Sauteed Mahi Mahi with Okra and Citrus Vinaigrette

I recovered from my failed attempt at making pique and chose another dish from A Return to Cooking to follow the crab salad. I should say, I eventually chose another dish. It took some time to decide with options like paella, curried napa cabbage bundles, monkfish with sofrito, and seared tuna with ratatouille all in the Puerto Rico chapter. In the end, my choice was sauteed mahi mahi with okra and citrus vinaigrette because okra is in season and abundant in Texas right now. I realize okra isn’t for everyone, but I’m a fan. I like it just slightly cooked with a little crunch, I’m happy with it fried, it’s always good stewed in gumbo, and the pickled version is a delight. Kurt, however, is a little more iffy about this vegetable. He’s not completely opposed to it, but he always needs some convincing.

For this dish, the okra was cut into half-inch pieces, and then it was simply sauteed in canola oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. The fish was seasoned with salt, pepper, and curry powder, and it was sauteed in canola oil. The vinaigrette required the most ingredients with dijon, lime zest, orange zest, lemon zest, lime juice, sherry vinegar, shallot, ginger, and canola oil. Once the vinaigrette was whisked together, seeded and diced tomatoes were added. For the presentation, the fish and okra were placed on a plate, the vinaigrette was poured over them, and tomatoes were spooned on top. I didn’t realize cooking like Eric Ripert could be so easy.

The pan sauteeing gave the fish a nice crust, and the citrus vinaigrette was a good match for the flavor of mahi mahi. Unfortunately, the curry powder got lost along the way. I didn’t taste it at all once the sauce was on the fish. However, another good match was the vinaigrette and tomatoes with the okra. The okra’s slime factor was nonexistent because the cut ends browned just slightly in the pan. Also, the brief cooking time prevented the okra from becoming mushy. I was shocked that such a simple preparation inspired Kurt to proclaim it the best okra ever. The only change I would make next time would be to sprinkle a little extra curry powder on the fish before cooking it, but this was an easily repeatable success of a dish.

Crab Salad with Chilled Gazpacho Sauce

A few years ago, I decided I had to have a copy of A Return to Cooking. As luck would have it, it wasn’t easy to find a new one, but I finally located one online. Earlier this year it was released in paperback with a new cover. I’m not sure if the this new version contains updated information or a new intro or if it’s just a paperback version of the original. The book is about Eric Ripert getting back to what he loves about cooking as he prepares meals away from the restaurant in four different locations. For the winter segment of the book, he cooked in Puerto Rico, and the tropical influence on those dishes made them very appealing to me. At the beginning of the chapter, Ripert described pique which is a sweet, spicy condiment made from fermented pineapple stock, chiles, and garlic. He mentioned it’s used on fish at Le Bernardin, and he planned to use it in several dishes while cooking in Puerto Rico. I had been thinking about pique and had wanted to try making it since I first the read the book. I never found the time or worked up the courage to try it until recently. I’ve never seen pique bottled, and I’ve never heard other chefs or food writers mention it, so all I knew was what was in this book. Two weeks ago while shopping at Whole Foods, I spotted a pile of organic pineapples and decided it was time to make pineapple stock for pique.

I followed the instructions exactly. Pineapple skins were boiled and then strained. That stock was added to a jar with hot Thai and habanero chiles, garlic, oregano, and peppercorns. It was topped with a barrier of olive oil and was left to ferment for one week at room temperature with a cheesecloth covering. Bubbles should have formed and then subsided after a week. No bubbles formed in my pique. It sat, did nothing, smelled like garlic, and the chiles started looking less than appetizing. I decided to play it safe and dump the pique. So, I still don’t really know anything more about this condiment. I had hoped to use it as suggested in the crab salad with chilled gazpacho sauce, but rather than risk a nice bout of food poisoning, I made a substitution instead. Maybe I’ll find a source to purchase pique one of these days, or I might just have to hop on a plane to learn more about it.

In the book, this dish is a lovely, light-colored, delicate-looking thing. What I created is far more garish with a vivid, red sauce, and the darkest green avocados I’ve seen for a while. The topping on the crab salad was supposed to have been finely diced, peeled, green tomatoes. Unfortunately, I arrived a little late at the farmers’ market last weekend, and not only did I miss any chance at finding green tomatoes I almost didn’t get tomatoes at all. One farmer was kind enough to offer me his over-ripe ones that no one else wanted. They were red, juicy, and perfect for pureeing into gazpacho, so I took them. For the topping, I finely diced some seeded, yellow cherry tomatoes and combined them with finely diced, seeded cucumber. It might not have been exactly the flavor that was intended, but the color contrast and the taste of cucumber worked nicely with the dish. Those vegetables were added to finely chopped, preserved lemon, lemon oil, a spicy vinaigrette which I used instead of pique, and salt and pepper. For the sauce, chopped, very ripe in my case, tomatoes were pulsed in the blender. Ripert suggested pulsing so as not to incorporate too much air. The puree was passed through a strainer, and it was seasoned with sherry vinegar and salt and pepper, and that was the sauce.

For the crab salad, mayonnaise was whisked with some vinaigrette, chopped chives were added, and lump crabmeat was gently stirred into the mix. To match the presentation in the book, a ring mold was needed, but I used a biscuit cutter. The crab salad was molded on the plate inside the biscuit cutter with the yellow tomato-cucumber mixture on top, gazpacho sauce was poured all around, the biscuit cutter mold was removed, and sliced avocado was added. Despite how fussy it sounds and how pretty it looked in the book, it was actually very easy to prepare. Because each part was chilled before being plated, it made a refreshing first course for a summer night’s meal.