How Do You Know When Swordfish Is Done?

I'yard but as susceptible equally the side by side guy to the January onslaught of media hype scolding us to untie the holiday feed bag and replace bad fats, sweets and red meat with whole grains, good carbs and fish.

Then I'k cut downwards on beef steaks and ramping up on fish steaks, hopefully staying on that regimen well across the point where I fall prey to ads for Valentine'south Twenty-four hour period chocolate.

I figured I'd start with swordfish, among the meatiest of all seafood. Its nutritional profile isn't all that unlike from that of sirloin, except it has something beef doesn't: more than than a gram per serving of treasured, middle-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. And thanks to smart fishery management, the stock of Atlantic swordfish that was so decimated in the 1990s has been rebuilt, to the point where information technology is considered an environmentally friendly dining selection.

But it'southward not cheap. The fish that local wholesaler Tim Sughrue of Congressional Seafood buys are long-line caught 40 miles east of Virginia Beach, where the Continental Shelf meets the warm Gulf Stream waters that attract swordfish. They're only three days out of the h2o when he gets them, so fresh their bloodlines are still burn-engine cherry, which is why they command a premium, he told me.

I'll say. I bought the swordfish for my experiments at Black Salt in the Palisades section of Washington for a stunning $26.99 a pound, then I resolved to utilise equally of information technology I could.

The 12-pound chunk I purchased was every bit breathtaking as the price. A cross-section revealed brilliant, white whorls of flesh in two loins on either side of the bloodline, which I removed and discarded because I don't care for its advent and strong taste.

Swordfish's meaty texture and, without that bloodline, its mild, lightly sweet qualities lend themselves to basic preparations, such as simply grilling steaks and dressing them with olive oil, lemon, herbs and perhaps a touch of garlic. To that cease, I plant myself fatigued to regional styles of cooking that lack arrayal: Basque, Japanese, Italian and Provencal. Those styles were born where seafood is a staple, and the quality of the catch is so summit, cooks understand non to muck near with it.

Given what I paid for it, though, I wanted to take information technology to some other level, simply I had to learn the hard way to resist the urge to add ingredients superfluously. Example: An attempt at a Japanese preparation, poaching the fish in chili oil, failed because I was thinking too much about the garnish of shisito peppers (which didn't contribute much flavor) and not enough nearly the fish (which turned out greasy).

I stayed with the Japanese approach on my second try. As I butchered more fish, I had to cut deep into a slice to remove the bloodline. That created a flap that, when bent back, made the steak wait like a rib chop, which I marinated in chili oil, ginger, mirin and tamari. Before searing, I sprinkled it with sugar (for actress caramelization) and finished the "chop" in a very low oven (220 degrees Fahrenheit) instead of a high one, equally I had been trained. The depression-and-slow fish method results in a moister fish, a concept I learned from chef Michel Richard.

Yellowish strips of omelet (tamago in Japanese) went under the fish, which I topped with a tamari, mirin and pickled ginger dressing with a touch on of serrano estrus. Shisito peppers were out; shiso leaves were in. Their intriguing taste, a combination of cilantro, basil and lemon, harmonizes perfectly with swordfish.

At kickoff glance, cooking a dense fish such equally swordfish is not as tricky a process every bit it is for more than frail fish, but it still requires attending.

Overcooking is mortiferous for any fish, but for swordfish it's particularly heinous. With the leached moisture goes any hint of flavor, and the texture becomes pasty. Undercooked, information technology is rubbery. Unlike, say, salmon, which doesn't dry out equally much equally information technology cooks, swordfish needs to be served medium well, to the indicate where it is just cooked through but still juicy.

In Panko-Stuffed Swordfish Roast, a middle cut of skin-on swordfish is sliced and stuffed. (Katherine Frey/THE WASHINGTON Postal service)

To guard against overcooking, you have to cut steaks ⁱⁱⁱ / ₄ to i inch thick; any thinner and they would exist past the point of no render in the glimmer of an eye. Insert a remote thermometer into a steak and set information technology at 120 to 125 degrees. That takes out the guesswork. Poking a piece of swordfish to exam for doneness doesn't work; information technology feels merely as hard at medium and medium well as at well done. A thick slice of swordfish is likewise hard to finish on the stove: It gets too hard on the outside earlier information technology is done on the within. Searing on one side merely, then turning the fish over and finishing in the oven (the unseared side doesn't get presented) avoids the adventure of overcooking.

I finished seared steaks in the oven with my piperade of softly cooked onions, bell peppers and garlic, finishing the dish with drizzles of excellent olive oil. Once again, the fish took centre phase — and again I had to pull back, replacing the distracting heat of cayenne pepper with mild Basque Espelette pepper and smoked paprika for depth.

Slowly baking a swordfish roast with olive oil, capers and thinly sliced lemons turned out dreadfully. The oil was acid from the lemon rinds, and when I tried to carve the roast into the lovely slices I envisioned, the flesh disintegrated into a shredded mess.

The solution: I cutting the roast into slices before baking, pressing in between them a rustic Italian breadcrumb stuffing. I tied the roast and broiled it at 350 degrees. The stuffing browned on top, heated all the fashion through and buffered the slices from the oven's dry heat. The result was a stunning presentation slice of lemony, herbal, easily sliceable and moist swordfish — plus a built-in side dish.

As much as I love information technology, swordfish does come with caveats. Like mackerel, shark and tilefish, it contains relatively loftier levels of mercury, so the FDA recommends consumption in moderation for most eaters and warns pregnant women, nursing mothers and immature children to skip it.

Eyeing leftover scraps of this expensive fish, I abased the idea for a carpaccio treatment in favor of using up those odd bits. Originally, I had envisioned a version of vitello tonnato, thin slices of veal prepare on a tuna sauce. Instead, I cut the leftover scraps into cubes, sauteed them and turned them into a Provence-worthy salad, using them to elevation reddish leaf lettuce dressed with parsley-orange vinaigrette, then drizzling with tonnato sauce and finishing with rosy segments of Cara Cara orangish.

Come up mid-February, this might be the makings of a meal that ends in chocolate. Won't I deserve it by then?

This is Hagedorn's last Process cavalcade, just he will continue to write regular feature stories for Food. He'll join Midweek'due south Free Range chat at noon: live.washingtonpost.com.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/swordfish-how-to-make-it-shine/2013/01/18/93e7281c-601a-11e2-a389-ee565c81c565_story.html