Fish Candy

Again, please pardon the terrible picture. I should put out a disclaimer that though I am not much of a photographer, I don't think I am as terrible as these pictures would suggest. I make the best out of what I have to work with, which is a shitty camera to begin with coupled with a broken LCD screen and this is what we get.

We finished our second bag of flour today with pancakes for breakfast and cake for dessert after dinner. This means that we had consumed over 10 lbs of flour in two weeks time; even for us that is a record. I like to heat up maple syrup on the stove to serve with pancakes, and after we drowned our pancakes in syrup this morning, there was only about 1/4 cup of syrup left. Rather than storing it back in a jar for the next pancake breakfast (likely to be no more than two days from now), I thought I might use it to make a marinate of sorts.

I had mackerel fillets defrosting and ventured forth to cook it in the maple syrup. We had the fish with plain rice and the maple syrup lime marinate reduced to a thick sauce and was delicious. The lime and maple syrup blended really well together and created a sort of bitterness that was offset by the sweetness of the syrup. William proclaimed that it tastes like fish candy.

LIME AND MAPLE SYRUP PAN SEARED MACKEREL

• 4 fillets of mackerel (other fish will also work)
• thumb size piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
  
• about 1/4 cup of maple syrup (make sure it's real maple syrup and none of that Aunt Jemima stuff, no offense against Aunt Jemima)
• juice of 1-2 limes, according to your taste
• pinch of crushed red pepper
  
• sea salt (or kosher salt)
• fresh ground pepper
• vegetable or canola oil

Rinse fish fillets and drain. Place fillets on a plate and rub in salt and pepper.

In a bowl, mix in maple syrup, lime juice, crushed red pepper and ginger.

Heat oil in a pan over medium high heat, when oil begins to bubble, add fish one at a time. Pan sear fish about 4 minutes on each side, flipping when one side has browned. (My tendency is to always flip the fish too soon and they fall apart. The key is to have patience and flip the fish only once)

When both sides of fish has been browned, pour in maple syrup mixture and turn heat down to medium low. The mixture will reduce and thicken; turn off heat and serve when the desire amount of sauce is left.