Almonds are grown in California in abundant numbers so luckily, the featured ingredient in 11-8: Almond Trout is fairly inexpensive for us. This is not the first recipe to include almonds in a main course. Jamie chopped some for the sauce of the 11-16: Indian Fried Fish and I added them whole to 9-27: West Indian Meat Casserole. Jamie also combined pork and almonds in 7-55: Sunday Pork Stew. Who could forget the chopped almonds in the sauce from the mauve chicken in 6-24: Mushroom-Almond Chicken? Once you go into desserts, Simply Delicious offers tons of recipes that contain this wondrous drupe, which is technically a seed, but commonly called a nut.
Pan-fried fish has to be my second favorite preparation of fish, second only to full frying in a deep fryer, of course.
The TIPS Section provided the justification for the choice of the rockfish fillets instead of the whole trout as shown on the recipe card.
This recipe was fairly easy to make because it didn’t require a lot of chopping, leaving me more energy to make the side dish of crispy chopped potatoes. That dish required a lot of chopping so dinner that night didn’t require too much work.
I patted and dried the fish fillets and then moistened them with lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. These smell great.
I had the perfect size container to dredge the fillets in a mixture of cornstarch, flour, and salt. I added the cornstarch because it sticks better.
The fish fillets are ready to pan-fry. I’ll toss these in the dredge mixture one more time right before I add these to the pan.
That’s a lot of butter! As it melts, I’ll add some canola oil into the pan to prevent the oil from burning.
The photo above was taken just after I added the fish to the pan. The butter is almost melted, you can see it in the bottom of the pan.
It didn’t take long for the bottom side to brown. I can see from the edges that the fish is almost ready to be flipped
What a beautiful color! Now I’ll brown the underside and then turn the heat down so the fish doesn’t burn. Time to make the sauce!
I pulled the fish from the pan and added the almonds and lactose-free milk. The cornstarch from the fish breading helped the sauce to thicken up nicely. I also added some ginger and some sautéed mushrooms that I had in the fridge to finish out the sauce.
Time to combine the fish and the sauce in the pan and then serve it up for dinner. One fillet broke in half during cooking.
Now presenting: Almond Rockfish with crispy potatoes and a lemon garnish. I love how this dish came out and the final photo really captured the flavorful appeal of the fish. I didn’t drown it in sauce as shown in the example photo, mostly because there wasn’t a lot of sauce to spread around. I may have cooked it down a little too far. The garnish was a next level part of the photo that I don’t usually include, but I thought it added a nice pop of yellow to the final photo.
GRADE: A-
