On the second day of Christmas my true love said to me: "Can we please have something light and crisp..."And this is what came out of the kitchen that evening; white fish, cooked to translucent perfection in a little butter, some sea salt and fresh ground pepper.
I "made the beds" that night with some "zeekraal" (literally seabeads) which is a vegetable found in saline environments along our coast. I think it's called samphire or seabeans in English. Salicornia is another name I've found. Due to the nature of this vegetable it's a great companion for seafood and goes really well with lamb as well. It's already salty by itself, no need to add anything. I think the flavour and texture can best be described as a cross between green baby asparagus and maybe haricots verts.
Very easy to work with, just blanch for a couple of minutes in boiling water, drain and you're done! I did add extra flavour by stir frying the samphire after blanching in some sesame oil, just a few quick turns et voilà.
For a crisp topping I deep fried some glass noodles of which you can see the remnants scattered on the plate.... the kids were so quick to eat it I couldn't get a decent picture!
I served this with rice and a soy dressing.
Soy dressing:
1 cup of japanese soy sauce (Kikkoman)
1 ts grated fresh ginger
1 tbs honey
In a small saucepan reduce soy sauce by half, turn off the heat and dissolve the honey in the soy, add ginger and stir well.
Except for roast beef with the neighbors on Christmas and on night a sausage in tomato sauce, we've had fish and steamed broccoli every night for almost two weeks.
ReplyDeleteGlasswort sounds interesting, don't think I've seen that.
I could use some light and crisp food after the Yule gorging.
ReplyDelete