Like roasting a chicken, cooking a fish whole is a great way to preserving flavor and moisture. Whether you like to roast it with aromatics, bake it en papillote or steam it with fresh ginger and garlic, we want to hear about your preferred method for getting the most out of your fish. And don't forget to include...
These are not your usual contests. We have a slightly nutty system but it works. Together, the Food52 community has created two cookbooks this way -- there’s no stopping us now. Read about it
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Amanda empties 2 pounds of sea salt into a bowl.
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Egg whites moisten the salt, and the mixture becomes a thick, grainy paste.
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Amanda has fun custom designing the bed of salt for our red snapper.
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Before being laid to rest on his salt bed, the snapper is filled with parsley, lemon and fennel fronds.
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Now for the fun part: we take fistfuls of salt and pat them all over the snapper to create a thick, even coating.
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We tried to be courteous, leaving his eye uncovered until the very end.
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Amanda cheerfully dispatches him to the oven.
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While the fish bakes, we chop some garlic...
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and parsley for the gremolata, adding the zest of a lemon as well.
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Perhaps even more fun than coating the fish is breaking open and removing the hard crust once it's cooked.
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It's a two person job.
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Merrill slices some tomatoes and lemons for stuffing in the belly of the fish. (You can skip the tomatoes this time of year.)
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A nicely cleaned fish.
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Merrill stuffs the fish as if she were neatly packing a suitcase.
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Then Merrill tied it up with twine -- not too tight.
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The fish is lying on a cedar plank that we soaked in water for a couple of hours.
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The temperature dipped below 50F so Amanda came prepared. Merrill, however, is a braver soul.
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This is the fish after just a few minutes on the covered grill. Its skin turns the color of whiskey.
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It's a smoky affair. That's Amanda's backyard view -- a true Brooklyn neighborhood. If it were a clear day, you'd see the tops of some of the buildings in Lower Manhattan, too.
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The plank caught fire which, in retrospect, looks terrific. In the moment, it caused some panic. Didn't want a scorched fish for our final photo!
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Looking like it were made of bronze.
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Now, looking rather prehistoric. In a good way.
