Category Archives: Better Half

I know.  You’re shocked.  Cook­ing, here at bipolarlawyercook?

What’s up with that?

Here, let me get out the smelling salts before I start post­ing pic­tures and recount­ing the recipe and prov­ing that yeah, that “cook” thing in my han­dle isn’t there just for show.

I know.  I had to pick the poor Bet­ter Half up off the floor too.  More­over, I had to enlist the poor bas­tard in prep­ping the stew, it’d been so long since I’d been home on a week­night and had the day off and had the time to go gro­cery shop­ping (thank you, end­less round of close shifts and emo­tional exhaus­tion prior to job trans­fer, whut?)  But he was a champ, and we got it done, which was good, because today was one of those first raw fall blus­tery days where you’re (or maybe just me, but still) all– “Hmm.  SOUP.  Yeah.”

This tasty, gluten-free, low-carbish (just leave out the rice and brown sugar if you so choose) white fish stew is DELICIOUS.  And not really a chow­der despite my sojourn this past week­end in Province­town on the Cape (and more, per­haps, some­time, on how the leather dad­dies and their boys knew my col­lege best friend and I weren’t together but the les­bians all seemed to give us the “you’re a cute cou­ple” nod, which I thought was lol­rar­i­ous) stew is Thai-flavored, deli­cious, and except for a lit­tle chop­ping for prep, quick-cooking and easy to make.

It comes straight from Melissa Clark’s new book In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite , a cook­book I am very much enjoy­ing and lit­ter­ing with pos­tit notes at night in my bed.  Clark writes reg­u­larly for the NYT, and I’ve made sev­eral recipes of hers over this spring and sum­mer that were solid hits that I just haven’t got­ten around to post­ing about (includ­ing her OMG gaz­pa­cho with yogurt which you should go google right now).  (I’ve been COOKING.  I’ve just been remiss in blog­ging.  I know.  You’re shocked.)

I tweaked the recipe in one way that departs from the highly copy­right viola­tive way in which I am about to just post the fol­low­ing photo of the recipe straight from the book:  I rinsed and chopped one small­ish zuc­chini, halved it length­wise, then halved it again and cut it into thin quar­ter slices, to be added in at the last stage with the fish.

As for the rest:  the BH does not care for shell­fish, so I used 1 lb. wild-caught George’s Bank cod in place of the vari­ety rec­om­mended, since the snap­per was farmed and I just … don’t like farmed fish, no mat­ter what peo­ple may say about safety.  I served it with Jas­mine rice, wicked lazy style– Trader Joe’s sells some frozen (I shit you not) in lit­tle microwav­able bags and I zapped one to serve on the side and spoon into the bowl.  You could skip it if you’re count­ing your carbs.  Like­wise, the recipe calls for 1 tbsp. brown sugar for that authen­tic Thai-ish kind of taste.  I have a feel­ing you could add in agave nec­tar in equal pro­por­tion right before serv­ing if you were watch­ing your sugar and get about the same fla­vor, though I haven’t tried it.

So.  Recipe.  (I know.  Going to hell.  At least I will have been well fed on the way…):

Mise en place, aka all that shit you need to get started.

And then, by the magic of my being too lazy to take a pic­ture of what’s really a very fast process– seri­ously, stir the shal­lots and gar­lic until ten­der in oil, then add the liq­uid and sim­mer 10 min­utes before adding the fish and the zuc­chini and cook­ing three min­utes more– we have the fin­ished product.

Voila.  Pretty, pretty coconut fish stew with basil and lemon­grass.  And zuc­chini.  Because I’m sub­ver­sive in adding veg­gies like that.

Here’s the ver­sion with rice, in case you want to know what it looks like all fragrant-steamy with the added odor of Jas­mine rice mix­ing in with the coconut milk and the lime juice and fish stew loveliness.

Thus ends my fish tale, all of it totally true.  Espe­cially the part about my vio­lat­ing copy­right by post­ing the recipe pic­ture.  Although adding the zuc­chini arguably trans­forms this whole post into fair use.

I think.

Eh.

I think I’ll have some more soup and not worry instead.  It’s that kind of soup.