Braised Monkfish with Saffron and Olives | America’s Test Kitchen (S24 E26)

A traditional North African specialty, a tagine is both the name for a conical cooking vessel and the stew that is cooked inside it.

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– Monkfish is a very meaty, sturdy fish that is perfect for braising, and today, Dan’s gonna show us how. – So I love monkfish, it’s such an interesting
fish, great texture, and it really does hold
up well to braising. Today, we’re gonna work with a lot of kinda North African
flavors to build this, so it’s gonna be really complex, sweet, savory, really aromatic. So I’m gonna start with the aromatics. I have one onion here,
which I’m gonna half, and then slice pole to pole into about quarter-inch thick slices. – [Julia] Okay.
(knife chopping) – Okay, great. So we’ve
got our onions cut. We’re gonna work with carrots as well. This actually plays
into that kind of savory and sweet thing we’re talking about, so very savory with the onions, this is gonna add some
natural sweetness to the dish. (carrot scraping) So I’m gonna slice these
down the center into two. Okay, I’m gonna slice
these a quarter-inch thick. – [Julia] I’m hearing the
sound of a very sharp knife. It is making a really lovely
crack through those carrots. – Carrots can be a tough
vegetable to cut through if you have a dull knife,
so this is nice and easy. Add this to my bowl with the onions. Now, we’re gonna work with an orange. This is gonna add some lovely aroma to it, it’s also gonna hit a little bit more on that sweetness profile,
and it’s gonna work in a couple of different ways in the dish, so I’m gonna use my peeler to take off nice wide strips here. – [Julia] Hmm. Orange zest. – [Dan] Orange zest. Okay, so two of these are
gonna go into the bowl with the other aromatics, and this third one here, I’m
going to mince really fine, and we’re gonna mix it with some garlic. – [Julia] Ooo. – So this is gonna go into our bowl with a teaspoon of minced garlic. We’re actually gonna save this, and it’s gonna go in at
the very end of cooking. – Ah, nice bright hit at the end. – So we have two tablespoons
of extra virgin olive oil over medium-high heat, and we want it to just shimmer, which you can kind of see happening now. We’re gonna go in with
all of our aromatics… (spoon clattering) And a quarter teaspoon of salt. – You know, with the orange in there, that really is an
interesting braising profile. – [Dan] A little bit different than maybe what you’ve had
before for braised fish? – Yeah, so I actually grew
up eating braised monkfish, we had it a lot. – Really? – Yeah, my mother always braised it in a tomato broth, though. – [Dan] Oh, I love that. – With a little bit of paprika, yeah, it was kind of a
standard dish in our house, so I’m excited to see it
done another way ’cause I… It really never dawned on me to make it different
than she always made it. – That’s great. Yeah, it’s gonna have
some of the same flavors, we have paprika and tomato paste going in, but yeah, a few other
things going on, as well. So we’re gonna cook this until
everything is nice and soft, and a little bit of browning, which is gonna be nice for flavor, it takes anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes. (food sizzling) All right, this is looking beautiful, you can see there’s some
fond on the bottom there. Everything’s nice and wilted, and the onions get a little bit sweeter when you cook them that way, so that’s gonna help out the dish a lot. Awesome, so now let’s turn
our focus to the monkfish. – It’s not a looker. – [Dan] It’s not a
looker in any way, right? If you’ve ever seen a whole monkfish… – Oh, they’re evil-looking. – Its massive head and huge teeth. They’re interesting fish,
they’re a bottom-dweller and they’re, like, an assassin,
like, attack hunter, right? And so, they don’t move a lot, but when they do, they
can go really quickly, and their muscle structure
is really unique, I think that kind of
almost lobster-like texture that some people attribute to it, it comes from that, and it’s
gonna hold up really well, it’s not the kind of
fish that flakes apart, so braising is a perfect
thing to do with it. So when you’re shopping for monkfish, you’re only gonna see the tail portion. If you see it like this
at the supermarket, this means that it has the
membrane still attached. – [Julia] It hasn’t been peeled yet. – Hasn’t been peeled, and it’s
something you can do at home, but I don’t know, it’s kind
of a mess, and a lot of times, you end up taking off
more fish than you’d like, so I highly, highly recommend
having your fish monger or whoever’s behind the
fish counter do it for you, and then, you should have
something that looks like this, – [Julia] Right.
– So really, really clean, and this is what we’re gonna work with. All right, so we’re just gonna cut this into manageable pieces,
about three inches in length, so we’ll probably get three
out of this piece here. – [Julia] How many pounds
of monkfish is this? – This is one-and-a-half pounds. So I’m gonna pat this nice and dry, and we’re just gonna season
it with salt and pepper. (pepper grinder rattling) Black pepper is a really nice
component of this dish too, just in terms of how it balances
out some of the sweetness, that really nice heat
and sweet is always nice. All right, so I’m just gonna
flip these over and repeat. (pepper shaker rattling) Now that everything’s
beautiful and soft in here, we’re gonna add the rest
of our sauce ingredients. We’re gonna start with four
teaspoons of minced garlic. (spoon clattering) We’ve got a tablespoon of tomato paste. Again, lots of richness and savoriness, but some sweetness, as well. (spatula clattering) And I’ve got one-and-a-quarter
teaspoons of paprika, one teaspoon of ground cumin, half a teaspoon of dried mint, and I have a quarter-teaspoon of saffron. – [Julia] Oh, hello. Quarter-teaspoon. – [Dan] Quarter-teaspoon. – Ah, nice. – I upped the ante there a little bit with the saffron, right?
– Yeah, you did. (spoon clattering) Oh, saffron and a braise is the best, especially when there’s fish in it, ’cause you can really taste that nuanced fragrance of the saffron. I don’t like it when it gets covered up with lots of big, meaty things. – Exactly, yep. (spoon clattering) Okay, great, we’re just cooking
this until it’s fragrant, and that has already happened. – Smells pretty fragrant to me. (spoon clattering) – Great. So now, we’re gonna do a little de-glazing with one eight-ounce bottle of clam juice. You know, seafood broth out
there isn’t generally very good, and clam juice is really consistent and it adds just some
nice background brininess, it’s not gonna come off as, you know, clam chowder or everything, but it adds a lot of flavor here, and then, you can use that, you can scrape up all of that fond once it gets de-glazed there. I’m gonna add our monkfish now and just kinda nestle
this into the liquid. Make sure that it’s got good contact. – [Julia] Oh, that smells good, Dan. – Doesn’t it? – [Julia] Yeah.
– Already. And I’m just gonna spoon a little bit of the sauce over the top, get that nice and incorporated so it’s not just unseasoned on top there. – Makes sense, you gonna
have to flip the fish over during cooking, or just leave it be? – [Dan] Just leave it be. – [Julia] Let it ride. – Yeah, let it ride, and,
you know, the thing is, like, braising, most of the time,
it takes forever, right? It’s this big project, you’re like, “I’m gonna braise
something in the winter,” what’s great about fish
is it cooks so quickly, you get, like, that comfort
and that home-iness, but in a fraction of the time. – And usually, we braise in the oven, but I don’t see the oven on behind you. – No need. This is a good summertime dish, you know, you don’t have
to turn your oven on, it’s not gonna heat up
your kitchen very much, so we’re gonna let this cook until the monkfish hits 140 degrees, and that’s really important, a lot of people think about temping with just, like, steaks and meat, but with fish, it’s just as important, and that’s gonna make sure we have really tender, juicy results, it’s gonna be perfectly cooked, and that’s gonna take anywhere
from eight to 12 minutes. (pot lid clattering) – Okay, let’s check out our fish. (pot lid clattering) – [Julia] Ooh, what a nice simmer. – [Dan] Smells good too. – [Julia] It does. – All right, so I’m
gonna take our temp here, we’re looking for about 140°. All right, there we go,
we’re at 142°. Not bad. – [Julia] Nice. – Not spot on, but really nice there, so I’m gonna turn the heat off, and then, I’m gonna go fishing
for our orange zest strips. (Julia chuckling) They’ve done their job, they’ve
contributed lots of flavor. Okay, so our final components, we’ve got lots of cooked,
rich flavors in there, and a lot of this is gonna add brightness and kind of pops of complimentary flavor. So we first have a quarter-cup
of chopped, oil-cured olives. Oil-cured is not the best name for them, it’s kind of a misnomer,
they’re actually salt-cured, but they’re really rich and dense, you know, there’s no liquid
to kind of dilute anything, so they’re gonna add
a lot of nice salinity and a lot of richness too, then we’ve got two
tablespoons of fresh mint that’s been chopped. – Oh, so fresh mint to compliment the dried mint that you put in earlier. – Double-mint. (Julia laughing) Double-mint fish. And then, for some acidity,
a teaspoon of sherry vinegar. – [Julia] Mmm. – And then, finally, we have our garlic and orange zest mixture from before, so this is where we’re gonna
get fresh orange flavor and a little bit of nice
punch from that garlic. – [Julia] Yeah, a little kick. – A little kick. So we’re gonna gently just stir this in. (spoon scraping) Oh, yeah, it’s almost like
a folding motion, really, more than anything. (spoon clattering) Beautiful. – Ooh, that smells delicious. – Let’s just do a quick
taste for seasoning. That needs a little salt. – [Julia] Does it? – Mm-hmm. And a little bit of more pepper. (pepper shaker rattling) That’s really our only heat in the dish, and so, it’s nice to have a
good amount of pepper in there. All right, I’m gonna give you this really nice big piece here. – [Julia] Oh, thank you. – [Dan] Lots of beautiful vegetables. – [Julia] That is beautiful. – [Dan] Isn’t it? It’s gorgeous, and really not that much effort involved. – [Julia] No. I’m gonna go and put
some of the sauce first, I just wanna get a sense of the flavors. (Julia laughing) I love it. – You do? – I do. The carrots, the onions,
but then, the saffron, and then, a little bit
of that oil-cured olive, and then, the mint! It’s a complex mixture of flavors.