Man With a Pan by John Donahue Page A

well-traveled Washington Post food writer who had been downsized during the Post ’s recent cutbacks. She herself was considering becoming a free-lance writer. My two-year-old son knew nothing of the cheek meat and brain pulp that had gone into the meal, and he tucked in to his bowl of pasta with relish. So as not to disturb his forward progress, I whispered the fish-head spaghetti sauce recipe to the former Washington Post food writer when she asked for it.
    “Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s la cucina povera !” The cuisine of the poor.
    Maybe so. Or maybe you could just call it “fruit of the freelancer.”

    “You can stop the pain, Marcel. Just show us how to crust a sea bass.”
    Recipe File
    Southeast Asian Catfish
    Taking on Asian cuisine is always a little daunting at first, but there are usually a few key ingredients that unlock a lot of the mystery. When it comes to Thai and Vietnamese cuisine, the particular taste we associate with it comes mostly from something known in English as fish sauce. Fish sauce is a heavily salted, slightly fermented liquid derived from small fish (often anchovies). In spite of its name, it doesn’t taste fishy. It just tastes, for lack of a better description, Southeast Asiany.
    The great thing about fish sauce is that once you buy a bottle of it, you can keep it around for a year or more. It’s cheap and widely available at Asian grocery stores, and it adds a breath of the sea to whatever you’re cooking.
    Lately I’ve been using it to make cheaper freshwater fish like tilapia and cat-fish taste a little more flavorful. Freshwater fish sometimes have a muddy taste (“off flavor,” it’s called in the industry), and a strong sauce, like this one, gives the fish a whole new life.
    I adapted this recipe after writing a New York Times Magazine story on Vietnamese catfish. You can use any white, flaky fish, but in Vietnam today, the most common fish is pangasius catfish, also known on the market as basa or tra. American catfish works great for this, too.
    Vegetable oil for frying
2 pounds skinless catfish fillets
Flour for dusting fish
Salt to taste
¼ cup lime juice
¼ cup fish sauce
Chopped cilantro to taste
    Pour the oil into a large skillet until it is about ⅛ inch deep. Put the heat to medium until the oil shimmers.
    Dredge the fish fillets in flour and shake off any excess.
    Place the fillets in the hot oil. Do not overlap or crowd in the pan.
    Brown the fillets on one side, then flip and brown on the other side (at this phase you’re just browning, not cooking all the way through).
    Remove the fish from the pan and drain on paper towel. Sprinkle with salt.
    Drain off the oil.
    Return the pan to the stove on a low heat.
    Deglaze the pan with the lime juice and the fish sauce, using a wooden spoon to scrape the batter off the bottom of the pan. Heat until just before boiling.
    Return the fish to the pan. Flip the fish once to make sure the sauce coats the entire fillet.
    Transfer to a warm serving platter and garnish with freshly chopped cilantro.
    Serve with rice.
    Pan-national Everything-but-the-Kitchen-Sink Fish Cakes
    Serves 6 to 8
    One of my maxims is that wild fish are precious and should never be wasted. I fish pretty regularly, and inevitably I end up with fish at the bottom of my freezer that’s past its prime. When that happens, I’ll turn to this recipe. It’s an easy way to prepare fish in a ready-to-cook fashion. The cakes may be frozen and reheated later on. They are also an effective way to get people who may not like fish (such as children) to eat fish. The international spices mask most of the fishy flavor.
    3 medium potatoes
4 good-size fillets of white-fleshed fish (tilapia, catfish, pollock—anything cheap), at least 2 pounds total
Olive oil for frying
1 large onion, minced
2 stalks celery, minced
2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled and grated
3 garlic cloves, grated
2 carrots, grated
1 jalapeño pepper, minced (optional) 2 teaspoons horseradish
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