Annalena flies solo: is this a new recipe? Monkfish, mushrooms and tomatoes

One of the things that people say about cooking is that, ultimately, there really isn't anything new that comes out of a kitchen. For the most part, this is true. Think of how many people have been cooking since the beginning of time. Steak tartare? Uh, no. Even when you think it's really, REALLY creative. A few years ago, I thought that lemon verbena would make a wonderful sorbet, and it did. I bragged about it. I told my herb vendor (Stokes Farms), that I did it. I was so proud. Mario Batali's sous chef was there. He gave me their house recipe.

Mine was better. But it WAS the same thing. Of course, when you look at the cooks who are "out there," like the restaurant Alinea, or others, this is all new. But is it food? I've not been to these places, but sorry, I remain unconvinced. But perhaps that's unfair. It is invention coming out of those kitchens. Whether one chooses to eat it or not, is a different issue.

You can never learn enough about cooking, and you can study recipe after recipe after recipe, and certain themes emerge. For example, let's look at the example of short ribs. I really don't remember which one of the "brown" spirits was the first one used, but there are recipes for short ribs braised in bourbon, in scotch, in beer, in stout, in lager, etc. I THINK the first one was actually coffee, and if you think about it, certain flavor notes in coffee DO suggest the flavors of those strong drinks, so it was just one step to them. Are they new recipes? Probably. But where does "new" become variation, and where does it just turn into copying?

I dunno.

My recipe has probably been made somewhere, probably by some Provencal cook, because it feels like it. On Monday, shopping at the Farmer's Market, someone was asking my fish monger Dolores about monkfish. She and her buddy Jan were explaining how to cook it, and of course, I jumped in. Now, I was NOT planning to buy monkfish, but now the thought was in my head. Ten minutes later, I had a pound and a half tail of it.

I like monkfish. It's frequently called "poor man's lobster," for reasons I don't get. It doesn't taste like lobster to me (I HATE lobster), I don't think the texture is the same, so I just don't get it. I DO like it. If you saw a monkfish before it was butchered, you might not want to eat it. The fish is UGLEEEE! And scary. All of the meat IS in the tail, it's nice and solid and dense, and it's a white fish with very little fat in it. It's still sustainable, and it's still cheap .

I also picked up a pound of shitake mushrooms. I use a lot of mushrooms at this time of year. These are not foraged mushrooms, but they are really good. Their solid density really appeals to me with winter food. But there wasn't really all that much to work with in the kitchen, t hanks to my latest purge of stuff. So, it was looking like mushrooms and monk, in some way, manner or form.

I like baked monkfish, and while mushrooms do bake up nicely, they throw off a lot of water, and they take a long time to get soft. So I decided to pan fry them a bit first. A few sprigs of rosemary, five small cloves of chopped garlic, and a pound of sliced shitakes went into a pan, and cooked for ten minutes.

A note on shitakes. The stems are tough. REALLY tough. You can save them and add them to a stock or b roth, but I love to just chew on them. I'm weird, I know.

And a note on rosemary. When you cook with i t, leave it on the branch. The reason for this is those needles. They're extremely bothersome if you wind up with one of them in your teeth. If you leave them whole, the flavor will go into the food, and you can pull out the branch at the end, and have no problem.

I put the mushrooms down on the bottom of a 9x13 glass baking dish, with the oil. That was enough for the fish to rest on, patted dry and salted. Looking at it, it just looked, well, lonely. But I had a lot of the baked tomatoes I made when they were in season, all under oil. I crushed four of them in my hands, and added that to the mushrooms. Then I covered everything with foil tightly, and put it in a 400 degree oven.

I DID overcook it. I baked for 30 minutes. 20 would have been fine. But taking the foil off released a wonderful aroma of mushroom, tomato, and fish, with rosemary underneath it all It served up beautifully, with swiss chard and couscous.

Maybe this isn't original. Very little of what a cook does, ultimately, is original. But if you wanted to copy this, either with monkfish, or some other white fish, be my guest. If you use fish steaks or filets, like cod, or flounder, or pollak, or something like that, I suggest you cut the cooking time down to ten minutes or so. Check the fish with a knife to see if it's cooked through.

You will enjoy this. I promise. And you don't have to give me credit.