A welcome sign of summer in New York City is the appearance of blackfish in local fish markets.
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These husky, tough-looking guys are abundant in the summer waters around Long Island. Their big jaws are well adapted for crunching into barnacles, crabs, lobsters, and mussels – a diet that supposedly makes their dense flesh taste like those crustaceans. I can’t say I ever noticed a similarity myself, but they’re certainly a good, tasty fish.
Having seen them in my store this week, I went fishing in my big recipe binder and pulled up a recipe for baked blackfish that I’d cut from a magazine decades ago, when we lived on Long Island. Somehow, I hadn’t made it in years. For dinner for two, I bought a pair of modest-sized filets, about ¾ pound.
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The flavorings for the fish were simple: paprika, fennel, parsley, thyme, butter, lemon juice, and white wine. Not having marked in the source of the recipe, I can’t guess what if any ethnicity it derived from. Long Island Melting Pot?
The first step in the preparation was to lay the fillets out in a baking dish and sprinkle on paprika. The recipe didn’t specify a kind, and I keep both sweet Hungarian paprika and smoked Spanish pimentón. I decided that, back in the day, Spanish paprikas wouldn’t have been common in stores hereabouts, so I used a fine Hungarian one that my friend Cathy had brought me from a visit to Budapest.
Then I put together the other ingredients – ¼ cup of white wine, ½ tablespoon of lemon juice, ½ teaspoon each of fennel seeds and chopped parsley, ⅛ teaspoon of dried thyme, and a tablespoon of melted butter – and poured them all over the fish.
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The dish was to bake at 375° for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the fish flaked easily. Mine took longer than that – more like 25 minutes, but then it was done just right.
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A good, simple dish it was. The buttery sauce was very nice, especially on the plain rice I served with it. At first, the sauce almost over-ran the blackfish’s delicate flavor. But oddly enough, as dinner progressed and the fish cooled a bit, its own flavor came out more strongly and very pleasantly.
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P.S. The green vegetable on the plate above is beet tops – from a gigantic bunch of fresh beets I’d bought that morning at the greenmarket. Quickly cooked in only a little water, salt, and olive oil, they were fabulous; the best we’d ever eaten. After too long a stretch of winter vegetables, fresh leafy greens are another welcome sign of summer.
I’m going to try this sauce with some Gunard we have in the freezer. It is a strong tasting fish.
Nice idea. Let us know how it works.
I’m happy that the paprika contributed to this great-looking dish.