Monkfish with Curried Lentils and Brown Butter Cauliflower

This recipe is based on a Bon Appetit recipe that I got via Epicurious, but I modified it to (1) reduce the carb level, (2) deal with some of the blandness issues that the commenters complained about, and (3) correct the very wrong cooking times.

Monkfish with Curried Lentils and Brown Butter Cauliflower

• 1 small head cauliflower, cut into florets
  
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 4 garlic cloves
  
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg (use fresh nutmeg and grate it yourself)
• salt and white pepper to taste
  

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/4 cup finely chopped peeled carrots
• 1/4 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup French green lentils
  
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  
• 1-1/4 cups water
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 2 tablespoons butter
  
• chicken or other stock as desired
• salt to taste
  

• 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
• 1 small head cauliflower, cut into small florets
• salt to taste

• 4 6-ounce monkfish fillets (each about 1 inch thick), skin removed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• fresh lemon

This recipe is really three (or four) parts, and they can all be done separately. (And, yes, there are supposed to be 2 heads of cauliflower; you use them in different parts.)

1. The cauliflower purée "sauce"

Bring first 4 ingredients to boil in medium saucepan. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until cauliflower is very tender, about 17 minutes. Cool slightly. Transfer mixture to blender (or food processor, or just use an immersion blender); puree until smooth. Season with salt and white pepper. This can be made far ahead of time and reheated.

2. Lentils/cauliflower

Heat oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, carrots, and celery; sauté until just soft. Add lentils, curry, paprika; and cayenne pepper; stir. Add 1 1/4 cups water and wine; bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until lentils are tender, stirring occasionally. The original recipe says that this this will take 30 minutes. I think this depends entirely on the type of lentils that you use, and the wonderful French green ones take quite a bit longer than that... more like 45 or 50 minutes. So start this way ahead of time, and don't start the cauliflower step until the lentils

Meanwhile (see note above), cook butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until browned, about 2 minutes. Add cauliflower; sauté until beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Add 1/4 cup water; cover and cook until cauliflower is crisp-tender and water evaporates, about 10 minutes longer (at least). Stir in lentil mixture. Season with salt and pepper.

This can be made ahead and rewarmed, too. In fact, if you were making this for something like a dinner party, you could make everything except the fish earlier and just reheat.

Finally.... sprinkle monkfish with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add fish; sauté until just opaque in center, about 6 minutes per side. Squeeze fresh lemon onto the fish. (You could use any firm white fish).

Divide sauce among 4 plates. Spoon lentil mixture alongside. Place fish atop lentils.

The original recipe, which you can find here, had a gremoulata for the top of the fish, but I didn't have any parsley, so I skipped it, and I really don't think it's necessary.

The main carb source in this dish is the lentils. I cut them in half (relative to the original recipe), so if this recipe serves 4, it's about 15 net carbs from the lentils (and a little more from the cauliflower). Not induction-friendly, but not excessive.

The vegetable mixture in this is great without the fish, too, just as a side dish for anything. It has a nice curried kick to it. It's also really easy after you do it once; it looks complicated, but it's not.

Salmon with Lentils/Variants

This is a fantastically good recipe that that I found in Gourmet. The only catch about it is that it uses lentils, which could be ok if you're on a low-carb diet (in moderation), but it's definitely not induction friendly, because you will use up all your carbs in one meal! So I'm giving you my version of the original recipe, but also some suggestions for making it lower carb if desired.

You will need:
1 cup lentils (French green are suggested, but any lentils are really ok)
4 cups water
about 8 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chives
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh tarragon (must be fresh)
2 leeks
4 salmon fillets, about 6 oz. each

Put the lentils, water, and about 1 tsp. salt in a medium saucepan, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 20-25 minutes, until just tender. Reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid, and drain.

While the lentils are cooking, make herb butter. Use 5 T. butter, softened, the mustard, the chives, the tarragon, and the lemon juice. Set aside. Then finely chop the lentils (white and pale green parts only) and rinse to remove any dirt. Sauté the leeks in 1 T. butter until soft.

Add the lentils to the leeks, and add about 3 T of the herb butter. Taste; add salt, freshly-ground pepper, and more lemon juice as needed.

In a nonstick pan, melt the remaining (plain) butter. Pan-fry the salmon, turning once, 3-4 minutes on each side, depending on thickness. (Don't overcook. Overcooked salmon is dry and not so great.) Spread with remaining herb butter, and serve (with the lentils).

Serves 4; takes about 35 minutes if you are efficient!

Modifications:

• For more or fewer people: Lentils require about 1/4 cup (uncooked) per person, and about 1 cup water for each 1/4 cup of lentils. Thus you can easily cook more or less; just add a little extra to the herb butter for more.
• To reduce carbs: Skip the lentils. Use green beans instead, but reduce the mustard by 1/2, or omit it completely. (Steam the green beans, which should probably be sliced, and then add to the lentil mix.) Summer savory is a nice substitute for the tarragon if you're using green beans.
• Different herb butters: The taste of this dish really depends on what's in the herb butter. As written, it's lemony and mustardy... but if you omit the mustard, you get just lemony, with that anise taste of tarragon. Or try a completely different combination... for example, omit the tarragon and mustard and add a little curry powder (not too much!). Or keep the tarragon, omit the mustard, and add a little chipotle chili powder or some finely diced jalapenos. Totally different dish.
  

Carbs: about 20 (net) with lentils, trace without (or depends on what vegetables you choose). Wheat-free, gluten-free

Crispy Low-Carb Tilapia/Marie Rose Sauce

This recipe makes a pan-fried tilapia that's crispy but virtually zero carb (just a trace for the eggs and cream). And, in case you're wondering, even though it uses pork rinds for a coating, the result does not taste anything like pork. This isn't a really original recipe, but I couldn't find a low carb one when I was searching that really told me what I wanted to know, so here's my take on this (and there's a bonus sauce at the end). Note that this is (obviously, but not all "breaded" fish recipes are) wheat free and gluten free.

Note: This also reheats very well. 400 degrees in a toaster oven for about 10 minutes.

You will need:
Tilapia or other white fish (cod or haddock would be fine)
1 bag pork rinds (4 oz.)
eggs (1 is plenty unless you have a lot of fish)
cream (about 1/4 cup)
salt and pepper
oil for frying

The only trick to this is to process the pork rinds in a large food processor until they are very fine, like bread crumbs. Processed pork rinds look just like bread crumbs, but they're more dense. Mix the egg and cream (use 2 eggs if you have a lot of fish) and season with salt and pepper (you could also add cayenne or some herbs).

Heat oil in a large frying or saute pan. I used olive oil; I know it's not the greatest for high heat, but I don't like peanut oil, and I try to avoid grain oils. Vegetable oil might be ok, I suppose. You want it to be quite hot before you put the fish in, or it won't be crispy.

Pat the tilapia with a paper towel so that it's really dry, and then dip in the egg/cream mixture. Roll lightly in the pork rind crumbs. Really lightly, because as I said, these are dense, and you can use practically the whole batch on one piece of fish if you're not careful. I stretched one bag to 7 pieces of fish (alternately, if you want really crispy, you could just make double the pork rinds). Fry the fish in the hot oil, about 2 minutes per side.

If you're making a lot, so that you need to do more than one batch, you can put the cooked ones on a cookie sheet (or other large flat pan) in the oven at about 300 degrees to keep warm. Don't stack them or they'll lose their crisp.

I served these on a bed of field greens, which was really nice. A great alternative to tartar sauce is Marie Rose sauce, common in the UK but not so common in the US. The way I make it is like this:

Marie Rose Sauce

1 cup Hellman's or other mayonnaise
Heinz 1-carb ketchup ( you can really use any ketchup because you need hardly any)
lemon juice
Worcestershire sauce
pepper or cayenne

Put the mayonnaise in a small bowl, and blend in just enough ketchup to make it pink. You don't want it to taste like ketchup, so go easy. Then add the juice of about 1/4 lemon, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, and pepper to taste. Again, go easy on everything... it's easier to add more than to try to compensate for putting too much in. A dash of Tabasco or other hot sauce is also good. Carbs on this depend completely on the carbs in your mayonnaise, but are minimal.

Spicy Grilled Marlin with Cucumber-Avocado Relish

For the fish:
Marlin steaks (swordfish would be good, too) (as many as you need)
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Cayenne pepper
Chipotle chili powder
Salt and freshly-ground pepper
1 large clove garlic, finely minced or crushed (if you're not a garlic fan, you could omit this, but it's great)

For the relish:
1 cucumber, seeded and diced finely (I prefer English [seedless] cucumber, although you do still need to seed it.)
1 avocado, diced
rice vinegar (I used Nakano Red Pepper Rice Vinegar)
fresh Italian parsley, about 2 tablespoons diced finely
Salt and freshly-ground pepper

Start by making the marinade for the fish. The amounts that you want depend on how many marlin steaks you're cooking; I cooked 3, and I used about 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, a sprinkling of cayenne and chili powder (a little goes a long way on both), 1 very fat clove of garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. If you don't like spicy, I'd omit the cayenne but not the chili powder; just use hardly any. Marinate the fish for at least a half hour, but 2-3 hours would be fine, too.

In the meantime, make the relish. Dice the cucumber and avocado, add the rice vinegar, and then add the fresh parsley (if you only have dried parsley, it would be better to omit it. Cilantro would be good, too, but Michael hates it). Add salt and pepper to taste. Chill. (You could make this relish spicier by adding jalapenos or onion, but I wanted a cool complement to the marlin marinade.)

Grill the marlin, and this is the tricky part because marlin gets both dry and tough if you overcook it. I grilled it 4 minutes/side on medium heat, and that was too much (we have a huge Weber grill, so this would really depend on what you're grilling on plus the thickness of the steaks... these were a good 1.5 inches, I think). Next time I'll try 3 minutes; they would be better.

I served these on a bed of greens and drizzled a little of the marinade over the top; you could also use it as a dipping sauce (especially if you overcook the marlin!). Put the relish on the side. We also had brussels sprouts and a few lima beans; lovely plate in shades of green. I really should have taken a picture.