ArcaMax

Miserable and Ready...

Blackened Sea Bass with cayenne-dusted leek rings and heirloom cherry tomato salad with balsamic reduction drizzle

In June, I decided that I could no longer stand it. I had to make an effort to lose weight again. I was miserable and I didn’t look much better than miserable. Enough already.

I’ve been on a 25 year diet roller coaster with Oprah. Truth be told, I don’t even know Oprah, but we seem to be on the same schedule for weight loss. When she dragged out that wagon of fat and announced that she had lost 40 pounds, I was on the same diet and had just lost 52. We had never discussed it. What were the odds that we’d pick the same doctor-supervised, extreme weight loss program? That was the beginning of my tracking our weight. We’d both lose a considerable amount. Then, without communicating with each other, we’d both gain it back—and that amount of “fat” brought some “friends” along and we’d both end up a little bigger than we were before we lost the weight.

Sound familiar?

I’ve decided I prefer the word “fat”. I’ll quit putting it in quotations now. The other mainstream alternatives just aren’t appealing to me. Some think that obese is better. Whoever dreamed up that a word that starts with O, (the shape of my waistline), would be more politically correct? Others prefer overweight. Another “o” word. One of my favorites is Rubenesque, but so few people know Ruben’s paintings that it doesn’t make sense to use it. Most people just look at you funny if you do. Plump belongs to babies. And morbidly obese just makes me ill. So I’ll just take fat.

Fat it is. Fat is what I’ve been for too long.

So, as I evaluated what I was going to do for a diet, this time, I whined at my doctor that I had had it and I was not going to take it anymore. I was going to find something drastic again. My doctor has been listening to me whine about my weight for about 10 years now. This time his answer was different. He asked me to hold on for a bit, because he had been doing some research, and he felt that maybe, just maybe, he’d found a diet that would work for me. He said he finally understood why I had gained weight. He knew it had nothing to do with being lazy or even that I was eating too much. In fact, I might be eating too little. Working out or not working out had nothing to do with it. I knew that, because I had been working out for years, and I gained all kinds of muscle but I never lost fat.

When he brought me the information on the diet, I listened carefully, intently, slightly skeptically, but I was polite. Then I said I was game. And the weight loss began once again.

I’ve been giving you recipes from the diet for the last few weeks. I haven’t really designated them as diet food. As part of my life you know I develop recipes. Even with this diet, I still have the ability and flexibility to develop recipes. Tons of them. So here’s one for today.

Blackened Sea Bass...
...with Cayenne-dusted Leek rings and heirloom cherry tomato salad with balsamic reduction drizzle

This one is kind of “zippy”. Blackening is a Cajun tradition, and Cajun’s like their food with major flavor. If you don’t like spicy food, switch the blackening spice to celery salt. If you don’t have the budget for sea bass, substitute tilapia, catfish, whitefish, trout, grouper or another fish. Just reduce the cooking time, because your fish will be thinner and will cook faster.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2-6 oz pieces of sea bass

Blackened fish seasoning

2 large leeks cleaned and cut into quarter-inch rings. *White part and very light green part only (see note below)

Olive oil spray

Cayenne to taste (optional)

2 cups of quartered cherry tomatoes (the heirloom ones are just more colorful)

**Balsamic reduction (see note below)

Directions:

Set oven to 400 degrees

Take your cut leek rings and separate them into individual rings. (The last bits in the middle get difficult to separate so just put those on the sheet as a bit of a blob. That’s fine). Lightly spray a large cookie sheet and place the rings on top. Scatter them around and grate sea salt over the top. Roast the onion rings for 15 minutes or until the edges begin to blacken on the outermost ones. Remove from oven and every so gently sprinkle with cayenne to give them zip.

While the onion rings are roasting…

Dust your sea bass pieces with a nice coating of blackening spices on the flesh side only. (top).

Heat a cast iron pan (if you have one, or other high-heat resistant sauté pan) with a light spray of olive oil. Put the fish in the pan spice side down. Sear on medium high for 2 minutes. Gently turn the fish over. (At this point, if you DO NOT have a pan that can handle a 400 degree oven, transfer your fish to an oven-proof baking dish. Otherwise you can transfer the fish in the cast iron pan to your oven).

Roast the fish in the 400 degree oven for 8 – 9 minutes or until the fish easily flakes off of the bottom skin and does not have any translucency left. (If you are using a flatter fish lessen the cooking time to about 4 minutes and check to see if it’s done. You’ll be looking to make sure the fish is no longer translucent).

While the onion rings and the fish are roasting you can assemble your salad

Place the quartered tomatoes on a plate and grate with sea salt. Drizzle on some balsamic reduction instead of salad dressing. (If you do not have balsamic reduction you can use your diet salad dressing. Just a couple of tsp will be enough).

When ready to plate your food:

Dieters get one half cup of cherry tomatoes and a heaping helping of onion rings. Or a larger portion of cherry tomatoes and very few onion rings. (see pic. I opted for more tomatoes. My dining partner LOVES the onion rings). Extra onion rings can be saved and re-heated. Cherry tomatoes can be saved too. Everyone gets to eat a full portion of fish. Do not eat the skin. It should separate with your fork quite easily and then just toss the skin in the trash after you eat.

*Cleaning Leeks. Messy devils they are. They always come with mud attached. Rinse the leeks. Then cut off the white roots. Now, take a sharp knife and slice vertically through the top later of leek and separate it from the rest. You’ll probably see mud. Then rinse the whole leek thoroughly. Cut your rings and discard the green parts. DO NOT put the leek garbage in your garbage disposal. If you do, it won’t be long before you will be calling a plumber.

**Balsamic reduction. Balsamic reduction is very easy (yet tricky) to make. All you need to do is put a bottle of balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan. Gently boil it down until only syrup remains. (The balsamic vinegar will become thicker.) Stop and let it cool. I’ve made the mistake, at the end of the process, of looking away and then burned it. If you spent $12 on your vinegar that will really aggravate you, so be careful. The results are well worth it! I use a bit of a drizzle on so many things. It’s a rich taste.

For storage, I buy one of those old-fashioned bottles with the pointy top and cut it off. (Sort of like an old ketchup bottle that you see at restaurants). The easiest place to pick one up is a hair care/beauty supply store. Stylists use them for dying hair. They are nice because you can cut just a bit off the closed top so you have a very narrow drizzle and can control the amount . If you are not that into cooking, and this looks like a craft project instead of cooking, just ignore me and use dressing. ? This stuff stores very well in your refrigerator for quite some time. Just don’t put it in the bottle until it’s completely cool or you’ll melt the bottle.

Cheers
Enjoy,
Zola

Send email to Zola at dinnerwithzola@hotmail.com.