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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Roasted Sea Bass on a Radicchio Salad with Sugar Snap Peas & Apple

June 19, 2016 by Mary 18 Comments

With my mother-in-law’s passing, the inevitable clean up and division of “stuff” is happening. My husband and oldest son went back down to Baltimore this past week to pitch in and help Steve’s sister with the work of emptying her condo. Needing to leave early on Wednesday morning, our son came to our apartment to spend the night on Tuesday. Steve and I had several business networking events that evening so he offered to cook dinner.

Well we arrived home to a DINNER!!! A gourmet dinner and combination – this Roasted Sea Bass on a Radicchio Salad with Sugar Snap Peas & Apple – that I would have never thought of. He is fearless, creative and brilliant in his cooking and combinations. He is, I think, a better cook than me. Okay. That. Was. Hard. To say.

I had some sea bass fillets in the fridge and he found a head of radicchio, a bunch of herbs – parsley, cilantro, mint and dill,  part of a jalapeño, some sugar snap peas and a Jazz apple. He made a beautiful salad of the radicchio, thinly sliced apple, a little fresh jalapeño, par boiled sugar snap peas and herbs with a lemon, olive oil, mustard, and worcestershire sauce dressing and the fish was marinating in a lemon, olive oil, herb mixture. He felt my refrigerator needed cleaning out so he went to work using things up.

When would I dream my son would chastise me on the condition of my vegetable drawers?

Never.

But it’s all good! And, he was right.

So the fish fillets, with the herb marinade piled on top, roasted in 425 degree oven for close to 20 minutes. Did you ever notice that sea bass fillets really expand and puff up in thickness, so the roasting takes longer than you would expect?

But then he did something unexpected, because he wanted the herbs to be crispy. When finished roasting, he flash broiled the fillets and got those herbs to have a nice crunch! I wouldn’t have thought of that. And, he served the fish on top of a big pile of the salad. Total delish!! And beautiful!

Roasted sea bass fillets on a radicchio, sugar snap peas and apple salad.So I don’t really have his recipe but what I’ve outlined here is what he told me he did and here’s a picture of his delicious dish.

To all you young mothers out there, cook delicious meals, let your children see you do it, have them help. Then you too will reap the rewards later and have dinners like this cooked for you!! What goes around comes around. Do it with LOVE and you will be rewarded.

I can’t wait to see what he and his fiancée will cook up tonight for Steve’s Father’s Day Dinner. 

Happy Father’s Day to all you wonderful dads out there!!! Have an awesome day!

Filed Under: Dinner, Fish, Salads Tagged With: herbs, radicchio, roasted sea bass

Too rich

September 28, 2011 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

Lyon style chicken with vinegar sauce.

© Con Poulos

Last night I made April Bloomfield’s recipe of Lyon-Style Chicken with Vinegar Sauce and her suggested Herbed Steamed Rice recipe that’s in the October edition of Food & Wine magazine. It was scrumptious……. but boy was it rich and fattening! I just don’t usually cook like this. Actually, at The Breslin, one of April’s restaurants here in NYC, I can only eat a half of her lamb burger. And don’t let me fool you, I can eat. So I took a look at these recipes. Six tablespoons of butter for both, plus 3 tablespoons of olive oil and no draining of the chicken fat plus a quarter cup of creme fraiche. Well I was originally going to cut back on everything and then I thought, no. I’ll make it this one time her way. Well my husband and Zach loved it and I did too but it was just way too rich in the end. I felt the fat cells expanding on my hips as I was eating, and believe me, they do not need to do that.

This is the thing. My cooking is full of flavor, clean and relatively low fat – meaning I really don’t use much butter. My big flavors come from lots of garlic, onions and all kinds of fresh herbs. I hope I can convince you that cooking this fresh way is not hard, gives you beautiful colors to play with and spreads your love to everyone around you, even in a healthy way!

Filed Under: Dinner, Poultry Tagged With: April, Bloomfield, butter, chicken, herbs, Lyon, rice, vinegar

How do you cook?

September 17, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

My cooking is very robust in flavor – using lots of garlic, onions, fresh herbs and spices. I like to pump it up – but not just with spice as Emeril does. I pump up the other things. People do love my cooking. It is all about the ingredients – the best quality and the freshest – otherwise, make something else.

how do you cook.

2 weeks ago I ran into Meryl Streep at our local butcher/ farm store. We had a conversation (OMG!) and she was lovely – even asked about me and where we lived! She was there picking out her vegetables just like all of us. (This is a tiny store.)

And then last night we watched Heartburn on Netflix on our computer. (we don’t have a TV in the country on purpose – my husband can be an addict and we are both addicts to news shows during the week.) It’s a great movie and a horrible one for the way her husband treats her. I think, if I remember correctly, it’s the story of Nora Ephron’s first marriage to Carl Bernstein, but I may be mistaken. Anyway, there’s cooking and birthing and babies in this movie and you can clearly tell Meryl has done it all in real life because she just so comfortable portraying it. She is a lovely lady.

 

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: Carl Bernstein, Emeril, garlic, Heartburn, herbs, Meryl, Netflix, Nora Ephron, spices, Streep

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

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