Tonight was therapy night, so I got home a bit later than normal. However, I still needed to cook dinner, and I had lots of ingredients that I needed to use, so I got to it. 
I knew I was going to cook some swai, but I had to figure out what was going to go with it. I was hungry, which is a bad thing when putting together a meal, so I ended up grabbing some fennel, an ear of sweet corn, some green bell pepper, red onion, "baby broccoli," a couple mushrooms, my last bit of basil, and a clove of garlic.
Historically, I do not like corn, just in general. I've had a few corn dishes that were okay, but it's never been a favorite of mine. Obviously I love cornbread and corn dogs, but those aren't really corn dishes. I love them damn corndogs, man.
I used my knife to cut the corn off of the cob. That actually went pretty smoothly, which made me happy. I'm not sure what to do with a corn cob, but, once all of the kernels were removed, I stuck it in a freezer bag for some experiments.
I decided I wanted to make a corn puree, but I didn't want to bother with pulling out the blender or food processor, so I went for the mortar and pestle again. As it turns out, that doesn't make corn puree; instead, it makes corn juice and wet corn husks.
Being the enterprising old drunk guy that I am, I strained the liquid out of the resulting bowl of shit and stashed the kernels for yet another experiment. I hate corn, so I'm going to figure out how to make me like it. That's kind of my thing.
So just to recap my veggies (bowl-by-bowl moving clockwise from the bottom-right): diced fennel bulb, corn juice, sliced garlic and red onion, sliced mushrooms and diced bell peppers, fennel fronds(?), minced basil, and whole "baby broccoli." I keep putting that in quotes because that's how it was labeled at Kroger, but I've heard it called about seven thousand different fucking things at this point.
As for my swai, I threw on some butter, salt, pepper, paprika, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and little clumps of lemon zest because juice squeezed out on it while I was zesting it and I got pissed and just chucked the clumps around. I broiled it on high for about 8 minutes, then flipped it over and broiled for maybe another 6 minutes or so. I took care of that while I paid attention to the veggies (i.e. I fucking ignored it until I suddenly remembered that there was fish cooking).
Back to the real story. I melted some butter, added in a little olive oil, and tossed the broccoli in for a few minutes by itself. I wanted it to cook enough to lay down before I added anything else in, and that took a little while because the shit's been all curled up since I got it.
When it finally was flat, I added in the garlic and red onion, threw in a little salt, mixed it all around, and let it cook until the onions sweated a bit. I then tossed in the diced fennel bulb, mixed, and let it sit until the garlic started to brown, at which point I removed everything from the pan into a bowl, dumped in some basil, and mixed it all up.
Note: In case you haven't worked with fennel before, the best way I can describe its flavor is "earthy anise." It's very interesting. I'm looking forward to using it more.
While the broccoli marinated, I tossed in a little more butter and olive oil, let it melt and mix, then dumped in my mushrooms and bell pepper. Since the pan had already been cooking for a little while, these sautéed pretty quickly, and that's when the magic happened.
I dumped in the corn juice. It looked like scrambled egg at first, and then started thickening up and I got pretty weirded out. That's when I remembered that "corn starch" is a thing, so I'm just making the blind assumption that there was some starch in that liquid. Or maybe it's the sugar. I don't fucking know, but I'll find out eventually.
I turned the heat down a bit, threw in a little salt, and just let it all sit in a clump on the side while the fish finished. Before I used it, I strained the liquid out of the solids, leaving a nice thick clump. That may not sound appetizing, but for fuck's sake, try this shit.
Speaking of the fish, you can definitely tell where I put the slices of butter. I don't know what I expected. Next time, I'll season the fish and then add the butter on top so I don't have bald spots. I just think that'll look a bit nicer.
For plating, I pulled out my 3" PVC again and used it to measure and cut half of the fish into a circle. I had also planned to use the pipe for stacking the food again, but, looking at what I had, there really wasn't anything to stack, so I just moved on.
I crisscrossed a couple stalks of broccoli on top of the fish, then spooned some garlic, onion, and fennel on top of that. I added a little bit of the corn juice mixture onto the side of the plate because it was essentially a semi-sweet non-pickled vegetable relish. I also stuck one of the fennel fronds on top of the fish to look all fancy and shit. I was a little surprised at first, because I felt like there should be more food, but it ended up being decently filling. I ate my dinner, which tasted amazing, yet strangely incomplete, and got started cleaning up the kitchen and packing my leftovers for lunch the next day.
And that's when I realized I'm a fucking idiot because I'd cooked up a rice cooker full of couscous and completely forgot that it existed. It was going to go under the fish. It was going to tie it all together. It was going to be a-fucking-mazing. But I forgot it, so I packed some with my lunch, and now I'm snacking on it while I write. Lesson learned: don't forget the goddamn couscous.
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