Seared Red Snapper with Roasted Tomatoes and Fennel

Made this tasty dish a few nights ago. It was very light tasting and yet satisfying.


We roasted the thinly sliced fennel and onions with a touch of olive oil in the oven at 425 deg F until they started to soften and caramelize, about 15 minutes, stirring at least once.


Meanwhile we brought some home-grown, oven-roasted tomatoes (previously slow-roasted at 275 deg F for 3 hours with whole garlic cloves, a hint of thyme, salt and pepper) up to serving temperature in an oven proof skillet. We added the onion/fennel mixture to the pan reserving about 1 cup for later. We did not mix the onion mixture with the tomatoes, just let it fall into the tomatoes.


We then high heat seared the skin-on Red Snapper fillets in a non-stick skillet with olive oil and then placed them on top of the tomato/fennel and onions and topped with the remaining onion/fennel mixture. The entire pan was then returned to the 425 deg F oven to finish cooking the red snapper through and to give additional browning to the veggies.

Siboney Chicago

Check out the review of our delicious lunch at a new Cuban restaurant in Chicago 7/23/09. Click on the title above or cut and paste the URL below into your browser:

http://chicago.metromix.com/restaurants/cuban/siboney-cuban-cuisine-bucktown-wicker-park/reader-review/1221932/view#5607152292dfcdaa2d4d6fb470f7d3f3

Best Meal in Barolo

A few weeks ago we were in Barolo, Italy and enjoyed a fabulous meal at a restaurant called La Cantinetta. The food was great and the service fun and relaxed. Here are a few photos from that evening.

La Cantinetta on Via Roma 33, Barolo Italy

We ordered the antipasti tasting which happened to be five courses of starters. We expected a lot of local cured meats and pickled veggies - we were very pleasantly surprised that was not the case!

The first course or amuse bouche was a very thin slice of local salami and small blini sized frittata of greens - crispy on the outside yet tender and with great flavor.

We didn't think to photograph the dishes until the next course arrived - a rabbit mousse with caramelized red onions and toasted brioche. OMG! Heavenly, and for those of you squeemish about rabbit just think of it as a chicken with fur. It was amazing - creamy, savory, sweet and crunchy!

The next course was delicious vitello tonnato. Have always shied away from this dish thinking it was too strange a pairing. Well I was wrong. A tender, perfectly roasted slice of veal with a tuna and caper sauce. We had to have seconds, hence the dirty plate in the picture!

That was followed by a famous raviolo filled with verdura (chopped mixed greens), a soft egg yolk and topped with Parmigiano Reggiano and browned butter. Amazing that such simple and pure flavors could be so response provoking. The mmm's and oh my's kept flying out of our mouths as we devoured this delicacy.

To bring it to the next level they offered a crispy asparagus tart with a fonduta sauce. It's hard to describe how perfectly crisp and yet light the pastry shell was on this dish. The cheesy sauce was a perfect smooth and silky accompaniment to the crisp and tender asparagus in the tart.

To amaze one even further a dish of spinach gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce was beyond description. Surely we will never have gnocchi this light and tender without it being at all wet as most gnocchi tend to be. We had braced ourselves for knock your head off gorgonzola flavor only to find that the chef used a slight hand with such a potentially overwhelming cheese.

A dish of the local classic - ravioli al plin - were tasty but woefully inadequate next to that masterpiece of spinach gnocchi. Regardless of the tastier dish on the table, all the ravioli al plin were consumed!

We had no room for dessert and missed what appeared to be a delicious mixed berry tart that we saw them shaping in the pan just as we were arriving.

We can't wait to return to the area in the future and experience another wonderful meal here.