How to Poach Fish - Mahi-Mahi with Shrimp

Hi everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. Another beautiful day in Florida, loving life and gonna make some delicious food for you today. I've got my co-host Susan Sarah. And Susan, is it almost like summer in New York now?

Yes, it's going to be 55°F today, so I am wearing my short sleeves.

Very nice.

And I am ready to just I'm going out to lunch today after the show and it's beautiful, beautiful.

I know my friend Mark up in Boston was saying thanks for sending some good weather up there. They're finally, I think, digging out a little from the mess they had.

Yeah, it is. I'll tell you, we had a lot of snow. And even last week we had like 10 inches and it is just melting so fast. So fast. I really think as soon as it melts, we're going to start seeing things pop up from the ground, so that's exciting.

That's it. Spring is always a good time of year, spring. Now, I saw a picture that someone posted that really had me going, "Oh yeah, isn't that the truth?" Everything's in perspective. It had a picture. It said 46 degrees in Florida, and it showed a picture of people with coats, scarves, hats, and gloves on. Then it said 46 degrees in Michigan and they're sitting outside around a grill with t-shirts on and drinking beer.

Oh my gosh, that's right. You're absolutely right. Well, I'll tell you something. I went to Trader Joe's last week and we have them all around us and I never go. And I said, you know what, I think I want to start a little ritual with my husband at the end of the day before dinner, an hour or so before dinner. We'll kind of put out little goodies, you know, and I'm I'm not going to slave away, but I'll reach into the freezer. And so I hadn't been there, I think, about a year. That place is unbelievable. And you know, I mean, I bought everything. Oh, okay. The phone is ringing.

Oh, no problem.

No, that's okay. It's my husband. So I lifted it up and hung up. Yeah, so I bought fish. And I remember last time you said sockeye salmon. They had wild-caught sockeye salmon. They had wild-caught Dover sole. I got swordfish. I was really excited. It's a great place. Do you have a Trader Joe's near you?

We do. They just finally put one in Winter Park about 6 months now. Everywhere they put a Trader Joe's, it's just insane. And they always seem to put them in— I don't want to say hard-to-get places, but places that don't really have a lot of parking or that you really got to pull off. You know what, you're right!

You're right.

And there was so much on the news about all the traffic it caused and all the problems it caused, but they always seem to— you know, they have beautiful stores and they pick good locations, but they don't always think a lot about the people that's coming into them.

You're right, you're right, I know. So, but you know what, somehow, unless it's everyone is just there for Trader Joe's. And then I saw you had a post on Meyer lemons, and I went to Trader Joe's and there's a package of these beautiful 6 Meyer lemons, which I don't think I've ever even bought. And I said, you know what, I I just have to buy them because Meyer lemons should be good. Then I come home and I see a post you did on those incredible ricotta Meyer lemon cookies. I haven't made them yet, but that is bookmarked.

So two of the best things I've ever made. Oh yeah, they were very good. They don't seem to last. They don't hold up as long as regular cookies, but they probably won't stick around the house that long either because they're that good. But when you do some zest, I also took a little lime zest and I put that into the glaze.

Yeah.

So you saw little specks of green and yellow in the glaze, which really was pretty too. I don't know if I did them for the ones I did the picture of, but I did them in another batch. So they are delicious.

You know what I'm wondering, I don't know why it just occurred to me, what do you think about a little bit of spice? In those cookies, or is it not appropriate?

Again, it's what your taste buds call for. You could put something in them, whatever flavors you like. Just remember, it should go with lemon. Yeah. Like I said, you can make them with lime. You could make them with orange. You can make them with other flavors. It's just a matter of what your taste goes for. I don't know what specifically. I tend to lean maybe towards nutmeg or clove with lemon. I don't know. You could even use rosemary with them if you wanted to go in that direction.

A little bit savory.

Yeah, just a little. I mean, because they add rosemary in a lot of sweets now. You could use something like that, but I would try them traditional first and then see how they taste, and that'll probably give you another, a better idea where you can go. The glaze really makes the cookie. The glaze really pushes it over the top.

Okay, so we're going from cookies to fish.

Cookies to fish. Let's talk about fish. A lot of times I pan fry fish, I sauté it, and basically this is starting out like a sauté. It's just another way to cook fish. Sometimes you get fish that really can dry out on you and really tend to be tougher to eat because they're drier, they lose the flavor, they're just not made for broiling or sautéing or for grilling even at that point, unless you marinate them, you go to the trouble of marinating them. But you want to think about poaching as almost like a marinating in the pan while you're cooking it, because you're going to infuse the fish with the flavors from the poaching process and you're going to keep it surrounded by liquid. Like I always tell you, when you put fish in the oven, put a little water on the pan to keep the moisture in it to help it from drying out completely. Same type of thing, only on a larger scale, and we're doing it all in a pan. So like any process though, I kind of start them the same. I start— let me turn this on— I start in the direction of sautéing. So kick this on. And what I do is I heat my pan up, and I'm going to put a little olive oil in. And it really is a very simple process, and it's one you can almost leave on its own once you get it started, or you can leave it for a few minutes. Let's put it that that way, not on its own. I'm going to take— and I did not get any salt and pepper out, so let me grab that because I do want to season it up a little bit. So let me just—

so is that all you have, just plain salt and pepper? That's all.

I'm, you know, I'm very basic about cooking. I'm going to use some garlic and I'm going to use some lemon in this.. But I'm not always big on adding different spices. Now that doesn't mean you can't do it. This would be a good vehicle for some fresh herbs. I'm just going to put this in here and I'm going to let it sauté just a little bit. Even though we're poaching, I'm going to start it this way because I want to seal it a little. I want to just get some little bit of a cooked surface on it rather than simply boiling the meat.

And will that add— I mean, I would imagine that might add some flavor as well.

Yeah, it's going to help. It's going to help the texture and it's going to help the flavor. And like I said, it's rather than just putting it in and boiling it to death. To me, boiling meat has never been my preferred cooking method. So poaching is a little bit different on how we look at it because I, like I said, I like to cook it a little first. Just going to turn it over. And I'm trying a new method today. I actually have my camera set up. You can't see it from where you are, but I have my film camera set up, or my digital camera, not film. Yeah, I'm going to shoot down on it and take some pictures for me so I can try and include them in my post.

Oh, great!

We'll see how they come out. So it's the first time. So anyway, I'm here now. I'm going to throw some garlic in, and I'm going to make a little bit of a court bouillon in the pan. And now I'm going to remove all this when I go to finish it, but I'm going to throw in some celery, onions, and carrots. And that is typically what you would use in a court bouillon if you're making a broth to poach it. That's all it is. It's a vegetable broth. You can make any kind of a broth to poach in, but this is what you would use for a lot of fish dishes. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to let these season, sauté a little bit because, again, boiling a raw vegetable never quite gets you the same flavor. I'm going to take this fish out of here right now.

I think what you're doing here, I think that's the secret. Secret weapon. I don't see that in any poaching recipes. I don't think that's done so frequently. I think that's really smart.

Well, you can make your court bouillon ahead of time. Like, you could make it up and freeze it, even if you want to use all your vegetables to make a nice broth with. All right, so here is what I have, and that's enough for me. I have the garlic, I have the celery and onions, and carrots. Now I'm going to hit some wine. Wine!

Thank you!

Now we're going to begin— ooh, here we go. Now we're going to begin the poaching process. First, we're going to start by making the court bouillon. I have some vegetable stock. I have some lemon.

Oh, nice! To brighten everything.

Well, you know, you want a little bit of acid in here to help with the poaching process. So one of the things I love to do with my lemon after I have used it in a dish, like I did skin some of it for the zest, but cutting up your lemon in smaller pieces, if you have a garbage disposal, put them in your garbage disposal and they make the house smell so much nicer because the lemon oils get in the garbage disposal.

There you go.

I've even had a friend who would take that along, like lemon or lime with some other herbs, freeze them into ice cubes because ice is good for your garbage disposal for the blades. And when she has a stinky in her sink, she pulls one out and throws it in there.

That's perfect. So should I go into what I want to talk about now? Let's go into it.

I pull the fish out because I don't want it to boil, like I said, but I want I want this to reduce a little, this broth. So we're going to let it boil a little bit and then reduce it. And while we're doing that, why don't you take over?

Yeah, that is looking fantastic. And you know what? I'll tell you, Chef, when I came up with this idea for what we're going to— and from time to time, I like to talk about storage in the kitchen. It's just always important to think about. I thought that you might be using one of those big, long stainless steel oval, oblong poacher. You know, those— that kind of— yeah, that poacher thing. But look what you're doing. It's in a basic pan and it's the same concept. So I think you're in good shape here. So let's take a look at some fun storage options for the kitchen. And I'm going to screen share. And where am I? Here I am. Okay, now look at this. This isn't, you know, a headline. We're talking about storage. We have some beautiful pottery and we have utensils. This is actually taken at Ina Garten's Kitchen of the Year, which is produced by House Beautiful in Rockefeller Center a few years back. But you know what? We don't often You know, sometimes our drawers, they're, you know, things are scattered everywhere. And look at how organized you can be. A few beautiful pieces of pottery, it's a way to have easy instant access. And it's a way to, you know, to have it decorative too. So yes, it's simple, but I put it up here because sometimes I think we forget about this type of simple storage solution. Now, you know, many of our counters look like this. We have— I mean, I don't have 5 or 10 pounds of flour in 2 glass containers like Ina Garten does on my counter, but the point is there's not much counter space in front of it. You have the Cuisinart, you have the KitchenAid. So I think it's always important a few times a year to scan your countertops. Scan them. See what has made its way, you know, into now what's clutter, potentially clutter. See what you used once 5 months ago and it's still there. And you think you'll use it again. You want to use it again, but you just don't. So, and again, here's another picture of, you know, it's okay if you have lots of counter space. This could— I believe every place should, every small appliance should have a home. It's okay if this is a home, but if this is a real prep space, then I think that's a problem. And you see the range is right there. So again, scan your countertops, very important. You know what, here is just a basket. What a gorgeous, gorgeous basket. And I happen to think this looks terrific with some cutting boards in it. So you don't have to have built-ins storage all the time. Grab something, grab a decorative basket, put some things in it that you will need to access. Single layer storage, such as bowls in a drawer, something you rarely see, but if you use bowls frequently, I mean, let's consider it. We may use it for breakfast or dinner or prep. You know, there they are, a different way of storing. Here's a double-level cutlery drawer. So that's a lot of people like it. I will say I've never been a fan of it unless it's in a very, very small kitchen. Some of my very large kitchen clients have wanted that. I don't see the point of going back and forth and something gets stuck, but it's there for tiny kitchens and I think then it'll be useful. Storing spices in alphabetical order for sure. I'm sure you do that, Chef.

Yeah, you know, I don't have that many, but I I love that because number one, you're keeping them in small containers and you're keeping them in the dark. Because where does everybody store their spices? In that little bitty cabinet over top of the stove.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

That's the wrong place.

Under the countertop. Now this is the first time I had seen glasses in a drawer, which is interesting, very interesting. I mean, for people who don't want to reach, reach up. Why not? I would put a little bit of a sticky sort of material, rubberized sort of material, so that the glasses don't move around. And open shelving— there's, you know, us kitchen designers have violent arguments on open shelving or closed cabinets. I've lived with both. I love open shelving because I'm lazy and I can just grab the dishes. And, you know, and my argument is that any dust that gets on it is good for the immune system. So, yeah, so more open shelving. This is a wonderful kitchen also by House Beautiful, Kitchen of the Year. And just, you know, again, open shelving, a combination of beautiful and useful items. You know, you have glamorous metallic sort of tile on there. And look at this, this is a real glam way to store pots and pans, and then on one side of it, beautiful items. So, you know, you can mix the two very, very effectively, and of course metallic finishes make it really exciting. Another view in there, and glass cabinets, wonderful. Another view of that. Drawers, drawers are so useful for any kind of storage. Better— drawers are better than two doors you open up and then you take out the rollout shelf. So lots of ideas here, just random sort of ideas I put together. Corners are always a challenge, how to store things in corners, and some drawer Items in drawers and segmented places to put all your small items is really very nice to have. And yes, and drawers, I mean, for bottles, for mixers. I love the rail on the back of a backsplash. Love a rail. Very, very common in Europe. Very, very useful. And, you know, then we have the upscale, we have luxury drawer inserts too. So lots to do. I even like that storage with a high toe kick, which makes access much, much easier. And here's a wider shot of that. I mean, then you don't have to bend all the way down to the floor. So that's it for me, some kind of unique and innovative, you know, ways to store items in the kitchen.

Great. You know, everybody's always looking for ideas on where to put things and how to get them out of the way and things to make their life easier. You just showed us a bunch of those.

Oh yeah, there's much more to come. And my thought was the big long oblong fish culture.

Well, you know, people have them, and I used to have them where I worked at, and we would only use them for catering to put things into display. We never really cooked in them. It's funny.

Oh, really? That's funny.

I mean, they're not— I mean, if you're in a fancy— it's more for display or for presentation. And if you're in that kind of a restaurant, I'm almost positive they wouldn't cook it in that one. They probably transfer it, if possible, into that and then display it. And honestly, for poaching in a restaurant, a lot of times, or if it's a big fish, not poaching, but for doing a big fish, I would start it in the steamer a lot of times too. The steamer was a great way. I used to cook my salmon, my whole salmon in there, and then I would take the skin off of it and I would put a cream cheese kind of a topping on it and then layer cucumber slices.

Oh, nice.

Make it look like scales. It was kind of fun.

All right, so what are you up to?

Well, what I did was I turned it down, I let it boil, I let it reduce, and it reduced about half of the volume, which is perfect.. Then I took all the vegetables out. If you want to save them and eat them and use them, they would probably be very tasty right now, but that's not going in this dish, so I just removed them. Now I'm going to put the fish back in it. I'm going to turn it up a little bit. I'm going to let it cook a little bit more. You almost want to get this— I don't want to say raw, but you want to get it to the point where it's really barely done because that is going to be the most flavorful, moist time that you're going to serve it. I'm looking at a side view of the fish. Let me see if I can show you. You can see—

Oh, yes.

Let me— this is easier. I don't know if you can see how it's almost raw. Yes. Look how much of it's cooked. See how much of it's cooked already?

Yeah.

There is not a lot more to cook. Now, the important part about putting anything extra into here now. Now, I like— you could use asparagus, you could use green beans, you could use broccoli. I'm going to go with spinach because I like how it kind of cooks up. Anytime I use something red, I try— I mean green, I try to put in another color like red, but it could be a bright orange. Like maybe you precook some carrot slices in here that you want to use and just leave them in there at that point. But you want to get a little contrast of color so it's festive.

So how do you determine— it almost seems like there's a moment when the fish— you don't want the fish to cook more. How do you determine when the moment is otherwise, even if it's cooking in liquids, it will still dry out if you cook too long, won't it?

Absolutely.

So what's that moment?

I'm going to cook some shrimp, so I'm going to leave them with the shell on, and I'm going to put them in here now because they're not going to take too long. You want to start to feel the fish, and it should be firm to the touch, but it should have a little bit of give in it. It's something that takes time. Like I said, a good indicator, I can actually go in here and see that it's still a little raw in there. At this point, I'm going to turn it so I get that side cooked while I'm cooking the shrimp because it's almost going to be done now. I'm going to let my shrimp cook. At this point, I'm going to add in some spinach.

Nice. Mm-hmm.

And some cherry tomato halves. I'm going to let it finish because now it's almost done. A little bit of lemon zest.

You never put a lid on it. Why not?

It's not going to cook that long to need a lid. I'm not going to steam it so much because I sautéed it first. If I had not sautéed it first and was going with a straight poach, I might put a lid on it. You saw how quick this actually cooked. Again, in under half an hour, you're going to have dinner. Like I said, while the court bouillon was cooking, you could have done something else or maybe made a salad or another part of the dinner that you want.

Okay, so it won't be more moist if you put a lid on it or if you don't put a lid on it?

I don't think so because the liquid is what's helping it stay moist. The steam would just hit it from all sides, which could just dry it out too. Because the steam, you know, it's going to be wonderful as soon as it's done, but then you're going to have to deal with it as it cools off, as the liquid leaves. So here's my shrimp. I love lemon zest, and I'm actually going to serve it with a little. I can take a picture of this.

I don't know, there's something about spinach, and I've always cooked spinach in chicken broth. I mean, I've always steamed spinach. I've always used chicken broth to steam spinach, and there's just something about spinach and other liquids, and I swear it's almost like spinach absorbs the taste of the liquid surrounding it.

Absolutely, because honestly, spinach doesn't have a lot of flavor on its own. I mean, it does, but it's not something— now, this is pretty much— it's a little bit spongy right here, so that means it's pretty well cooked. This end, of course, is cooked already because it's thinner, but this end is here where you want to make sure. And you know, if you really need to check, you could stick just a little a very small knife in here and look and see in the center. I'm thinking this is done. I feel it's done. I'm just going to remove it for a minute. The shrimp are done. There's nothing wrong with having some u-peel shrimp. You can, of course, peel them if you want to. Now I'm going to add a little bit of butter to it.

Oh! Butter, thank you.

You know, I got sent a song and it's called Butter. Hopefully I'm going to have it on my show soon. Nice. And she was singing a song about butter.

Okay, so I bought from Trader Joe's, I bought that sockeye salmon, I bought Dover sole, and I bought swordfish. Can I— are those fish appropriate for—

Swordfish would be good for this because it's a steak fish and it could use this desperately. So swordfish would be good. Sole, you can do absolutely. It's a little thinner, right?

Yes.

So you might just be careful with it. Turn this off.

Oh, look at that. That is liquid gold. That's what I call my turkey stock on Thanksgiving, liquid gold.

See, now again, I may peel the shrimp. I'm probably going to take one or two shots. Now, of course, you want to have a starch with this, and rice would go great.

Oh, yeah.

Any other little type of grainy starch that you might like. If you like quinoa, a nice hot quinoa would be good. And then let me get another spoon. I just want to add just a little bit. Now this sauce would thicken just a little bit more if I had time to let it reduce. Add a little of this sauce because that is going to be delicious. And there you have it.

That is beautiful. Let me take a look. Okay, so those tomatoes, those are tomatoes.

Mm-hmm.

Are they— did you— what about— did you roast them, or are they just regular cherry tomatoes?

Regular. They're organic grape tomatoes, and because that's one of the things you really need to buy organic if you buy grape tomatoes.

Hold it up again. Let me take another look. Wow. More to one side, to the opposite side. Yeah, there you go. Oh, that's nice! And then you have those juices everywhere.

Yeah, and if you have rice or a little bit of another type of pasta, orzo or something, you could even serve it a little bit over that and eat it completely. It doesn't have to be on the side. Pour some of those juices on it. So this is going to be a nice, easy way to change up how you cook. And to take a piece of fish that may have been a little bit drier than you hoped for and make it more palatable, make it more tasty. And you're only limited in your poaching liquid with what you choose to use.

That is fantastic. You know, Chef, I made the chicken roll-ups after the show last week, and I got applause for that.

I think so.

Yeah, they were really good. I got applause. And this is, again, it's so elegant. It is texturally and visually beautiful. This is a weeknight restaurant— it's a restaurant meal for weeknight. I'm so excited about this dish.

And it's not— I mean, alright, say leave the shrimp off if you don't want to spend the money for shrimp, you don't have them. But I mean, this— the shrimp would take it up another level. So if you bought a bag of shrimp, and like I said, I always buy them at my— usually my big box stores because they have wild caught Gulf shrimp at BJ's and at Sam's. I can't remember if Costco does, but they have them there. And so you throw the bag— it's a big expenditure at once, but then over the course of months, you know, you'll have shrimp in different dishes that really pick them up a notch for, you know, a dollar a plate. You know, it's really about what you're spending.

That's terrific. Now let me ask you, are there— is there any fish, whether it's shellfish or regular fish that may not be good for this type of recipe?

Poaching fish, if it's really delicate fish, you're going to have to be careful. You would even— in a restaurant, if it was something that they thought was going to break apart, they might wrap it in cheesecloth when they poached it. I like to poach a delicate fish like flounder. Or even sole, is generally you can get away with broiling it, putting some butter or oil, olive oil, and some lemon and seasonings on it, and a quick broil, quick roast in the oven, and it's good to go. This is more for something, like I said, that you want to add, that doesn't have a high fat content on its own, or doesn't have a lot of—

that's going to get a little bit drier when That makes perfect sense, the last thing you said, that doesn't have a high fat content. It makes perfect sense.

Again, it doesn't mean you can't poach other fish. If you want to do it without oil or minimal oil, or if you want to use whatever other oils you have, if you want to do it in— like I have the vegan butter that I use now. You want to use it in that. It doesn't have to be olive oil, though olive oil is not a bad oil to cook with. With. If you're limiting the amounts, it can be smaller amounts.

One more question. What about— you see clam juice, like fishy kind of additive. Is that something you would want to add to the—

Clam juice wouldn't be bad. I would watch some fish stock because you don't want an overpowering flavor. I would probably almost use some chicken stock before I would use a really overpowering seafood stock simply because it's going to change the flavors and you're going to lose— it's going to bury the flavors a little bit if it's a little bit too potent. One thing I did do when I made the court bouillon when I did the shrimp was I left the shells on because the shells are going to add some flavors. Nice.

Okay. All right, so the chicken stock will make it a little more savory. Maybe.

Yeah, a little savory, and you don't get— like when I make clam chowder, I always use chicken stock because when I use clam stock, it's got this soft taste in my palate that just doesn't seem right. Now the chicken stock has more of a bite to it. You don't taste chicken, you just notice that there's more— yeah, it's a—

it's like a richness.

Yeah, it's a snappier kind of taste. I mean, you could even, if you wanted to add a little cream to this, if you want to get crazy, and while the court bouillon was cooking or reducing, you could add a little heavy cream into it. I mean, that'll change it up a little bit. This basic style of cooking is very adaptable. You can also do chicken this way, chicken breasts or thighs. You want to wash. You want to sauté it a little first because, again, boiling meat is not ever a good idea. You want to get that outside cooked, just like vegetables. When we make soup, we always cook the vegetables a little bit first.

Except for sous vide, which I'm obsessed with. We have to do a show on that sometime.

I've never done it. People love sous vide, but you'll have to cook then if you want to do a sous vide.

I will. I've been doing sous vide, and I'm a believer.

People that do it love it. I've never seen anything bad about it. It's just something that I've never tried. Who knows, maybe one day I'll wake up with a sous vide.

I'm going to do filet mignon. I'm going to do filet mignon on the show. We're going to do that.

Sounds good.

Okay, so thank you. Thank you. Beautiful, beautiful dish.

Thank you, and thanks to everyone who was here. Richard Clarkson's in the house. Nazim's in the house.

Yes, hi Nazim.

MJ is here. Where is he?

Yep.

Hello, MJ. David! Leopold is here, and we've got another couple people that have come and gone. Thank you so much for being here today with us around our kitchen table, and we hope to see you next week around the kitchen table again.

Yes, see you next week. Bye-bye!