Dinner bell's a-ringin

Well, my Beautiful Bride  and I recently moved into the 21st century and got cable TV (pronounced Tee-Vee, in a very enunciated manner). We have spent the past two and a half years without it, so why the sudden move to city-fication? Well, money of course. We found that it would be about $50/mo cheaper to have cable, internet, and home telephone with our current provider than to have internet and telephone alone, so like any red blooded American who is out to save .50 cents, we joined the masses of individuals who have 194 channels of absolutely nothing. Not that the 200 channels we get with our package are nothing but static and white noise, but out if the 200 channels, only about 6 are worth watching. Shows such as Duck Commanders, because they are a very family oriented show of people who remind me of my family (minus the Santa Claus beards), my Darlin's favorite,  Ellen Degeneres' show because, well, she's dang funny, and my favorite channels, RFD-TV (Rural Farm shows) and the Outdoors Network (fishing shows, of course) because they show people doing the things I enjoy, but don't have the time or money to do. 

My Bride and I have one channel in particular that we watch almost every time we turn on the television; Food Network. Between Bobby Flay (a Yankee who specializes in BBQ) and Paula Dean, a Southern gentle-lady whose recipes include things like Butter fried Bacon with butter and cream sauce (read: cholesterol enhance coronary events), we pick up recipes here and there that we like to try at home. Another one we enjoy watching is Chopped, a show which pits four different chefs each episode against each other with baskets of the strangest ingredients. The chefs will find combinations of things like black truffles, beets, fish roe in a tube, and juniper leaves, and have to use it for a one course meal. And this happens three times during the show; once for an appetizer, once for an entree, and once for desert. It's enough to make Julia Childs faint!

Anyway, while watching these shows, my Bride and I decided that we would do something similar in the real world and cook things for each other that we have never even attempted before. I decided tonight was my night, and offered to cook supper for my sweet wife. My gut told me that tonight was going to be a fish night, and we went to the local HEB grocery store where I found fresh caught salmon and farm raised mahi mahi for a really good price. I have cooked salmon before, but only in the oven. I've never even touched mahi mahi, and to be honest, I don't even know what it is beyond some water dwelling, scale-bearing, gill-breathing critter. But I know one thing for sure; a bit of oil and some herbs and you can make a sturgeon taste like food!

I started the meal by making a white wine garlic reduction and added a bit of butter (1/2 cup, to be precise)  and cooked that down into a sauce, which I refrigerated a half hour while everything else cooked. Next, I cubed and seasoned some potatoes with rosemary, cilantro, garlic, sage, and thyme and roasted the potatoes while I fixed the rest of the meal.  I heated olive oil in a skillet until it was starting to smoke  and  then threw in some fresh rosemary, more fresh garlic, and some diced white cap mushrooms. Once the oil was infused with the seasoning, I placed the mahi mahi and salmon in and cooked them for about 4 minutes on each side. They crusted nice and brown, and the seasoned oil made for one decent meal. It wasn't biscuits and gravy, but by George, it tasted downright fancy!

Beautiful Salmon for our favorite market: HEB

It really isn't a smoky as it seems....

The finished product: Pan seared Salmon and Mahi Mahi with herb roasted

potatoes, a dinner salad, and a side of white wine garlic butter.....      

And of course, Lone Star beer, lest I forget my roots and get too

fancy for my Wranglers....

And if you're interested in the rest of the story (ie. cleanup of this mess), pop on over to my Sweetheart's blog at acountrychickinthehenhouse and see what olive oil and fish does in a shallow pan at high temps....

Oh, and just in case you didn't know and were curious, this is a mahi mahi BEFORE dinner...

(Ugly son of a gun, ain't he?)

Until next time...