In which Kate learns take better inventory of her wine

This week's entry should have been a resounding success, if it weren't for one thing: I grabbed the wrong bottle of wine. Let me begin at the beginning:

A while back, I found this recipe. Olive Oil Cured Swordfish. I loved it on sight. First off, I really enjoy the flavor and texture of swordfish. Second of all, a lot of the recipes I've seen for swordfish are heavy on the citrus, almost too much so. This one used it as an appetizer, and the orange and coriander made it very different from what I've seen. And it was pretty easy--my biggest challenge was finding a vessel big enough to lay out the fish slices:

Ingredients:

6 oz fresh swordfish

1/4 cup dry white wine. Dry. Note that, it's very important. 

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 t salt

1 orange

Sea Salt

Freshly ground black pepper.

What happened with the wine was this, I took inventory, found the wine I wanted to use (we only had two whites in the house), made a mental note and prepared my shopping list. When I grabbed the wine to make the marinade (see below), it was a sweet wine, not a dry one.  If I'd had more lemon juice to counter it, things might have turned out better.

As it was, I sliced the swordfish thinly, the hint in the recipe to lead with the heel of the knife was very useful. I ended up with pretty uniform slices. 

in a small bowl, whisk together the white wine, lemon juice and salt to combine. Pour this mixture over the raw fish slices and allow to rest for 1 hour at room temperature. I would recommend a little more than an hour if you have the time. My thicker slices didn't get "cooked" in the full hour.

Meanwhile, zest the orange, then segment (supreme) it, slicing the segments again in half lengthwise. Reserve both. Toast, then grind the whole coriander in a mortar & pestle. Here is a place where I need a lot of practice, my knife work is not, shall we say, supreme. Fortunately, my sweetie goes through satsumas in the winter the way I go through chocolate when I have PMS.  

Remove the fish slices from the marinade and set them atop a large piece of paper towel set on a plate. Top with another piece of paper towel to cover and gently press to dry.

Transfer the fish slices to a serving platter, arranging them in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil to just cover. Scatter the orange segments, zest and ground coriander over them and sprinkle with a bit of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

I decided to serve this over an arugula salad as a main dish. It worked reasonably well, but it wasn't perfect. A day later, the marinade had done its job completely and the results was delicious. I plan to make this again, and when I have the money, serve it on a block of Himalayan salt like the one below


Happy eating everyone! As always, comments are encouraged.

Next week: something with sumac, and I don't mean the poison kind.