Fish and Sausage Stew
2002-05-05 @ 2:56 p.m.
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It has been a very long week. Mostly I've been busy and stressed at work. After only a week back from vacation, I'm ready for another one. Yesterday (Saturday) at work we did more business before 5 o'clock than we usually do in a whole Saturday this time of year. It wasn't a busy day on the sales floor at all. It just happened that a lot of our heavy-hitters (We've got a bunch of customers who spend anywhere from $300 or $400 to $3,000 or $4,000 at a time. We have them on an e-mail list to which we send announcements of tastings and newly available wines. They often just order by e-mail and pick it up when it comes in. I do the e-mail so they are kinda my group to keep up with, me and my boss.) all decided to come in this weekend to pick up their orders. Some of them had a bunch of stuff. We had four or five purchases yesterday that were $2,000 or more each. Today I woke up tired.
But we started off the day well. The family went out to breakfast at a local diner (I think Badsnake has a full report on the diner) for breakfast. Afterward Bad and Sara went Targeting (Bad hates to shop, but she loves to hang out with Sara.) Jake and I came home and took the recycling to the center and then took Angel for a walk. It was a great way to start the day. I told Jake this morning that one interesting aspect of our four-way relationship is that the secondary couples seem to be enjoying a never-ending honeymoon period. Bad can still be talked into going shopping with Sara, and I enjoy taking the recycling if it means time alone in the truck with Jake. We drove through one of our favorite neighborhoods and drove slowly past the best houses and the greatest gardens. Jake and I love to check out other peoples' houses and gardens. As soon as I finish with this I'm heading to the deck to drink beer and paint my toenails. It's a good day at the Rancho.
Earlier this week I cooked a fish and sausage stew for me and Badsnake. Since it was for just the two of us I put okra in it. So far Jake and Sara say "ick" to okra. But I took some leftovers to Jake Friday night when she was too tired to get up off the couch to make herself supper. I haven't asked yet if she ate around the okra.
Since I've discovered individually frozen fish filets in the freezer section of Publix, I've been keeping a bag on hand. This time I got whiting. But the whiting still has the skin on it, and I really don't like fish skin. I'll probably go back to the pollock.
Fish and Sausage Stew
2 slightly bigger than hotdog-size links of Italian sausage (Publix has Italian turkey sausage. I used the mild.)
2 filets of fish
2 cups of tiny shrimp (salad size because that is what I had in the freezer)
1 1/2 to 2 cups frozen corn
2 cups frozen okra
chicken broth
1 med. onion, chopped
olive oil
habenero garlic
herbed vinegar
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
a few shakes of Cayenne pepper powder
Cut the sausage and fish into bite-size pieces. This is easier to do when they are still slightly frozen.
Pur�e the garlic with a mortar and pestle. Add a little herbed vinegar to give it something to dissolve in, and set aside.
Saut� the onion in olive oil in a Dutch oven pot. Add the chopped sausage and saut� until browned. Add fish. When fish is done, take all of this out of the pot and set aside. Heat about 4 cups of chicken broth in the same pan. Add the tomatoes, cayenne and the habenero garlic mix. Add the vegetables and bring to a boil. Add the shrimp just a few minutes before serving. You can serve this in a bowl over rice or just by itself.
The habenero garlic is something I picked up last weekend on vacation. We went to the river festival and I found a booth that was selling various home-canned foods, jellies and the like. This is garlic cloves pickled in vinegar with just a bit of habenero pepper added for flavor. The garlic is soft, so it's easy to pur�e. There is actually very little habenero pepper in it, so it isn't as spicy as it sounds. Sara has already expressed her fear of eating it, but I could probably add it to a dish and she wouldn't notice. It actually isn't as hot as I hoped it would be.
You could call this a gumbo except that it's missing a couple of key ingredients. As with gumbo the preferred wine is beer. I don't remember what I drank with it, but if it wasn't beer it was probably a German or Alsatian wine.
I should probably apologize here for never putting links in my diary. My only excuse is that I'm not quite as computer-friendly as the rest of my family and it's a pain in the ass. So, sorry. Deal with it.
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