Using Day-Old Fish for New Guests (Politely and Deliciously)

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Fish, like guests, begin to smell after three days.” I cannot speak for the kinds of guests you invite over or when they begin to smell. I imagine that in July, a guest might smell bad after less than three days, particularly in a sweaty place like Louisiana, where I am. I cannot answer for the fish. However, I have two recipes for day-old fish that do not stink at all, and they are ready for your guests in summer time.

My husband and I are trying to eat healthier, and that includes a diet with more fish in it than we ate before. Fortunately for us, salmon has been on sale at our local supermarket, and in my last post, you see I had a recipe for glazed salmon. But what to do with a big piece of fish the next day? My dogs sniff around me when I take out fish and bacon. They are willing to eat four-day-old fish, I find. Humans shouldn’t eat such things. So I had to produce new things with leftovers, or even at a sale price, we would have wasted money on salmon.

I wish you Ben Franklin’s sense of humor, and I wish you fish, the best fish around, as a healthy and delicious protein in your diet. You can make things with leftover fish as I have. I offer you my best wishes for best fishes.

I remembered a brunch spot I used to love in Paris when I lived there — Thé Mariage Frères was the place not far from the Hôtel de Ville. Normally a tea shop with thousands of different kinds of teas for sale, on Sunday mornings, they open a high-ceilinged back room filled with cane chairs and ferns, pipe in Maria Callas, and serve an elegant brunch with white-tuxedoed waiters. Almost every dish includes tea in it — jams made out of tea, roasted duck breast in a tea glaze, and of course, people drink tea. They had a marvelous old-fashioned œufs brouillés au saumon — a scrambled egg (but not IHOP’s version of scrambled eggs) dish with salmon. I used to love that with tea-jam on scones. Looking at the slab of salmon in my fridge, I decided to resurrect and renovate that that dish.

For the French, les œufs brouillés are slow-cooked in a pot. There is neither frying pan nor griddle involved. Unlike an omelet, which barely adds a whisper of milk, les œufs brouillés includes a fair amount of milk or cream, and it is cooked over a very slow flame. Thé Mariage Frères made their eggs with smoked salmon, I recalled, but I decided I could make a new rather decadent version of eggs and salmon.

Other than eggs and cream, these were the key ingredients in the brunch dish I was cooking up for us.

I chopped up shallots finely, chopped also some parsley, to which I added some dried thyme, chopped the salmon in a coarse dice. Then I added the shallots to a pot with butter and sweated them until they were clear.

I sweat shallots in butter until they turn semi-transparent. You won’t believe how delicious they are prepared this way!

Afterwards, I added eggs, cream, salmon, salt, pepper, and parsley and slowly, slowly cooked them, stirring them with a wooden spoon. I served this dish over toasted brioche bread and some home fries spiced with Ras El Hanout, which I made using leftover potatoes from another night last week — see recipe below (but no detailed description here). It was a bit decadent, definitely not a diet food, but a delicious one. My husband and I went off our diets just a little bit. I won’t claim to regret it.

We didn’t have tuxedoed waiters serving this to us while Maria Callas sang, but this brunch was nevertheless decadent and delicious.

Later in the week, I also had some imitation crab meat that was getting a little old. I prefer the price of imitation crab meat and the longevity of it as well over actual canned crab bits, but there are limits to the lifespan of imitation crab.

The night before, I had made a sort of spectacular dish with apricot-glazed chicken, red onions and potatoes, and asparagus wrapped in bacon. I will talk about that another time in greater detail.

If one shouldn’t keep crab around too long, cooked bacon ought to be eaten relatively quickly as well. I had some leftover bacon-wrapped asparagus from the night before, so I made a new dish quite nice for a summer evening.

I diced the crab meat. I chopped up some basil, cilantro, and parsley. I coarsely chopped a big yellow onion. I unwrapped the bacon from the leftover asparagus, and I chopped up both separately. I chopped up some grape tomatoes which were starting to wrinkle.

Here are many of the ingredients I put together into this pasta dish — herbs, aging grape tomatoes sliced, leftover bacon and asparagus with an onion, salt and pepper, and leftover crab meat (not pictured here). It’s amazing how sometimes leftovers can be even tastier than the original dish!

I sautéed the onion and the bacon together in some olive oil. I added a LOT of garlic to them once the onion was clear. After a few minutes, I tossed in the asparagus, tomato slices, the chopped herbs and I added salt, pepper, and a huge amount of oregano, which I prefer to use dried.

I cooked some farfalle, and I tossed the pasta with all the aforementioned ingredients in a large bowl. I ate it tonight while it was warm, and it was delicious. I suspect it will be even better tomorrow as a cold pasta salad. Right now, it’s steamy here in New Orleans, and the idea of eating, say, a hot and hearty soup makes one feel oppressed. A cold pasta salad, however, is lovely. I may invite my new next door neighbor Gabby over for a taste.

I am calling this pasta dish farfalle oreganate with crab and asparagus. I ate it warm, but it would make a marvelous cold pasta dish as well in the heat of July.

In this heat, I wish you ice cubes aplenty. I wish you fresh food. I wish you guests who know when it’s time to leave. I wish you Ben Franklin’s sense of humor, and I wish you fish, the best fish around, as a healthy and delicious protein in your diet. You can make things with leftover fish as I have. I offer you my best wishes for best fishes. May your household smell delicious with them.

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SHOPPING LIST

Understand that some of these ingredients are leftovers, so if one has them on hand already, I suppose they would not need to be purchased for those recipes.

MEAT AND FISH

Bacon

Salmon fillet

Imitation crab meat

DAIRY

6 eggs

heavy cream (the smallest container will do)

Butter

PRODUCE

2 Red peppers

4 shallots

1 large yellow onion

Parsley

Cilantro

Basil

Potatoes

Asparagus

Grape tomatoes

GROCERY

Brioche Bread

Dried thyme

Dried Oregano

Extra virgin olive oil

Farfalle pasta (aka bow tie pasta)

Minced Garlic (I use it from a jar)

Paprika

Ras El Hanout ( a specialty Moroccan spice)

Turmeric

Thèse items currently sell at my local supermarket for around $85, except for the Ras El Hanout, a specialty spice which I bought online for about $10. Again, if you already have these leftover, you would not need to purchase them.

RECIPES

Anne’s œufs brouillés au saumon (snooty scrambled eggs)

4 shallots, minced.

1/2 stick of butter, cut into segments.

1-2 pounds of cooked salmon, minced

6 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup of heavy cream

Salt

Pepper

2 tsp dried thyme

1/4 chopped parsley

4 slices of brioche bread, toasted

1. Sweat the diced shallots in butter in a pot over a very low flame until they are clear.

2. Add the salmon, stirring to coat with the butter and shallots.

3. Beat the eggs with salt and pepper and the cream.

4. Slowly cook the eggs with the other ingredients in that same pot over a low flame, stirring with a wooden spoon. If you are doing this correctly, you might take up to a half hour to cook them.

5. Serve over Brioche toast.

Anne’s Ras El Hanout Home Fries

4 potatoes, previously cooked and chopped.

2 red peppers, chopped

4 tbsp ras el Hanout

1 tbsp of Paprika

1 tbsp of Turmeric

2 tbsp minced garlic

Salt and pepper

1/4 cup of olive oil

1. heat the olive oil in a skillet.

2. Add the peppers and sautée them until they are soft.

3. Add the cooked potatoes, and stir.

4. Add all the other ingredients listed above into the pan and sautée with the other ingredients until the potatoes and peppers are thoroughly and evenly coated with the spice and garlic mixture.

Anne’s farfalle oreganate with crab and asparagus

3 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces (you can use leftover bacon, as I did)

1 small bunch of asparagus, cooked and chopped

1 large onion

Chopped basil, cilantro, and parsley, about a cup total of herbs.

1/4 cup of dried oregano

1 pint of grape tomatoes, halved

1/4 cup of minced garlic

1/2 cup olive oil

1 box of farfalle pasta, cooked according to the instructions on the box.

1. Add the bacon and onion to a large skillet. Cook until the onion is clear.

2. Add the olive oil to the pan along with the cooked asparagus and tomatoes. Stir until evenly coated in the bacon grease and olive oil.

3. Add the salt, pepper, garlic and herbs, including the dried oregano. Cook until the garlic is slightly clear and the herbs are a bit soft.

4. Toss the cooked pasta in this mixture and serve. (Note that I cook the pasta generally after I have prepared the sauce, but you an do it as you see fit.)