After our second long morning's dive (ended at 2:00 pm), we packed up from Gonzaga Bay and drove back north to spend the final night in an (Heaven be praised!) air-conditioned motel in San Felipe. Attached to the motel is the Baja Mar restaurant where the owner, chief hostess and the head chef are all personal friends of Dale's. Everything on the menu that we tried, both going down and coming back was delicious but not on the menu and only available by special request if you know it's there is Grouper Philadelphia. I saw it being prepared on the next Gonetobaja video that is coming to a Sport Chalet near you next month but didn't really have a good idea of how it went together. All I know is that it looked wonderful. In real life, it's better. I asked the waiter what went into it and all I got was, "The list is long. There's three kinds of onions and bell peppers in it. And mushrooms." That much we could figure out just looking at it.
So, tomorrow night I will try to see how close I can come to the original. What I can say is begin by slicing Philadelphia cream cheese about 1/4" thick and lay it out on strips of grouper fillet and roll up the fillet around the cheese then pin with bamboo skewers and set aside. In a pre-heated pan bring 2 Tbs olive oil to fragrance then add about a half cup each of chopped yellow onion, leek, green bell pepper, sliced mushrooms and red bell pepper along with about a 1/4 cup of chopped celery or, in my case, Swiss chard stems, and 2 Tbs minced cilantro or possibly parsley. Sautee' until the onions are soft. Then pour in perhaps 1/4-1/2 cup of white wine or dry sherry and cook until the alcohol boils off. Push the vegetables to the sides of the pan and add the fish. Turn the heat to "low", cover and simmer until the cheese melts out and the fish is flakey. Place the fish on dinner plates already charged with a scoop of Mexican rice and a summer green salad or perhaps sliced pineapple, stir up the sauce and pour it over the fish. If we can even come close on this . . . hoo-boy!
Therefor this is not really a recipe but a work in progress. Let's try it on all kinds of fish, seabass in the British Isles, cod in Scandinavia, snapper in the Gulf or whatever you happen to have and then we'll share notes. I'm really looking forward to the development of this one.
So, tomorrow night I will try to see how close I can come to the original. What I can say is begin by slicing Philadelphia cream cheese about 1/4" thick and lay it out on strips of grouper fillet and roll up the fillet around the cheese then pin with bamboo skewers and set aside. In a pre-heated pan bring 2 Tbs olive oil to fragrance then add about a half cup each of chopped yellow onion, leek, green bell pepper, sliced mushrooms and red bell pepper along with about a 1/4 cup of chopped celery or, in my case, Swiss chard stems, and 2 Tbs minced cilantro or possibly parsley. Sautee' until the onions are soft. Then pour in perhaps 1/4-1/2 cup of white wine or dry sherry and cook until the alcohol boils off. Push the vegetables to the sides of the pan and add the fish. Turn the heat to "low", cover and simmer until the cheese melts out and the fish is flakey. Place the fish on dinner plates already charged with a scoop of Mexican rice and a summer green salad or perhaps sliced pineapple, stir up the sauce and pour it over the fish. If we can even come close on this . . . hoo-boy!
Therefor this is not really a recipe but a work in progress. Let's try it on all kinds of fish, seabass in the British Isles, cod in Scandinavia, snapper in the Gulf or whatever you happen to have and then we'll share notes. I'm really looking forward to the development of this one.
