Cooking the Books, Part II

It's the 20th in Japan, although I know it's still the 19th in the States. I have a busy schedule tomorrow so I'm going to go ahead and post my recipe for the 32 Poems Blog Recipes for Poets Project today. Readers of my blog may also see the recipe posted on my original post on this topic, since that is where 32 Poems editor Deb Ager reqested the recipes be put. But I'm going to paste it here as well for the convenience of my blog readers.

I had said that I would post a crockpot recipe that takes only 20 minutes to prepare, but the weather has warmed up here, and I no longer feel like using a crockpot. So instead I am posting a very quick and delicious fish recipe that I like to use in warmer weather. So here it goes:


Foil-baked Mackerel
Serves 4

4 mackerel fillets (use Atlantic or Chub mackerel to avoid high mercury levels; do NOT use King, Spanish or Gulf mackerel for the same reason)
black pepper
vegetables of your choice: thinly sliced onions, thinly sliced green peppers, shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, cherry tomatoes halved, broccoli florets, etc.
2 tablespoons olive oil
lemon juice or ponzu sauce

1. Prepare four squares of aluminum foil, about 8 or 10 inches per side. Place one fish fillet in the center of each square of foil, skin-side down if there is skin. Sprinkle fish with pepper to taste. Drizzle each fillet with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil.

2. Arrange vegetables of choice on top of the fish. (I let my kids select their own vegetables for their personal packets.)

3. Fold the ends of the foil up until you have a closed package with the folds on the top.

4. Place the foil packages (folds up) in a fry pan (do not grease or oil the pan). For 12 - 15 minutes, heat the fish packages over medium heat, or until done.

5. Be careful when moving the packets to serving plates since they will be hot. Each person can receive a packet on his or her plate and enjoy opening it up (carefully, they are hot!) and eating it.

6. Serve with lemon or lime juice, or ponzu sauce, which is a Japanese citrus sauce that you can get at many Asian markets. You can also mix soy sauce with lemon or lime juice to simulate ponzu sauce.

This is a quick recipe with vegetables included. Mackerel is a mild fish which almost everyone can enjoy. I usually serve this dish with rice and a salad. Clean up is quick because usually there is no leakage from the aluminum foil packets into the fry pan, so a quick wipe of the pan is all that is needed. Enjoy!

And check out the other recipes offered by other poets on the 32 Poems blog.