipe), others with strawberry jelly (not pictured), marshmallow paste, and even one with French Vanilla ice cream (not pictured).

By itself, the sandwich halves are a bit drier and crunchier than the oatmeal cookies I've made in the past.  However, when combined with a jam or spread, they turned out well.  The pine nut spread took some time getting used to, as there was very little sweetness to the sandwich, compared to the other mixtures.  These came very close to the image provided in the cookbook and while I am uncertain if I want to devote over an hour to making them (the oatmeal cookies I make rarely take more than 10 minutes of prep time, with no chilling), they certainly did taste very well.

Sometime later this weekend or next week, I'm going to try the Lemon Cakes recipe and perhaps a catfish variant on the Almond Crusted Trout recipe.  So far, so good with these recipes, even with the problems outlined above.

Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, A Feast of Song and Fire: Cookbook review part I

 One ought not to review cookbooks, even ones inspired by TV/fantasy series such as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire/A Game of Thrones, by how the words are laid out.  After all, cookbooks are rarely the source of scintillating prose or masterful characterizations.  Rather, themed cookbooks can be judged on a combination of how faithful they are to their subject matter and (much more importantly) by how well cooks of various levels of expertise can re-create the foods described in both the book/TV series and within the cookbook itself.

Over the next few weeks, I plan on cooking about 3-4 recipes found within (several do not appeal to me, but that is as much due to my odd eating preferences as it is to not wanting to track down quail and other wild game).  I will name the recipe, give a brief description of what was entailed in its making, how it turned out (with photo(s)), and of course, if such a recipe would be used again.

I chose a dessert item for my first test.  Some words, even when used by Americans to denote a historical setting, have changed their meaning.  One example is the Honey Biscuit.  When I first read this, I was thinking of a regular American biscuit that utilizes honey in place of butter/buttermilk, but as I read this recipe more closely, it quickly became obvious that it is more of a cookie than any "biscuit" would be to me (obviously, for those who use UK English, "biscuit" would be the correct term).  Either way, I was ready to try this recipe, which involves about 10-15 minutes of preparation time and 12-15 minutes baking at 300°F.

The ingredients weren't hard to track down, although I went to a local Mennonite store to buy some of the spices, to insure that they would be fresh.  The recipe called for using a mixture of flour, salt, baking powder, ginger, pumpkin pie spices, and granulated sugar that then saw the addition of 1/2 cup of butter that was kneaded into the mixture until it achieved the consistency of fine bread crumbs.  After that, 1/2 cup of honey was heated in the microwave for a minute until it became hot and runny and this was poured into the mixture and stirred until a dough was formed.  From there, two-inch dough balls were made and then rolled in sugar and placed non-flattened on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, where these biscuits/cookies (the yield says 16; mine made 14 slightly-larger ones) baked at 300° for roughly 15 minutes, before removed from the oven and left standing on the baking sheet for another 10 minutes until it had hardened a slight bit more around the edges.

As you might expect from this quick description (I choose not to list full recipes, but co-authors Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer do run a blog, The Inn at the Crossroads, where several of these recipes, but alas not this one, can be found), it is not a very challenging recipe in terms of ingredient acquisition or making.  On my first try, the honey biscuits/cookies turned out almost exactly how they are pictured in the book:

The taste was wonderful.  Although I have a weakness for sugar cookies, these honey biscuits/cookies had a more complex taste to them.  The spices and honey added to the basic goodness of a warm sugar cookie and despite my usual reluctance to have too many sugary items while on a weight-loss regimen, I quickly ate three of them within the first 10 minutes.  Although one certainly tastes the spices and honey, it isn't too strong or overpowering.  Rather, the spices and honey complement the sugar, creating a cookie/biscuit that was delicious.  Considering how easy it was to get the ingredients, prepare them, and how it turned out, this honey biscuit recipe certainly will be one that I will use again in the near future.