Frank’s Light-N-Lean Redfish Creole

Do you like redfish courtbouillion? How about redfish sauce piquant? What about redfish lightly braised in fresh tomatoes? Well, if you like all that, then you’re gonna rave over this recipe! It’s as tasty as it can get, it’s technically heart-healthy too, and serve it with brown rice and it’ll fit right into your SugarBusters regimen! But best of all, it’s just

Ingredients:

8 redfish fillets, about 8 ounces each
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. onion powder
½ tsp. garlic powder
3 tsp. lemon pepper
½ tsp. coarse ground black pepper
1 tsp. Frank Davis Seafood Seasoning
¼ cup peanut oil
½ cup thinly sliced green onions as garnish
½ cup thinly sliced green onions as garnish
1 cup coarsely diced celery
2/3 cup chopped bell peppers
6 cloves freshly minced garlic
10-12 diced fresh plum tomatoes
1 can diced Rotel tomatoes with chilies
¼ cup finely minced Italian flatleaf parsley
2 Tbsp. Lee & Perrin’s Worcestershire Sauce
1 Tbsp. Creole mustard
1 fresh lemon, squeezed and diced

Instructions:

First, lay out the fish fillets in a shallow-sided baking pan on the countertop and pat them dry on both sides with a couple of paper towels. Then lightly sprinkle each one with the salt, onion powder, garlic powder, lemon-pepper, coarse ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, and seafood seasoning and set them aside momentarily.

In the meantime, take a heavy aluminum 12" anodized or Teflon-coated Dutch oven and heat the peanut oil to sizzling. Then drop in the onions, celery, and bell pepper and sauté them until the onions begin to caramelize. At this point, toss in the garlic, stir it into the seasoning vegetable mixture, and continue to cook over a high heat until the onions become richly browned (be careful though, not to let the garlic burn!).

Now reduce the heat to medium and pour in the fresh chopped plum tomatoes, the Rotel tomatoes (including the water in the can), the minced parsley, the Worcestershire sauce, the Creole mustard, and the chopped up lemon (essentially you’re making a "flavoring courtbouillion"). Then when the stock comes up to a slow simmer, take the pot off the fire, spoon the mixture liberally—but evenly—over the fish fillets in the baking pan, and slide the pan into a pre-heated 375 degree oven. You can figure it will take about 25 minutes for the redfish to bake and for the natural drippings to "sweat" from the veggies and the fish to create a succulent sauce. By the way, you should bake the fish uncovered.

When the dish is ready, take the pan from the oven and ladle both the fish and the accompanying sauce over a mound of steamed brown rice. You’re going to find that the natural flavors are so intense they’ll be every bit as delectable as the old traditional recipe made with tomato paste, tomato sauce, and red wine…and you certainly won’t ever be able to convince anyone that this is really good for you.

Chef's Notes:  
1. You don’t need redfish to do this recipe—the dish can be done with almost any non-oily whitefish (trout, catfish, flounder, orange roughly, Tilapia, cod, haddock, sheepshead, and drum).

2. Lemon pepper comes in both the salted and unsalted variety. So if you need to restrict your sodium intake, buy the salt-free kind. Just read the nutrition label.

3. The spice quantities included in the recipe serve only as a guideline. So if you want to add more or less of the flavoring ingredients do so without any reservation. Just keep in mind that it will affect the intensity of the final flavor after the dish id baked.

 
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-Frank
  
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