Today's Dinner: Pescado a la Veracruzana

[Don Cuevas]

Pescado a la Veracruzana (fish in a tomato, onion, peppers, olive and (optional) capers sauce.)

There are umpteen ways to go about making this. After consultation with two Mexico Food Mavens, I decided on using mero fillets (grouper). It was recommended by one to use a whole filleted piece of mero, but that was unobtainable where I shopped, and individual filletes are easier to portion.

Basically a non pureed, but chunky sauce is made from the above ingredients. It closely resembles Creole Sauce a la Louisiane. Typically, slices or strips of pickled chiles jalapeños of chiles güeros (pale, long, medium hot chiles) are added for zest. I'm leaving out the chiles picantes. See below*. I have a recipe from the Mexican cookbook published years ago by the Ortho Chemical Company. (How ironic.) Despite the publisher, it's a great little cookbook.

The sauce is seasoned with lime juice, s&p, a dash of cinnamon and of cloves, and bay leaves. Chiles optional. One version has sweet green bell pepper in it. (See, very Creole in style. The big difference is no celery.)

When the sauce is ready, the fish fillets can be dusted with seasoned flour, lightly browned, and placed in a baking dish. Or, unfloured and not fried, they could go directly into the baking dish.The sauce is poured over, and the whole is baked at 375º F for 10 to 15 minutes.

The individual servings are each garnish with a fried chile guero or strips of pickled jalapeños. As there is a 4 y/o child* coming to dinner, his portion will be chile free.
Chopped parsley of cilantro is sprinkled over the top.

Steamed rice is a nice accompaniment, but tiny potatoes, sauteed in oil and butter with garlic are classic. I'm going to expand on that a bit further by mixing the potatoes with lightly cooked fresh green beans.

Rice accompanies every meal around here, so I'm debating with myself to make a pot of simple rice. It's probably unnecessary, although we'd have no trouble eating the leftovers over the next day or so.

Our neighbor lady is bringing as Ensalada de Nopalitos. We have some store-bought French bread, and for dessert, fresh mangos.

Fresh limonada, beer and refrescos (soda) for those who wish that.

Someone else's Pescado a la Veracruzana pictured below.

[gringalais]

Looks good, and healthy too. I was just looking for some new options for fish.

[Deleted]

I often make dishes that look like that -- fish fillets under a bubbly sauce full of vegetables. I tend to invent a new recipe with different ingredients each time, though. Of course, if I had guests coming over, I would try to stick to something standard.

[Don Cuevas]

The flinkin' fish fillets are not thawing, even though I brought them ought of the freezer at 10:30. I could, if pushed to it, run cold water over them in a colander, but I prefer not to. Still, I have time. Here things are not expected to start at the stated time, anyway.

The sauce is ready. I set aside a cup and a half w/o chiles for the niño.

For some reason, I thought it would be good to dip each fillet in seasoned flour, lightly fry them, and then slip them into a baking pan with the sauce for about 10-15 minutes in the oven. But none of my recipes say to do that. I think I'm just a glutton for complicating things.

Our landlady is bringing an Enasalada de Nopalitos. I saw her husband and youngest daughter (a grown woman) holding a colander of cooked nopalitos (prickly pear pads, skinned or diced), running the water from the garden hose over it. These folks are hardy.

[Deleted]

My first thought was "how can they not have defrosted by 8 p.m.?" but then I remembered that little detail about time zones.

[Don Cuevas]

Well, I ended up giving the fillets a brief rinse under the tap, then patted them dry with paper towels.
When I reread my principal, guiding recipe, it did say to lightly fry them, then put them into a baking pan with the sauce. I dipped them into seasoned flour, then fried them on both sides until they just began to color.

This went well, and they baked 12 minutes with aluminum foil cover.

There were also baby potatoes cooked whole in garlic butter plus green beans, some arroz gualdo (golden rice, seasoned with too much recado rojo, a block of Yucatecan seasoning base dominated by achiote, Spanish. English, annato. Latin; bixaorellana ;-)

The ensalada de nopalitos was very good and refreshing.

The warmed baguette style bread was almost superfluous, but we ate most of a loaf.

I quickly pan-roasted 3 chiles güeros: long, pale yellow to green chiles, with a very surprising bite. Those were passed at the table for the bold and macho.
These are shorter than the ones I had.



These Chiles de Agua look a lot more like the ones I used.



The child's portion I made by reserving some un-chiled sauce, put it into a small non-stick skillet, and simmered his fish in there. (By the way, he'd never tasted olives before. I gave him one as a sample.)

The adults' sauce had a mere two sliced chiles jalapeños added. It gave just a mild buzz. Nice, but not enough to knock you over.

Dessert was fresh, sliced mango. Unfortunately, at least one was underripe. Earlier in the day, I went for a walk. Down at the crossroads was the Friday produce truck. After I bought some onions and round(!) tomatoes, he gave us all a big slice of ripe mango. If I'd known, I'd have bought from him.

I have some photos, but will need to wait until much later to deal with them.