Recipe Contest WInner

I finally decided on a winner for the recipe contest. It was tough – the recipes I got from Die Murane and Eternal were excellent, but FoodCrazee’s turned out great, even after a few problems – all on my part.

The first problem was I dropped the bottle of fish sauce, which pretty much exploded in the kitchen. After cleaning the floor, it only smells a bit like high tide in the house - we have to press on without fish sauce. No banana leaves, though I did find lemon grass. No bird’s eye peppers, so I substituted Ms. Habanera. I guess if you are serving the girls during tea you could stick with the bird’s eye peppers, but the Habaneras are a “come to jesus” kind of pepper and will really add some bite to your food.

Anyway I pressed. I heated 2Tbs of peanut oil laced with diced Habaneras and garlic in the microwave, thinly sliced the lemon grass and use my vegetable peeler to zest the lime. I sprinkled two Mahi-Mahi fillets with a pinch of salt and black pepper, then squeezed the lime over them and brushed on the flavored oil. I scattered the lemon grass and lime zest over the fillets, then wrapped them in foil leaving an end to the pouch open so I could pour in a bit of rice wine (I wanted something to make up flavor and moisture lost when omitting the for the fish sauce that met its fate at much too young an age). Crimped the edges of the foil pouch and tossed it on the grill.

I did take a picture of the finished product., but it was way over exposed so I am not going to waste your time. The fish was great, even with the substitutions I was forced to make.

If you are interested in Oriental food motor on over to Food Crazee’s site he has some kick ass dishes!

I am going to donate the $100 to the Westside Food Bank in his name. Thanks to all who played!!! I will post the results of my efforts with your recipes later. Still wish I would have gotten some Aussie recipes, but maybe you can’t do much with roots and grubs. Yeah, that’s a challenge to you upsidedowners…

Do yourself a favor and visit the links on the right, there are some interesting folks out there - a very mind expanding kind of experience!