Red Snapper Veracruz Style

With spring break just around the corner, many students will be heading for Mexico. This dish from south of the border sounds great for those of us staying home. 

 This recipe can be found in  Death in The Science Classroom.

Rick Podowski, the star of the Rick Podowski and The Hefty Trio series has made only one trip to Veracruz and he remembers this dish because it captures the flavors of this distinct part of Mexico, The snapper is covered with a tomato sauce and the capers, and jalapeño peppers provide an extra bite. Serve this dish with white rice. Rick modified this recipe from one he found in Bon Appetit.

Serves 6

1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice, well drained, juices reserved
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup finely chopped white onion
3 large garlic cloves, chopped
3 small bay leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 cup chopped pitted green olives
2 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons drained capers
6 4- to 5-ounce red snapper fillets

Place drained tomatoes in medium bowl and crush them to a coarse puree. Drain again, reserving juices.

Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and stir 30 seconds. Add garlic and stir 30 seconds. Add tomato puree and cook 1 minute. Add bay leaves, parsley, oregano, garlic and 1/4 cup reserved tomato juices. Simmer until sauce thickens, about 3 minutes. Add olives, raisins, capers, and all remaining reserved tomato juices. Simmer until sauce thickens again, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 425°F. Spread 3 tablespoons sauce in bottom of 15x10x2-inch glass baking dish. Arrange fish atop sauce. Sprinkle fish lightly with salt and pepper. Spoon remaining sauce over. Bake uncovered until fish is just opaque in the center, about 18 minutes.

Using long spatula, transfer fish with sauce to plates. Serve with rice, salad, sourdough bread and a glass of Pinot Noir.

Irish Stew

There is no better way to celebrate St Patrick's Day than with a traditional  Irish Lamb Stew and some wine.  Consider a Merlot or a Meritage for this dish. The recipe is from Death In The Science Classroom.

Serves 6

5 pounds lamb shoulder chops

20 baby red-skinned potatoes

6 large carrots, peeled, quartered

3 medium onions, quartered

2 medium leeks (white and pale greens parts only), split lengthwise, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme

2 cups water

Trim the fat from lamb and cut the meat into 1 1/2-inch pieces. 

Place fat in heavy large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook fat until 3 tablespoons drippings are rendered, about 5 minutes. Using large spoon, remove any solid fat from pot; discard. Sprinkle lamb with salt and pepper. Add lamb to pot; sauté until brown on all sides, about 5 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer lamb to plate. 

Add vegetables, parsley, and thyme to pot; stir to coat with drippings. Return meat. Add 2 cups water and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover pot tightly; simmer until lamb is tender and vegetables are soft, stirring occasionally, about 1 1/2 hours.

Place 1 cup vegetables in processor; puree. Add to stew. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover; chill. Simmer before serving.)

eBook Week

The following books are only $1.50 during this Smashwords promotion.

Murder Before the Bell, The Fishy Chips, The Winning Certificate, Death in the Science Classroom, and Death of a Foster Child

Pay only $.99 for Mellow Out--Lessons Learned From Household Cats 

A Winter Supper--Polish Borscht

Borscht is one of Rick's favorite soups. Serve this with some pierogi which can be found in the freezer section of the supermarket and you will have a wonderful meal.

This recipe first appeared in Death of a Foster Child. The borscht was paired with Mica Cellar's Meritage.

Ingredients

2 leeks

2 carrots

2 stalks of celery

8 beets (medium sized)

8 cups of water

1 bay leaf

2 cups rough chopped parsley or one bunch

2 cups rough chopped dill or one bunch

2 teaspoons salt

lemon juice or vinegar to taste

Clean the leeks, carrots and celery and chop into large chunks. Wash the beets and chop off both the ends. Do not peel. Add all of the ingredients, except the lemon juice, to a very large pot, and bring to a boil.

 Simmer for 1 hour. Remove the beets and set aside. Peel the beets when they have cooled down. 

Strain out the veggies, reserving the broth. Either chop the beets into small bite size pieces or julienne them.

 Put the beets and broth back in the pot. Heat until nice and hot. Add lemon juice or vinegar to taste and season with salt and pepper.

Serves 8

Borscht, Pierogies, Sour Cream and Meritage

A Romantic Polish Dinner

“Interesting," Elaine said as Rick poured the vodka over the chicken and struck a match. "Until I met you, I never thought of using 'Polish food' and 'romantic' in the same sentence.”   From  Death In the Science Classroom 

Polish Chicken Flambé 

Serves 4

4 chicken quarters

2 tablespoons salt

2 tablespoons strong Polish vodka or other vodka

4 stale dinner rolls

1/2 cup milk

1/ 4 cup butter or margarine

2 eggs

1/4 cup dry bread crumbs

1 tablespoon finely chopped walnuts

1 tablespoon finely chopped almonds

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/ 4 cup chopped fresh parsley

In a medium bowl, soak rolls in milk add butter or margarine, eggs, 1 tablespoon of salt, dry bread crumbs, walnuts, almonds, nutmeg, and parsley.  Use  a food processor to combine ingredients.  

Grease a baking pan, place the stuffing inside and cover with foil.

Rub chicken with 1tablespoon salt.   Preheat oven to 375F. 

Cover and bake 30 minutes. Remove cover; bake 30 minutes more or until juices run clear. Place chicken quarters, skin -side up, on a platter. Pour vodka over chicken. Using a long match, carefully ignite vodka. Serve immediately.

This dish is perfect with a bottle of Pinot Noir from Big Basin Vineyards.

Insights Into The Donald And His Supporters

This blog usually contains a recipe and wine pairing from the Rick Podowski and The Hefty Trio mystery series.  Since many of us are still trying to figure why Trump was elected, I am going to offer the insights that I gained from my cats.  Chapter 15 of Mellow Out--Lesson Learned From Household Cats ($1.99) is reprinted below.

Samantha

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s. I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

Michelle Obama

Respect People Who Are Not Very Bright

“He’s stupid.” “What an idiot.” “Does he even have an IQ?” "Is he blind?" These are statements typically made when people profusely disagree with a comment made by someone else or when an umpire makes a bad call at a baseball game. Many people think that these retorts provide an answer to the original comment, but all they really do is to reflect on the intelligence of the speaker. Is it possible to love and respect people who are not as bright as you?

This chapter is being written during the middle of the 2016 primary campaign, and Donald Trump is attracting record crowds, as well as winning the majority of delegates to the convention. In fact, it’s so bad that party leaders are banning together to try and stop The Donald. Mr. Trump wants to deport eleven million undocumented workers, build a wall across the US-Mexican border and put a moratorium on allowing Muslims into the country. It is obvious that these things cannot happen based on cost, our constitution, and our laws.* Even so, millions of Americans support Trump, and they want him to be our president. Every Trump supporter can’t have inferior intelligence, so something else must be going on.

The Senate’s most vocal critic of the scientific consensus on climate change is Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma. On February 27, 2015, he brought a snowball to the Senate floor to “prove” that global warming is a hoax. If it’s cold outside, then global warming can’t exist. After Inhofe finished his speech, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, one of the most vocal proponents for policies to curb global warming, went to the floor to rebut Inhofe’s claims.

“I want to respond to the presentation by one of the Republican senators suggesting that the continued existence of snow disproves climate change,” Whitehouse said before explaining how studies by NASA and other credible organizations have proven through various scientific methods that the planet is warming.

Inhofe is a United States senator and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, so I don’t believe that he can be so misinformed. Something else is in play.

The Mitzer

Perhaps the behavior of my cats can provide an answer to this senseless situation where educated people with lots of power and authority advocate really dumb things. We have an eight-foot fence around our yard. The Mitzer likes to sit on the top rail of the fence. Since I am 5’11”, there is no way I can reach the Mitzer. However, every time I stand next to the fence, the Mitzer runs down the fence to the gate and then jumps on the roof. In about fifteen minutes, she returns. This is a typical pattern.

Chubby Wubby

If Chubby is sitting on the patio chair, I can pet her. However, if she is sitting in the yard and I go up to her, she runs. Eventually, I get tired of chasing her. These actions are examples of instinctual behaviors. When Chubby is hunting, she becomes the master of agility and speed. We can puff ourselves up and say that cats are not as smart as humans. However, the reality is that they have a different type of intelligence.

Howard Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences. The theory states that there are seven ways people understand the world: Verbal-Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Visual-Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical-Rhythmic, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal. Everyone has all of these seven types of intelligence, but they are ordered differently in each individual. A football player has a bodily-kinesthetic intelligence so he may be outstanding when playing the game, but his linguistic intelligence may be last so he does very poorly in English and debate.

This country has been in love with television game shows since the 1950s. Shows like The $64,000 Question, Jeopardy, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? are three among the thousands of game shows that have been on the television networks. The lights and the music contribute to the tension as the contestants are forced to quickly respond. The winners are rewarded with a huge amount of money Are the winners more intelligent than the other contestants because their response time was less? Not really. They just have a Linguistic intelligence that is more highly developed than the others. For me, I would rather associate with someone who is slower to produce the answer but uses a Logical-Mathematical type of intelligence.

Linguistic intelligence with quick responses does work well in the game show environment. However, it may not be appropriate for an engineer designing a bridge where environmental factors, safety, costs and efficiency all have a role to play in terms of the final design.

Willie

Maybe the response to Trump supporters, Senator Inhofe and those people that appear to be not very bright is that they are looking at the situation from a different intelligence angle. For example, Trump may be engaging his audiences at an interpersonal level, and because they like him, his lack of substance may not be important to them.

So when we try to evaluate a person’s ideas, it’s good to be open to other perspectives. Often we are so sure that we are right that we fail to at least entertain the other person’s point of view. From reading Gardner and observing my cats, it is clear that everything is not black and white. We have to examine the context before we make a judgment and resist name-calling because the person has a different position.

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*It is difficult to believe that Trump is trying to implement his agenda.