Let’s start with the ingredients:
1 orange
1 small grapefruit
1 large lemon
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 habanero or other chili, seeded and minced, or to taste
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons oil
4 red snapper fillets, 4 to 6 ounces each, preferably skin on (and scaled)
I’m cooking in North Carolina this week, and I felt the impact on my culinary options when I went to the grocery store. (Disclosure: My husband is currently stationed at a military base in Jacksonville, NC, and I spend about 60% of my time in DC and 40% of my time with him in J-ville, as I often refer to it. Needless to say, I’m drawn there because of my husband, not the culture…if you can count chain restaurants, big trucks, tattoo parlors, and strip clubs as culture. But what you hear is true – people are nicer in the South. If only my DC grocery store employees were half as courteous and helpful as the ones so eager to help me out in the J-ville aisles.)
Okay, back to the shopping. The fruits and vegetables were easy enough, but the lack of a fresh seafood counter limited my fish options. There were a few pre-packaged selections of “fresh” fish fillets and a few more varieties in the freezer case. No red snapper in either set, so I decided to stick with something “fresh” and to try to get as close to the skin-on red snapper fillets as called for in the recipe, which seemed fine since Bittman said you could even make this with chicken or pork. I settled on some nice looking mahi-mahi with the “sell by” date well in the future.
With all my ingredients ready, I started on the preparation.
1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Cut orange in half horizontally and section it as you would a grapefruit; do this over a bowl to capture all its juice. Remove seeds and combine flesh and juice in bowl. Repeat with grapefruit and lemon. Stir in cilantro, habanero and salt.
Sectioning the various citrus is easy, but by the end of the 2nd piece of fruit, there was no denying that is was a tedious task...as was finding the pesky seeds that did their best to hide in the fruit sections. I finally got to use the grapefruit spoons we got in a holiday gift pack; they were a great little tool for this purpose. Once the salsa was ready, I let it sit and got on with the fish.
2. Put oil in a nonstick or cast-iron skillet over medium high heat. A minute later, add fish, skin side down; season top with salt. Cook until skin begins to crisp, 3 or 4 minutes, then transfer to oven. Cook another 3 or 4 minutes, or until a thin-bladed knife meets little resistance when inserted into thickest part of fish. Serve fish with xec, immediately.
This part was easy. I had to cook the fillets in the oven for a few extra minutes as the mahi-mahi fillets were a bit thicker than your average snapper fillet. While the fish was in the oven, I tasted the salsa and decided to add another quarter of minced habanero to give it a bit more bite and a better balance with the cilantro. Before serving, I flipped the fillets over for a few seconds to get a bit of browning on the top. (I’m not sure this added anything, since I immediately covered the fish with a juicy salsa, but I figured it didn’t hurt either.)
Here’s the final product, which I served with some couscous and quick sautéed squash and onions in a lime vinaigrette:
As you can see from the picture, the salsa was pretty juicy. I like a chunkier salsa, so in the future, I'll probably reserve about half the juice and only add it as needed. However, as I alluded to at the beginning, I think I’d only make the xec again if I had some great blood oranges or other citrus that I needed to use. It was a fine dish, but nothing special...although it wasn't a total wasted effort since I liked the simple technique for cooking the fish and we had a fine weeknight meal.
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