024: A Whole Fish on Supermarket Days
A Valentine's Day Feast (though we don’t celebrate)
A sly cooking motivator is buying fish any time I shop at the supermarket. If I do, I know that I’ll cook a special meal that evening, lest the fish go bad. Last Tuesday evening I headed over to Adam’s for my semi-weekly shop. Normally I make a point of going in the morning or afternoon to avoid the after-work shopping crowd, but this day something interfered with our timing and we walked in to find utter pandemonium. It didn’t take long for the activity in the store to remind me to that it was Valentine’s Day. Upon entering you hit the floral department, just off of the green house and garden center, and that day there was a pop-up cashier-slash-florist selling bouquets of red and pink roses just near the entrance, with a pretty solid queue of middle-aged Hudson Valley menfolk waiting to check out. Genius. I regret not buying a bouquet for Reed. The other area of the market normally quiet is the fishmonger. I’ve never seen it so packed, again with men. Normally I hit meat and fish right after produce, but this time opted to cruise on straight to dairy in the hopes it would quiet down by the time I could loop back. Luckily it did. There is a rhythm to a supermarket, with concentrations of people ebbing and flowing, and I love to be a person who is not in a rush in the midst of it all. My current pace (of a stay-at-home-mom with literally nowhere to be) is so unlike my previous existence in NYC, I occasionally forget that I don’t need to be manic at the market. I still get triggered remembering trips to the Columbus Circle Whole Foods after work.
The truth is, I did have a special dinner planned for us that evening—but to celebrate our one year anniversary of moving into our house, which we gut-renovated over the course of the previous year. Incidentally we moved in on Valentine’s Day 2022, less than three weeks before our son was born. Reed joked that moving in that weekend was my Valentine’s gift. No doubt he had an acute awareness of my desperation to get settled before our planned home birth—mood heavily influenced by hormones.
Fatefully, that day of my trip to the supermarket, my copy of Rachel Roddy’s My Kitchen in Rome: Recipes and Notes on Italian Cooking arrived. I devoured it that same afternoon as Tycho slept in the stroller at our nearby park overlooking the Hudson River. Naps have been rough lately and that morning was no exception, so after many failed attempts I hustled him into the stroller, maneuvered it into the flattest position, and within 5 minutes on the bumpy road he was snoozing. We made it to the park, still snoozing. We made it to a bench, still snoozing. I settled down into my seat as stealthily as possible. And I sat there reading this beautiful cookbook for what felt like a very long time. It was heaven. In a fit of inspiration I planned our house-anniversary meal, each bit from the pages of Roddy’s book: oven-baked Sea Bass, served with salsa verde and braised fennel. I began by choosing the fennel, knowing that I had two bulbs that needed to be used. In the recipe she recommends serving them with fish, so I landed quickly on oven-baked whole fish.
Luckily the line at the fishmonger abated by the time we cruised back around. Alas, no Sea Bass, so I requested two whole Trout. The last time Reed and I shared a whole Trout we both came away from the meal hungry, so I bought one for each of us, naively imagining that Tycho would get some the following day. The fishmonger informed me that “this is nothing!” when I remarked upon how busy the store was. Maybe she would feel differently if her station was placed nearer the pop-up bouquet cashier.
Upon arriving home, the extent of the messiness there really hit me. Late afternoon between 3 and 6PM is the hardest part of the day. I begin to hit a wall—as Tycho arrives at his neediest part of the day—my energy for cooking quickly diminishing as I count the minutes until Reed arrives home from work. By the time I fed Tycho his dinner, got his pajamas on, read bedtime stories, and cleaned up toys and other baby stuff while Reed did bedtime, the last thing I wanted to do was cook.
But My Kitchen In Rome was calling to me. Enamored as I was of the new cookbook, I felt excited to try out some of the recipes. And plus, I didn’t have a choice. I bought not one but two whole trout. They probably would have been fine had they chilled overnight, but I decided not to take the risk. I lay supine on the couch contemplating all of this, working up the energy as Reed came down the stairs, it being past 8pm already. I heaved myself up and suggested that he make me a G&T and put Columbo on the laptop so we could have it on in the background while I cooked. That worked to divert me from the desire to remain on the couch.
Rachel Roddy’s Oven-Baked Whole Fish recipe could not be simpler. After seasoning the fish all over with salt and pepper, I inserted sliced lemon into the cavity of each fish, wrapped them loosely in wax paper, and set them in a 350 F oven for 10 minutes (Roddy specifies 20 minutes per pound of fish, and each of mine weighed 1/2 a pound). It was perfectly cooked. The Salsa Verde is made from parsley, basil, and mint, roughly chopped in a food processor and then combined with a whole tin of rinsed anchovies, red wine vinegar and lots of olive oil. It yielded a pleasantly chunky texture, as opposed to a more liquid one, which I enjoy in a salsa verde.
Before putting the fish in the oven I braised the fennel (cut into quarters) in olive oil and water until deeply caramelized. I’m excited to try this braising technique with other vegetables. This meal felt perfectly unfussy, but also beautiful. I felt like I did right by those trout.
We ate in front of the TV watching Columbo—a show I always skipped past growing up. The first episode (marked episode zero, and currently available on Amazon but not Hulu) is pretty unexpected, and feels like a subversion of the detective genre. It began with the set up of the murder, and was deliberately slow. When watching an iconic piece of television or film for the first time, there is nothing more disorienting than not encountering the protagonist for more than an hour into it. Oh and Peter Falk is so young in it. He reminded me of Mark Ruffalo. Just as we decided to turn on another episode (filmed several years later and starring Lee Grant as the murderess, in a truly gorgeous voluminous shag), I remembered my plan for Affogato for dessert. So while Reed was walking Shelby I put the Moka Pot on the stove and waited for it to percolate. After they walked back in I filled two glasses with Perry’s Vanilla Bean Ice Cream (our go-to brand and flavor) and quickly drizzled the coffee over it. There is nothing that makes me feel more like I am in Italy than pouring espresso from a Moka pot over vanilla ice cream. Pretty good accidental Valentine’s Day, right?
While I have you, a quartet of recommendations:
Something to buy / Books from the DIA: Beacon museum bookstore children’s section. If you’re in the vicinity of the Hudson Valley, next time you’re at DIA, take a moment to peruse the children’s book section of the museum bookstore, which is exceptionally curated. I bought Peekaboo House by Camilla Reid—one of the best designed, high-quality and somehow insanely affordable ($9.99) kid’s books I’ve come across. It’s Tycho’s current favorite.
Something to patronize / Flora Good Times in Beacon. This shop is packed to the gills with beautiful and unexpected potted plants and fresh cut flowers. I bought a Jewel Orchid, potted in a little ceramic pot. They gave me great advice for caring for it, and several months later she’s still going strong on the windowsill of our bathroom.
Something to read / The New Yorker’s roundtable conversation on the Rom-Com in Crisis, is a must-read if, like me, you are despairing of the current state of the rom-com. I revere Nora Ephron, and think Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, and My Best Friend’s Wedding, are the peak of the genre, so I found this discussion, led by the brilliant and funny Naomi Fry, a satisfying read.
Something to eat / Palirria Canned Dolmas are my current fave pantry snack to have around.