Saturday, March 14, 2009

flounder, spinach sauce, biscuit



These are small flounders, and they made me think, "Isn't there a size limit on flounders?" Probably not. Once on T.V. I saw a guy pull up a flounder somewhere in the Bering Sea that was the size of a garage door -- a two car garage door. It took a long time. His pole was thicker than a broom stick and he broke one of his fingers getting it into the boat, which then took up the entire topside area of the boat. These are like aquarium size flounders and that broken-finger sport fisherman would mock them with derisive laughter.

The flounder is cooked in an excess of butter that is then used as the basis for my trademarked spinach sauce. The sauce is started by dropping a chicken broth ice cube into a mini Cuisinart along with a handful of spinach and a clove of crushed garlic. All that is thinned down a little bit with buttermilk that was already out from making the biscuit to get it out of the Cuisinart, but then the sauce is thickened with corn starch and further acidified with lime. The butter milk is not essential, it's just that it was convenient, I could have used milk, more chicken broth, water, or white wine.

And of course salt and pepper on the flounder and in the sauce.

How to make a single biscuit.

* 1/4 cup flour
* nob of butter, say a tablespoon, rubbed into the flour. If it's not enough butter to completely affect all the flour then add more. By rubbing, I mean smash it with your fingertips then get it off your fingers using the flour in the bowl before the heat of your fingers has a chance to warm it. Keep doing that until the butter is completely smashed and ALL the flour has butter in it. So you end up with a bunch of little butter dots coated with flour.
* use two leavening agents for double rising action.
a) 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
b) 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* aprox. 1/4 cup buttermilk to moisten the mixture and to react with the baking soda. Drizzle it into the combined mixture while stirring with a dinner knife. Add just enough buttermilk to bring the flour mixture together. Do not knead and do not overwork, just bring it together and smash it into a ball.
* bake on high for 12-15 minutes. Ideally, you'd put a batch of biscuits into a HOT oven to force the heat-activated portion of the leavening before setting, then cut the heat back immediately after putting them in. But this is not realistic with just one biscuit in a toaster oven. I used the convection oven that is a component of a combination microwave at its highest setting. I baked it for 12 minutes, then two more minutes, then again for two more minutes. So this biscuit was baked a total of 16 minutes.

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