Monkfish love

I have wanted to try monkfish for a long time. We finally bought some when somebody kindly gave us a gift certificate to Cheese and Crackers. For some reason we couldn't or didn't make it, so we put it in the freezer before it could go bad. Then we forgot about it. However, while digging through the freezer the other day we unearthed the monkfish and decided it was time to try it.

I bobbed about the internet looking at recipes and decided to keep it simple. Then I panicked partway through and segued into a different recipe. I stayed with the brown butter and lemon though. So what I ended up doing was sear it briefly in some olive oil in a pan, then I turned it and added some butter to the pan. Then I was supposed to just keep spooning the browning butter over the fish to finish cooking it. However that started to freak me out as the pieces of fish were so damned big and my back was killing me so instead I popped it in the oven to finish at 350° because that's what the oven happened to be at. We let it go 7-8 minutes. Then we pulled it out and put a knife into it, pulled it out and touched the tip of it. It was warm so we pronounced it done.

We had cooked some brown rice and we added parmesan, lemon juice, salt and pepper---and a little thyme because I forgot to put it on the fish. I threw some arugula and spinach in the fish pan and quickly wilted it. I added that to the plate and drizzled the brown butter and fish juices over the top of the fish along with a good squeeze of lemon.

I must say, I loved it. Monkfish is often called 'the poor man's lobster' and it does indeed have the sweet meatiness of lobster. It's very dense, we both ate barely half of our pieces. I plan to create something with the leftovers tonight. The rice was really good, I hadn't had brown rice in a while and I do like its chewy nuttiness. I LOVED the spinach and arugula, Ernie thought it was a bit chewy (I guess I could have cooked them down more but I like them to still have a bit of oomph). The lemon juice squeezed on top (and in the rice) made a huge difference, keeping it fresh and bright.

Contented sigh.

Onward.

Note: I did read later that it's not necessarily a sustainable fish. Well, hell. I will still buy it very occasionally. Top photo is from Wikipedia and edited by me.