Monkfish

Monkfish is also known as "poor man's lobster." Thick, meaty, not nearly as flaky as other white fish, and sweet. And I came into possession of two choice fillets--how, you ask? Why, because I couldn't stand to see them thrown away.

In the restaurant world, a lot of perfectly good food gets thrown out at the end of the night, and it hurts my soul to see it happen. A lot of that is because of health codes, but a lot of it (in my opinion) is perfectly preventable. Then again, I don't work in the sort of restaurant that's likely to serve bread pudding from stale bread and fish soup from scraps. Nevertheless, it still hurts my soul.

On Sunday night, a whole container of monkfish and kampachi fillets was saved from its trash fate, and last night, I cooked everything up.

Monkfish should be cooked all the way through, but just. I got a cast-iron skillet good and hot, melted some butter and olive oil, added some minced parsley, and seared the monkfish until it was cooked all the way through. That's it. Took three minutes, tops.

I served them with some peas and buttered rolls.

The kampachi was even better--more on that tomorrow.