i wanted a healthy, quick, and special dinner for friday
night date night with my dear hubs, so i went paging through the “healthy
mains” option on the epicurious iphone app.
i found this…
healthy? check. low fat. low carb. chock full of veggies and
lean protein.
quick? check. starting with canned stewed tomatoes can cut
down active and cooking time on any recipe.
special? check. reminiscent of our honeymoon in morocco,
tagine was a winner choice for a date-night-in dinner.
so i went to stop and shop and they didn’t have any halibut
at all. so i tried to google “fishes similar to halibut” and i found an interesting
discussion on chow but it didn’t get me very far and i kept thinking, “isn’t
there some corny joke about halibut?”.
anyway, i decided to buy three quarters
a pound of flounder and three quarters a pound of cod because they sounded good
and looked lovely. and then as i was leaving the seafood section i saw a pound
of frozen bay scallops and thought, ‘why not make enough to have leftovers?’
so i got the rest of the ingredients, which included stewed
tomatoes… i was looking for muir glen, because i remember reading a cook’s
illustrated taste test saying they are the best. but stop and shop didn’t have
any muir glen products, so i bought del monte because they were relatively
expensive, and when i have no other metric by which to measure quality i default
to cost. i am that consumer. but if i had taken a moment to look up that
results chart again, i would have seen hunts is also “recommended” by cook’s.
Anyway… i remembered the joke.
Q: Why did the vegan go deep-sea fishing? A: Just for the
halibut!
Ingredients
- 1/8 c extra virgin olive oil
- 1/8 c argan oil
- 1 heaping tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 pinch harissa powder (spice island chili powder blend will do as well)
- 3 (15 oz) cans stewed tomatoes
- 1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes
- 2 handfuls baby carrots, cut into thirds
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 3 small yellow/green squash, sliced
- 1 bell pepper, cut into 1 in. chunks
- 1 2.5 oz jar capers, drained
- 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
- 1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- several handfuls of grapes, sliced in half
- 1 squirt of lemon juice
- 1 handful raisins
- 3/4 lb flounder (about 2 6inch long filets)
- 3/4 lb cod (about 2 6inch long filets)
- 1 lb frozen bay scallops
- more cumin, pepper, salt, to taste
Preparation
- Heat the cumin and harissa in the oil in a large pot over medium heat while stirring until a savory-sweet smell hits you (about a minute). As soon as you get a fragrant whiff of the spices, dump in all the canned tomatoes.
- Add the garlic and chopped carrots and cook until the carrots are about fork tender(maybe 15 minutes).
- Now add the squash, bell pepper, capers, chick peas, and cinnamon. Cook for about 10 minutes more until the carrots and other vegetables have reached appropriate tenderness.
- Next, reduce the heat a bit if necessary and add the grapes, lemon juice, raisins, fish filets, and scallops. they will cook fairly quickly, in about 7 to 10 minutes. They are done when the scallops are white all the way through and the fish is getting flaky.
- Reduce the heat to low, and adjust the cumin, pepper, and salt, as needed.
- Serve alone as a stew, over moroccan couscous, israeli couscous, quinoa, or with crusty bread….
Enjoy!
p.s. forgot to take an "after" picture.. but this was great as lunch leftovers at work!