the owl and the olive tree

No pics this time, because, uh, we ate it too fast. Which does say something, I guess!

Fish a la meuniére literally means "fish in the style of the female miller," sometimes interpreted "miller's wife:" simply put, it's fish rolled in flour and then fried in butter, then sauced with butter, lemon and parsley. Named, I guess, on the principle that the miller has plenty of flour. Anyway, it's a simple sauce. As I understand it, it can be made with pretty much any kind of fish, although I would stick to milder-flavored fish as opposed to, say, tuna. We used rainbow trout, partly because it's generally considered to be sustainable.

Anyway, the recipe itself was easy. The difficult part was actually filleting the trout. (I usually buy my fish pre-filleted, but I'm experimenting more with breaking down whole fish.) It took some poking and experimenting, but I got the fish filleted, and only one piece (of four) was noticeably bony. Yay!

( Trout Meuniere )

So I wanted some kind of starch to go with the fish, and we had some red potatoes, so. And then I remembered something I read in Cook's Illustrated (I think), a way of cooking potatoes in water that is ludicrously heavily salted. The potatoes wind up nicely seasoned rather than too salty, and with a very silky, creamy interior. So I tried it. And sure enough, it worked as directed! The potatoes ended up beautifully seasoned without being too salty, and with a smooth and creamy interior that wasn't quite like any other red potatoes I'd ever had. A bit of googling indicates that these are Syracuse Salt Potatoes, and they're very easy and very good.

( Syracuse Salt Potatoes )