Broiled Snapper with Garlic Roast Potatoes

If you are cooking at home for Valentine's Day/weekend, I have a great fish suggestion for you.  I cannot seem to get enough of the fish recipes in the January 2014 issue of Bon Appetit!  When I first saw that the issue featured some fish dishes, I was desperate to like anything because—truth to tell—I was getting a bit bored with the fish recipes at my disposal. 

With our attempt to become more pescatarian (or whatever one is called who attempts to eat mostly vegetables and fish), we’d been running out of fun fish dishes, especially for those Sunday evening meals that we wanted to be a bit more elaborate than quick pan-fried fish (see my post from two weeks ago).  But the recipes Bon Appetit presented—all of them!—sounded so good!

Of course, I already made a substitution with the first recipe we tried.  Somehow, I imagined that it would be difficult to find good, fresh mackerel at the store, so I readily took their suggestion to use snapper instead for their “Mackerel with Crushed Potatoes and Oregano.”  We might look for mackerel next time though since the recipe was so yummy that we decided it’s a keeper!  (Here’s a link to the recipe.)

Some notes:

·      Any small potatoes will do, but the Yukon Gold will deliver a buttery look and texture.

·      We only had non-fat Greek yogurt (Fage), but that really didn’t seem to matter, so don’t panic and get another tub of yogurt if you have 2% or non-fat.

·      I thought we had fresh oregano, but we only had fresh thyme.  So, I substituted the thyme for the oregano and then added some dried oregano for more flavor (picture above).  Worked out great.   Oh, and Maldon works out great (for this and other dishes) because the flakes are soft enough to easily crush with your fingers as you sprinkle over your food.

·      If you have mackerel—like the recipe called for—you might not have this issue, but the snapper we cut in pieces were thicker than mackerel and tended to curl up (bottom picture).  We obviously also had to cook for a bit longer since they were thicker fillet pieces.  They tasted great though, so all’s well that ends well.

Happy Valentines Day!