The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper


Vol. 17 No. 21 - March 8, 2017

FEATURE

Enjoy the freshest local seafood

Anna Maria Island Sun News Story

submitted

Serve grouper piccata over linguine.

 

Gulf Coast living spoils you when it comes to food – mostly because it's never spoiled. The images used in ads for beers or bags of chips, with brightly-colored beach chairs and a cold drink in the sand are marketing people to crave a seemingly idealistic paradise. Well, that's our home. Where beachside beverages with friends is a community staple and fresh-caught seafood is an understatement.

I remember while working at a local seafood restaurant, a rather famous guest arrived off a fishing charter with a filet smuggled in a paper bag. He sheepishly sauntered up to me asking if there was any way we could cook his fish for him .

"I don't know how to cook fish, and it could be really awesome," he said.

He was so elated when I responded, "No problem!" that he excitedly proceeded to hug me, which would've been cool if he didn't just get back from a day of fishing, but, alas, I'll take it.

Little did he know, that's how it is every day here. We catch our own dinner. We eat while staring out at the water that it was caught in. Fishermen hop off the boat with the catches of the day for their friends in the restaurant business, providing locals and tourists with some of the freshest and best seafood in the country. We don't bat an eye, we just know what to order. But let's take a moment of gratitude – we're spoiled because our seafood isn't.

Grouper Piccata

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh grouper filets

½ c. all-purpose flour

½ tsp. cayenne pepper (if desired)

Salt & pepper to taste

3 Tbs. olive oil

1/3 c. dry white wine

½ c. chicken stock

¼ c. butter

2 Tbs. caper

1 clove garlic, minced

1 lemon, cut in half

Preheat oven to 350º

Season grouper filets with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper. Lightly coat the filets in flour and shake to remove any excess. Heat olive oil in non-stick skillet. Add grouper filets to skillet, and cook until lightly browned (2-3 minutes each side, depending on thickness). Remove filets from skillet, reserving juices in pan, and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 350º for 5-7 minutes, until fish is almost cooked through.

Add minced garlic to the skillet and sauté for 2 minutes. Add wine and chicken stock, along with the zest and juice from half a lemon. Simmer over low heat until the liquid reduces by about half. Stir in butter until it melts, add capers, and return fish to the skillet. Continue to simmer for 2-3 minutes, or until the grouper flakes easily. Serve on a plate with sauce spooned over the top, or serve over linguine. Garnish with thinly sliced lemon.

Bananas Foster is back

A cocktail bar is about fun, and nothing culinary is more fun than setting fire to dessert, and nothing has more fire than Foster.

We are bringing back the pyrotechnics of an old Beach Bistro favorite to our new cocktail bar – the Doctors Office.

Bananas Foster is not just about delicious pyrotechnics.

It also is good for you. There is protein in the ice cream. There is potassium in the bananas. And my Uncle George always swore by the beneficial effects of rum.

I learned how to make Bananas Foster from a crusty crew of veteran waiters at Arnaud's in New Orleans.

The Arnaud's Bananas Foster Guide goes something like this:

Blend equal amounts of butter and brown sugar in a medium hot pan and dilute it with a little banana liquor. Add silver dollar slices of banana, and quickly toss the bananas in the mix. You then tilt the pan and draw the banana mixture towards the handle while heating the far side of the pan until it is sizzling hot.

You are now ready to blow the whole thing up.

Remove the pan from the flame, and douse 151 rum in some abundance to the hot side of the pan.

Read the part about holding the pan away from the flame again.

If you pour the high octane 151 rum into the pan while it is still over the flame then the flame could potentially leap into the open bottle of rum. If this happens, you now have a startlingly powerful bottle rocket in your hand. The ignited bottle of rum can launch from your hand and travel across the room narrowly missing people and then explode in a ball of glass and fire against the wall an awesomely long way from the original launch site.

I will deny ever having done this. The attorneys for a restaurant where I used to work will deny it as well.

After pouring in the rum – away from the flame – draw the pan back across the fire of the burner, and the fire will jump into the pan and ignite a tower of flaming rum. It makes a VROOOM sound.

At this point the crowd invariably goes, "Ooooohh."

You then use a long handled spoon to sprinkle cinnamon sugar into the flaming mixture. The tiny bits of cinnamon from the sugar will float up through the towering inferno and sparkle like little fireworks.

And then the crowd goes, "Aaahh."

Spoon the molten mix over some great vanilla ice cream, and you are there.

Lush and rich. Bananas and rum and ice cream.

A second cautionary would be appropriate here.

Be careful not to stand downwind.

The first time I made Bananas Foster, there was a cluster of "old pro" waiters in the corner chuckling while I made my preparations. I assumed they were just getting a kick out of watching the rookie make Foster for the first time.

What I didn't know was that they were chuckling because I was standing in front of a rather robust air conditioning fan.

I heated the bejeezuz out of that pan, added a bunch of 151 rum and at ignition a 4-foot pillar of flame erupted from the pan and then passed across my head and shoulders like the Holy Spirit. The inferno removed my eyebrows and eyelashes and left my bushy head of hair a smoking halo.

That cluster of veteran waiters in the corner was rolling on the floor – laughter raucous and abundant.

I mustered the remnants of my smoking dignity and pretended that here at Arnaud's, we regularly set fire to the waiter as part of our Bananas Foster presentation.

"Yup, that's how we cook our bananas and waiters here at Arnaud's."

The awed lady patron who was to receive the bananas observed matter-of-factly, "Look, he's smoking."

Another cumulative guffaw from the corner.

At the Doctors Office we will have trained pros igniting our Bananas Foster.

If you are foolish enough to try it at home, remember what I said about the bottle rocket and standing downwind.

Sean Murphy is the head coach of the talented culinary teams that operate the Beach Bistro, Eat Here and their new craft cocktail bar, The Doctors Office.


AMISUN ~ The Island's Award-Winning Newspaper