Yogurt and Berries: Crab Stuffed Flounder + Panko Giveaway!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Crab Stuffed Flounder + Panko Giveaway!

I love fish, but we don’t cook it at home nearly as much as I’d like to. Sunday was a big grocery shopping afternoon (after doggie time at the beach!), and one of our stops was Whole Foods. We can never just go to one grocery store…usually two, sometimes 3! This was a 3-store kind of day (Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Market Basket). They are all close-by so it’s not like we go out of our way, and well, I love grocery shopping :)

We usually only will buy fresh fish at Whole Foods. I know it’s good quality and it never smells fishy over in their fish department. It can be expensive, but if you try to stick to what’s on sale it really isn’t any more expensive than most other stores!

On Sunday, I also learned another fact which solidifies Whole Foods as my go-to supermarket for fish…Genetically Modified (GM) fish. I have to admit that I don’t read or listen to the news nearly as much as I should, so I had no idea that Genetically Modified fish was even an option?! However the nice guy working the fish counter at my Whole Foods was telling us that the FDA is close to approving the first genetically engineered salmon to be sold commercially! Whole Foods will NOT be selling any of these GM/GE fish, but they will also NOT be allowed to have signs labeling that their fish is NOT genetically modified!? I think this whole thing is just insane and can’t understand why anyone would want to eat this “engineered” fish?! Here’s a recent article I just found on the subject.

I digress. While browsing the fish selection, we saw that Flounder was on sale for $8.99/lb, so we opted to go for that! I had this Lemon Pepper Panko I’ve been dying to use and wanted a fish that would work well with it. The WF’s fish man asked what I planned to do with the flounder and I told him. Well he had a great idea of his own…stuff it with crab cake filling!! I purchased about $4 worth of un-cooked crab cake mixture (using blue crab), and that was more than enough to fill our 5 small fillets.

Talk about an INCREDIBLY easy dish that looks and tastes like something much more involved!

Steps:

Rinse and dry fish fillets
Spray a glass casserole dish with cooking spray or brush with olive oil
Scoop crab filling onto fillet, I used about an egg-size amount of crab filling. You could use more, but I didn’t want to have trouble keeping the filet’s rolled up while they baked.
I rolled the fish around the crab, overlapping the fish around the bottom and placing the rolls, ends side down, so they don’t unroll…make sense? Or you could use toothpicks to hold the fish together around the filling.
I then brushed the rolled filets with olive oil and scooped the Lemon Pepper Panko on top.

These 5 baked at 375 got 12-15 minutes. They were thin, so it was easy to tell when they were done. The fish appeared noticeably more opaque white and just started to “crack” at the tops of the rolls.

We served ours with roasted Brussels and some jasmine rice. I normally would have preferred brown rice or potatoes, but all I had was white jasmine rice…good for a change though :)

This was DELICIOUS! And we had leftovers for lunch the next day. Fish dinner for under $5/person!

Giveaway Time!!

Chef Michael Chiarello (who I’m sure you’ve seen on the Food Network!)has teamed up with Progresso to spread the word about incorporating Panko into your dishes!

I know Panko isn’t exactly a “new’ thing, but until now I think I’ve only ever used it one other time! It’s a large flakey crumb, much coarser than regular bread crumbs, and this Lemon Pepper flavor smells divine as soon as you open the box, and it really adds a nice punch of lemon flavor to your dish.

Along with the box of Panko, I received a big beautiful cookbook! I LOVE adding to my cookbook collection, so I was especially giddy about this book!