Batter Licker

I teased you last week with super easy and snackable baked plantain chips, mentioning that they were also great for coating fish and promising to provide a recipe soon. And here I am, following through on that.

This plantain and coconut crusted fish recipe was inspired by something similar devised by another cook on my team during last month’s Top Chef competition. But I wasn’t remotely involved in helping prepare the fish that night, so I scraped together this similar recipe based mostly on memory. The resulting fish is very moist, slightly coconutty, and has a flavorful crisp crust.

… Read the rest of baked plantain and coconut crusted fish on BatterLicker.com!

Sometimes, in my kitchen, at our friends’ home using their grill, and in the food blogging world, things just don’t go as planned. Recipes go horribly awry; pictures turn out blurry; fluorescent lighting makes food appear greenish, blueish or just plain blah.

Or the incredibly simple but WOW shrimp recipe I’ve loved and made for years – with Beautiful Grill Marks Every Single Time – ends up having Zero Grill Marks, Whatsoever the one time I finally remembered to take photographs.

Thankfully, despite a few snafus during the cooking process, the shrimp still tasted pretty freakin’ great.

Snafus?? Well, let’s just say that, if a man walking around in an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat offers to grill the shrimp you’ve so carefully and beautifully marinated …

… Read the rest of grilled herbed shrimp on BatterLicker.com!

I remember picking radishes out of my mother’s garden as a child. And I’m almost certain that I did not clean them with as much diligence (and an entire bottle of hand soap) as the first baby carrots I ever pulled out of the ground. Rather, I brushed off the dirt with my shirt, twisted off the ugly root, and dove right in. Crunchy and spicy, I enjoyed the radish in its freshest and rawest state without any adornments. But unfortunately, I never thought to approach asparagus in the same way.

… Read the rest of asparagus, radish and smoked trout salad with lemon, dijon and balsamic vinaigrette on BatterLicker.com!

It’s New Year’s Eve, and let’s be realistic. As much as you may want to celebrate the first day of the 2011 with a decadent meal tomorrow, festivities that end up getting a little too festive tonight are likely to get in the way of prepping a complicated New Year’s Day dinner. Luckily, a little [...]

I’ve had a lot of bad shrimp cocktails in my life. You know, the ones where the shrimp is rubbery from overcooking, the $19 restaurant appetizer features only four measly little creatures, the shrimp has absolutely zero seasoning whatsoever, or the cocktail sauce tastes like ketchup and ketchup only. But all those shrimp cocktail mishaps [...]