Surprisingly successful

I love it when I just throw things together and something
wonderful comes out of the effort.

Saturday’s dinner was a kind of grab-bag like affair. We went shopping and saw a fish I knew
nothing about and had never seen in our local fish market, Lake Victoria
Perch. There was also fresh asparagus at Adams and very good looking white asparagus.

We bought the fish but none of my cookbooks discussed it. It looked like a big fillet and I tend to think
of perch as a small fish. Little did I
know.  Lake Victoria perch is not perch and I knew nothing of its provenance until after dinner, when I
finally looked it up. Well, at least it
tasted good.

I had planned to cook the fish and the white asparagus,
perhaps with some roasted beets, but when we returned home G noticed that the
plantains were beginning to get ripe and I had neglected to cook them since
last week so he asked for them for dinner. I wasn’t convinced this would be a cohesive dinner, but what the hay, I
was willing to give it a try.

So our menu consisted of:

    Tostones
    Broiled Lake Victoria Perch
    White
Asparagus with Aioili
    Signorello
Cabernet Sauvignon 2003

It was a surprisingly harmonious meal.

The tostones were different than usual because the plantains
were a little riper than usual for me. Because
of the higher sugar content they turned black upon frying and had a pleasant
burnt caramel flavor on initial tasting, blended with salt and a nice fried
crunchiness. The inside was sweet and
rich blending well with the bitter/crunchy initial taste sensation.

The fish, and I had no idea what I was doing, was
wonderful. I broiled it with Lime juice,
some nice Greek olive oil for this past season’s harvest, thinly sliced
shallots, salt, pepper, and a little fennel pollen. The fish was sweet and subtle and the olive
oil and spices complimented it nicely without overwhelming the fish. It seemed to be a somewhat oily fish, oilier
than I expect most white fish to be, but it was quite good and the lime juice
added just the right amount of tartness.

And the asparagus! Ahhhh what can I say. Generally I have found that white asparagus I
have purchased in markets at home in the US have never lived up to the white asparagus I have had in France. The French version seems sweeter and more
tender, whereas my attempts at preparing store-bought white asparagus have
tended to yield tough and stringy results. This batch looked good in the market, and indeed, they were sweet and
tender and quite good. The garlicky
richness of the Aioli rounded out the slightly bitter sweetness of the
asparagus.

But the real marvel of the meal was how well the individual
items went together. They were each good
in their own right, but the mixture of sweet, bitter and tart seemed to tie all
the dishes together as well. The menu was far more successful than I ever
imagined. Who would have thought?

And the wine was the perfect counterpoint. I had admittedly not been looking forward to
this wine. It was a gift. I am not particularly fond of Signorello’s
Cabernets, thinking there are definitely many far better wines to be had. But I had not gone down to the crawl space to
refresh the wine cabinet and Signorello was all that remained. Happy thing that, as the wine went perfectly
with the meal. I don’t at this point
know if this particular Signorello vintage is better than past vintages, or it
just happened to compliment this particular meal. But I am not going to
complain. Serendipitous perfection is
hard to come by.