I'm nothing if not lost in my imagination at the worst times. Many are the day that I have daydreamed my way to the house after work through Memphis traffic. Sometimes I don't even register where I am until I'm coming up to the last few turns through the neighborhood. It's probably not a great thing, but I'm still accident free and still react quickly to assholes from Florida and Alabama deciding they need to cut me off without a signal in the middle of a goddamn intersection. Seriously - folks complain about Memphis drivers, but it's all these out-of-state tags that are fucking ridiculous.
So, back on topic, I started thinking about food while I was driving, as one does. See, I've got a ton of fennel left (I bought one, but they're fucking huge and I haven't used much), so I have to figure out what to do with it. My first thought: make some rice with some sautéed fennel in there. Okay, that's easy. I can make other shit to go around that.
I started off my dicing one of the chunks of fennel bulb up into pretty tiny pieces. I sautéed it in some of that vegan butter shit (because I knew I'd need a bit of it and didn't want to use up all of my real butter) with a dash of salt. Quick and easy.
Once the fennel had started to brown a bit, I tossed it (and the leftover oil) into the rice cooker, then buried it with split green peas and rice, poured in plenty of water, dumped in some salt and black pepper, and got that started cooking.
Next up, I still had a bit of red onion that I need to use before it goes bad. I chopped it into pieces about an inch to inch and a half by inch or so, gave it a quick egg wash, then hit that with some salted and peppered bread crumbs.
I fried those up pretty quickly in some more of the vegan butter (which is essentially vegetable oil with vegetable fat, whatever the hell that is). I now know why people batter onion rings - that breading did not want to stick on. The pieces that lost a side of breading became my mid-cooking snacks while I started on the next bit of work.
I halved one of the big-ass swai fillets I have and seasoned those two pieces with some salt and pepper, then tossed them into my pan. At the risk of sounding condescending, I didn't literally toss them in; I laid them in away from myself because I'm not a moron.
Once it was time to flip the fish (when the cooked white exterior was starting to creep around the edges towards the top), I also added in some thinly sliced white onion, sliced garlic, and somewhat large diced pieces of green bell pepper.
After the fish finished cooking, I moved it to a plate and gave it a quick squeeze of lemon juice. Meanwhile, I seasoned the veggies lightly with some salt and pepper and let them cook a bit more until the garlic and onion started to brown and the pepper got a bit softer.
I removed all of the veggies but left the oil, into which I poured my egg wash bowl for a quick scrambled egg. I was fucking hungry; deal with it.
When it came time to plate, I filled my 3" PVC connector about halfway with rice in the corner of my plate. I then used a fork to open up a couple small grooves in the top and stuck a couple of my fried red onion pieces in there. I did this while the pipe was still on because I figured that digging around in the rice without something bracing it from the outside might lead to the column falling apart.
After I removed the pipe, I put half of the scrambled egg in the opposite corner, topped with some of the pepper, onion, and garlic mix, then laid one of the half-fillets on its flat side through the middle with a little S-curve to be all fancy and shit.
Unfortunately, the fennel did not give very much flavor to the rice (unless I had an actual piece of it in my mouth), which got me to thinking about grating some of the bulb into a dish at some point. I could also toss in some of the sprigs instead (or in addition) to give an extra bump of flavor. Luckily, I still have a shit ton, so there will be plenty of time to try out some ideas before it all turns brown and oozy.
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