Red Snapper, Green Sauce

Contains:  Seafood, nightshades, wheat, gluten.  Is:  Dairy-free.

Page 90, Italian Immigrant Cooking, by Elodia Rigante.

I’d bought this cookbook ages ago, because I was eager to try Italian cooking that hadn’t been overly-sweetened, overly-carbed- and had some true roots to the culture it came from.  Immigrants will tend to cook that way.  (It turns out I am not certain this is a best cookbook for the purpose I bought it for, but hey.  Do let me know what cookbooks you may use for authentic Italian from whichever region of that nation you rejoice in cooking…)

As unfortunately, most of the Italian restaurants I’ve seen either in western Connecticut or in western Massachusetts, don’t really go there – overly sweet, an over-abundance of tomato sauce, (AND the SAME tomato sauce from dish to dish…) a lack of true care – hence, I’ve been fairly neglectful of this cuisine in my blog.

For the sake of a challenge on Cookingbites.com, where I had to pick the 14th cookbook in my collection… I’m making this recipe below.  Since I recently did a pasta salad or three, I decided I wanted to make a lower carb / lower starch recipe from the book.  Hence, I chose Red Snapper, Green Sauce.  Plus, I found great red snapper back down in my old Connecticut stomping grounds.

I made a half-recipe, as shown below.  I live alone…  But otherwise I created this recipe exactly.  In the future, I’d half further the amount of oil… we don’t need all that, and most of it pooled off elsewhere in the cooking pan.  A waste.

Cookbooks. The 14th book in just had to be one I had to remove adjacent cookbooks to pull this one out for the challenge. Oh, well… I see some good recipes.

Prep Time: 15 minutes max.
Cook Time: 10 minutes.
Rest Time: A couple minutes.
Serves: 2.
Cuisine:  Italian.
Leftovers: Sure. 

• 1/2 slice Italian bread (I had to buy a whole loaf of bread for this!!!)
• 1/2 cup / 115 mL olive oil  (Recommended to drop this in half!)
• 1/4 cup / 60 mL lemon juice 
• 1/16th cup / 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
• 1/16th cup / 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1/2 tablespoon minced fresh basil
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 cup minced green bell pepper
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 2 to 3 red snapper fillets

Toss everything above up to and including the ground pepper into a blender.  Blend.

If too thick for your tastes, add a 1:1 mix of olive oil and lemon juice, blend further, to the consistency you want.

Stir in the minced bell pepper and capers, but don’t mangle those fellers in.  Just stir.

Take the fillets, and lay them on a lightly-oiled pan.  Top with the rest of the ingredients.

Broil in pre-heated oven for ten minutes.

I’d say:  half the amount of oil.  The top photo was the first photo I took, but less than five minutes later…. ahem, more oil seeped out.  Good quality REAL olive oil I lost, too.  This is THAT photo:

Red snapper, overwhelmed by the oil in the  green sauce. Very good, but could have used much less olive oil.

Oh, here’s the current cookbook corner in my kitchen:

Here they all are. Top shelf: cultures around the world. Second shelf: General, sauces, vegetarian, vegan, soups, BBQ. Counter: Rice, grains, Native American, Paleo, meat, fish, restaurants, and overflow.

This recipe has been shared at Fiesta Friday (hosted by Angie), and by Full Plate Thursday, hosted by Miz Helen.

 

 

 

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