Institutional food can scar you for life. In Finland I had more than my fill of it. For a while I worked at Lapinlahti Hospital in Helsinki, and my duties included joining the patients at a meal once a week. As I remember it, the patients' food was always a notch worse than what the hospital's paying canteen served. Mass catering naturally aims to optimise the ratio of price to food per diner, and in a hospital the demands of healthy eating and special diets complicate things further. In a kitchen on a tight budget, rainbow trout seemed to be on the patients' menu all the time. The hospital chefs disguised this cheap source of animal protein as culinary innovation as best they could, coming up with dubious creations such as Rainbow Trout Topped With Grilled Edam Cheese and Salmon Sprinkled With Pizza Herbs. Suffice it to say, I spent the next five years avoiding salmon, trout and novel ways of cooking fish as best I could 😉
But my steaming basket has changed everything. I only recently acquired a tower of bamboo steamer baskets, and these days it is balanced on my stove every other evening. As the gales from the Hudson are particularly forbidding these days, I am craving the food of sunny Sicily, and this mouthwatering recipe on the website of a New York personal chef brings a welcome respite. I simply had to try it. You should, too. Steaming was my method of choice once again, because it requires very little up-front effort and even less cleaning up afterwards. Along with curing, it is my favourite way of cooking fish precisely because it keeps the smell and the mess to a minimum.
Swordfish seems to be native to the shores of the Hudson, that is, to the fishmonger section of the Uptown Fairway. The supermarket sits right by the cold river, and luckily it also sells organic blood oranges. Salmon is an easy substitute, if you can stomach yet more salmon. Having tried both, I think the salmon family works in this recipe at least as well as swordfish, if not better. The swordfish steak in the picture shows the dark red rings that salmon does not have.
The sauce is as easy as anything and super fresh. Vinegar, orange juice and brown sugar boil down to a syrup, and the blood orange, tomato and red onion go in afterwards, raw. It also made a brilliant way to get rid of the red wine vinegar that had been lurking at the back of the fridge. I have never found much use for it, although we get through other kinds of vinegar by the litre.
Recipe card
Swordfish with Blood Oranges
- 2 servings
- Reducing the sauce 5-10 min
- Steaming 5-10 min
You will need
| 2 | swordfish steaks or salmon medallions |
| 50 ml | red wine vinegar |
| 100 ml | orange juice |
| 2 tbsp | brown sugar |
| 1-2 | blood oranges, supremed (the bitter, stringy white membrane around the segments removed) and diced |
| 1 | tomato, seeded and diced |
| 1/2 | red onion, finely diced |
| salt and pepper, to taste |
Method
- Prepare the sauce: combine the vinegar, orange juice and brown sugar in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and reduce for 5-10 minutes until you have a syrupy sauce. Take care that it does not boil dry or caramelise.
- Bring a pan of water to the boil and set the steamer basket on top. Line the basket with parchment paper.
- Put the fish on a plate, pour a little of the freshly made sauce over it to coat, and put the plate in the steamer. Cover and steam for 5-10 minutes, or until done. Take care not to overcook it.
- Add the diced blood oranges, tomato and red onion to the remaining syrup, but do not cook it any further. Let the sauce cool in the fridge while the fish steams.
- Let the fish rest for a few minutes at room temperature. Lift it onto a serving plate, salt it and top with the cool sauce.
- Serve with couscous, sticky rice or polenta.
The perfect movie to follow this meal is A Perfect Murder. You can envy Gwyneth Paltrow's kitchen and pretend that you own a palatial apartment with an acre of kitchen on Park Avenue, with a personal chef bustling about in it, of course.
