Friday, December 2, 2011

Baked Halibut

My apologies, it has been a while since my last posting. I now have a few moments and will catch up on the recipes that I've been creating from Mrs. Marjorie Standish's Cooking Down East Cook Book!


When I was growing up a dinner my mom used to make all the time was baked haddock. Her method was always to top the fish with breadcrumbs and lemon juice. It was one of our favorite meals, and if we were lucky she would make the egg sauce that Marjorie mentions frequently!





I decided earlier this month to make Baked Halibut and was expecting the recipes to be quite similar. I wasn't let down. In addition to the bread crumbs and fish though Marjorie had me prepare a delicious mustard and butter sauce that gets poured over the fish. The bread crumbs are added on top of this and the fish is baked in the oven.




One little note... Marjorie says bake in the oven at 350 for 40 minutes. I have never cooked fish for 40 minutes. It would most likely kill it... again. It's funny, her cooking times are often much longer than they actually need to be. Most likely a sign of the times, as back in the day everybody was very worried about food poisoning and food borne illness. So they cooked everything until it couldn't be cooked anymore. As evidence by most of these recipes!

The Baked Halibut was delicious, the added flavor of the mustard was a great idea. The dish was served warm with a side of fresh greens. I will definitely be keeping this one in the repertoire!




Blue Elephant Cafe
12 Pepperell Square 
Saco, Maine 04072
207-281-3070



1 comment:

  1. Hmm. From reading the recipe, I think I probably would have put the fish in a shallow baking pan rather than on a tray, so it would have been closer together and poured the sauce over the whole thing so it would have been more of a baked fish casserole. Can't say why really, and the way you did it obviously worked great, but it might explain the longer cooking time. My mom used glass baking dishes for casseroles, but most Maine cooks of the time used metal pans (like a brownie pan) for both casseroles and baking and that's what came to my mind reading the recipe. I wouldn't have thought of using a cookie tray.

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