fish

Clam Dip

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

Please do not take this post—published mere hours before gladiators attempt to sate our bloodlust by pummeling each other into early-onset dementia—as an endorsement of New England over Philadelphia. Though I’d happily live on nothing but Cape Code chips, I have no loyalty to the land of snow and chowdah—which isn’t to say that I care much about Philadelphia, either.

What I really mean is that I can barely be bothered to give a shit about football under the best of circumstances. If the Steelers were in the Super Bowl, and I was at the game, and a wealthy benefactor had ensured that I wouldn’t have to sit outside in the cold, and I had an entire Mineo’s pizza in one hand and an endless supply of Dippin Dots in the other, and, like, Bernadette Peters were performing a one-woman “strictly Sondheim” medley at halftime… maybe then I’d be able to muster up some enthusiasm. Continue reading →

Fish en Papillote and Herbed Carrots

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

Here are a few reasons fish (and carrots!) en papillote (or en aluminum foil, a la Nonnie) should be in your regular meal rotation, particularly this time of year:

  1. Preparing food en papillote, or inside a little sealed package, is an exceedingly easy, quick, and largely mess-free way to cook protein (and vegetables), making it ideal when you want to make dinner on the only weeknight you have free in between awards season screenings and holiday parties. (I know, I’m playing the world’s tiniest violin for myself.)
  2. But it also feels very fancy, mostly because it’s got a tres sophisticated French name, hohn hohn hohn.
  3. Plus, every time you slice into a little foil package with delicious things inside, you’ll feel like you’re opening a present you gave yourself—and after all, ’tis the season.

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Shrimp Puffs

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

The canon of weirdo Gentile party foods I grew up blissfully unaware of—ambrosia; grape jelly meatballs; anything involving, dear God, gelatin—would not be complete without shrimp puffs, a delightfully ’50s canapé comprised of crappy supermarket sandwich bread that’s toasted, then topped with a mixture of shrimp, mayo, and cheese, then broiled to an appealing golden brown.

Despite its final coloring—especially when the toasts are, say, left to sit in a hot oven a bit longer than they should, thanks to a negligent and slightly tipsy hostess juggling too many things at her own housewarming party—this may in fact be the whitest food in history, culturally speaking. Though I guess hotdish, a Midwestern casserole that combines canned cream of mushroom soup with canned vegetables and hamburger meat and tops the whole thing off with frozen tater tots, might have a bone to pick with that appellation.

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Shrimp Sauté au Citron

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

Oo la la!

What, exactly, is “shrimp sauté au citron”? Is it a rustic French classic, a recipe passed from peasant housewife to peasant housewife to cartoon food critic to, improbably, my Jewish, Pittsburgh-born grandmother? Is it a home cook’s approximation of a fancy restaurant entree, something you might find in Chapter V of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1? Or is it, perhaps, a made-up name meant to gussy up a dish that might better be described as “shrimp in a frying pan”?

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Ceviche

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

ceviche-7

So I got married, went on my honeymoon, returned home, unpacked—and the whole dang world promptly fell apart. As such, it feels a little frivolous to concentrate on what I ate while I was away, much less to relay it all to you in excruciating detail. (If only I’d had the wherewithal to write this post on Monday!) But hey, as a wise Irish girl group once sang, c’est la vie—and this is a food blog, not a liberal whining blog, damnit.

On to the fish! Continue reading →

Baked Salmon and Crookneck Squash

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

baked-salmon-12

It’s Health Food: ’60s Style! We’ve got fish drowned in vermouth; we’ve got summer squash drowned in butter; we’ve got some vaguely spanakopita-esque greens baked with yogurt and a feta-free Greek salad, neither of which actually came from my grandmother’s cookbook because hey, who are we kidding?

The salmon and the squash, though? They’re about the upper limits of what Nonnie has by way of low-cal entrées and vegetables. (I apologize, by the way, for posting yet another salmon recipe— when you’re trying to eat stuff that’s relatively good for you and also trying to work your way through your grandmother’s saturated fat-saturated recipes, salmon frequently seems like the only way to square the circle.) Continue reading →

Shrimp in Beer

/ Hillary Busis / Leave a comment

shrimp beer 10

When I was 10 or 11, my family took a trip to Club Med. It was my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary (!); to celebrate, they brought their whole brood—four sons, three daughters-in-law, a whopping 12 grandchildren—down to Florida, where we enjoyed a week of sun, sand, and scheduled group activities.

Years later, I can only remember bits and pieces from the trip: the thrill of taking a ride on the flying trapeze, my cousins’ brief but passionate obsession with bocce ball, seeing a group of leotard-clad women (who were either much younger or much older than I am now) perform a passable rendition of the “Cell Block Tango.” (I think I laughed pretty hard at “Lipschitz!”) Continue reading →