Watch Jeni Wheeler make a beautiful, colorful and healthy dish of swordfish atop a couscous salad!
1 c Pearled Couscous
1 European Cucumber
Baby Tomatoes
1 can Chickpeas
2 Lemons (or lemon juice)
1 Red Onion
Fresh mint
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Feta or Goat Cheese (optional)
5-8oz of swordfish per person
Za’atar
Adobo
EVOO or Avocado Oil
You can sub chicken or Tofu for the Swordfish.
All right, we are going to get started with our fall session of free Zoom cooking class with Jenny Wheeler of the Family Table Collaborative. I am so excited for today’s recipe. Jenny, I’m going to let you take it away. Thank you so much, Tony. I am here in my kitchen at the Family Table Collaborative. Welcome if this is your first time here to fun with food cooking live time with me Jenny Wheeler. I’m super excited to have you here tonight. And we are going to make a really actually quite simple, which is what we like to promote, right? Cooking does not always have to be hard. It doesn’t have to take a ton of time and it doesn’t have to be super expensive. However, eating and cooking as critical life skills is super important. So, we’re so excited to have you join us tonight. As always, we are incredibly appreciative of our partnership with the Hyannas Public Library. We go way back with them and they’re a huge reason why we’re able to interface with the public and do this every single month for over three years. It’s so exciting. So, thank you, Tony. Thank you all of you who join us. Let’s get cooking. All right. So tonight we’re doing one of my favorite dishes. Like this to me is like almost a level of comfort food and it’s so easy but it’s really tasty. So swordfish is a locally caught fish in case you did not know that. They are caught off the coast of Cape Cod all the time. So we’re going to do swordfish. If you want to sub out tofu or you want to sub out chicken, that’s totally fine. Um I went ahead and went with swordfish tonight. And then we’re going to make it over a couscous salad. I had said I had mentioned that you could add feta or goat cheese or keep it with no cheese. This is the level of ingredients. I added one or two things as I often do like when I’m amplifying something. So we’ve got our tomatoes, our pepper, our uh cucumber, European cubes mainly because I don’t like to peel cucumbers. Little olive oil. We have our lemons, our zatar, something I added. I love this creole seasoning. It adds a little bit of zip. Super nice. We’ve got our red onion, adobo, and then I added a little bit of sesame seeds just for presentation value on the top. We’ve got salt and pepper. And then for plating purposes, I’m using some micro greens. They are not necessary, but this is a very simple dish to make. It doesn’t take a ton of time. It’s not super expensive, but it is so tasty. One of my favorites. This falls kind of a little bit in the Mediterranean vibe, which is something that I would tell you is probably one of my favorite ways of cooking. I tend to lean Mediterranean when I cook in general. So, for me, this is my vibe. All right, so let’s get started. Where do we start? Since the Since the couscous is going to take 15 minutes to cook, let’s start there. And then we’ll get that going. Then we will get the swordfish started. We’ll put that in the oven. And by the time both of those are done, we’ll basically have most things chopped and ready to go. So, this is a recipe that start to finish, you’re looking at maybe 30 minutes. So that’s what I love is like again doesn’t have to be super expensive, doesn’t have to take a ton of time, doesn’t have to be so complicated, can deliver flavorpacked, super nutritious, amazing food, and a lot of it’s local. Doesn’t get better than that. All right, let’s get started. Thank you for coming tonight. All right, so for the couscous, it is one cup of couscous. Follow along. I’m using the Bob’s Redm Mill. It’s thericolor pearl couscous. This is their quick cooking version. So, it calls for for to serve three. It calls for one cup of couscous to one and a half cups of water. I’m going a little bit over that. So, I’m going to do a cup and a half of couscous to two and a/4 cups of water. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to get my burner started because I do think it makes a huge difference if you actually kind of what they refer to as toast the couscous first. So what I’m going to do is you can add butter if you want to keep it dairyf free. You can use olive oil which is what I’m using. So I’m just kind of lightly coating my pan. I have less than a tablespoon. It’s probably about a teaspoon and a half because I have a small pan. So, I’m just coating the pan with olive oil. I’m going to let that heat up a little bit. I’m taking my cup and a half of couscous. I’m going to pour it in. I’m going to give this about 10 more seconds. I’m going to pour it in. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to stir this around in the hot olive oil. Let’s get it toasted, if you will. I like that it adds a little bit extra flavor into the couscous when it comes out. So, all right. My pan should be hot. My olive oil is moving very loosely at this point, Tom. Pour this in. And I’m going to give this a stir. We’re going to stir it for a couple of minutes. And you can use any type of pulled couscous. I’m using aricolor. Add some nice color, kind of a nice little presentation. I’m just stirring it around. Let it sit for a minute. I’m going to keep stirring. We’re going to literally just let this toast off a little bit. And all we’ve done is we’ve allowed all of the couscous to be coated by the hot olive oil. And we’re letting it kind of crisp up a little bit. You don’t want to smell it necessarily. You don’t really want to see any darkening. You don’t want to burn any of it. You want to let it crisp a little bit. All right. And I do it makes a big difference. Like I know some people are like, “Oh, no. I just go ahead and do it.” But I do think it changes the flavor a little bit. And I like that. All right. All right. So, now I’m going to go ahead. I’m going to add my two and 1/4 cups water. And you’re going to hear a sizzle as my pan’s nice and hot. All right, give that a quick stir. Let that cook off a little bit. I am going to set my timer. It says 15 minutes. I always go a minute under. So, I’m going to set a timer for 14 minutes. 14 minutes. There we go. start. Okay. So, while that is going, we’re going to get the swordfish started and then we’re going to prep the individual ingredients that are going to go to the salad. The nice thing is with the couscous, everything we’re putting in is raw. So, that’s lovely, right? Makes life so much easier. So, our swordfish is right here. I’m going to clear this off a little bit to give me some working space. So, we have our swordfish. Now, I bought this on sale. I just lost one of my lemons. Um, I bought this on sale. I don’t know how many of you have Prime, but this is a local caught wild caught swordfish that on Prime at Whole Foods Market actually cost me $15 a pound. That’s like almost unheard of in these regions. And it, as you can see, this is a nice piece of swordfish. So, some people, I will tell you, there’s nothing wrong with the darker piece. It’s richer. It’s definitely stronger. So, there’s a lot of people that may, if they’re not a fishy fish person, and swordfish is not super fishy. However, the darker component is going to give you that fishier fish flavor. So, that’s the piece that you don’t want necessarily if you’re serving it to somebody that has a little bit more sensitivity to eating fish. The nice thing about swordfish is it’s like a steak. It’s hearty. It’s delicious. So, I went with kind of a Mediterranean theme tonight because again, Mediterranean cooking is probably one of my favorites. I like just about everything, but that to me speaks to me. So, what we’re going to do is I’m going to give it a little bit of spray. just to make stuff stick a little bit. I’m using an avocado oil, but you can use anything. I’m going to spray both sides. Okay. Then I am going to turn on my pan. I’m using a cast iron skillet because I am going to go from searing it to putting it in the oven for a little bit of time. So, we have that olive oil that we had talked about. We’re going to give the pan a nice little coat. Nothing extraordinary. it isn’t going to absorb a ton of it to be honest. You want to get a nice sear. So, as you can see, I’ve got olive oil. I’m coating the pan, but there’s not really a residual per se sitting around. All right. So, we have our beautiful piece of swordfish. I went with zitar because again, zitar is one of my favorite spices. It’s a little bit of an allspice. Different countries make it differently. Um, but we’re going to give this a nice little coating on both sides. And you can see all zatara. Zitara is a little different in every place, but you can see if you look closely, there’s sesame seeds in this. I’m going to amplify that because I’m going to actually add a little bit additional sesame seeds. But just for a little kick, because I like a little kick, I’m going to add a little bit of this creole seasoning. And you’re going to be like, Creole combined with like Mediterranean. But it’s one of those things that for me just works. I like that little bit of kick it adds. Now, if you don’t want to, you can do exactly what I had suggested, which is adobo. Adobo has a little bit of salt in it, as does the creole. So, I’m not going to double down with that. So, we’ve got the Creole spice. We’ve got the Zatara spice. And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to give that one quick spray again only for stickability, if you will. I don’t think that’s actually a word. I just made it up. Um, so but I’m going to add a few extra sesame seeds because I really like sesame seeds. So, we’re going to add back to So, we’re going to add a couple extra sesame seeds. Now, at the end, you can always add salt and pepper just like you have. I have salt and pepper here on the standby. I’m not going to add it now because here’s the deal. I would way rather under salt for somebody’s pallet than overs salt. So, we have a nice hot pan and we’re going to go ahead and sear off. You should be able to hear that sizzle. As you can see, got a nice sizzle on it. I’m going to sear it off for about 30 to 60 seconds. Then we’re going to turn it over. Turning my couscous down a hair. And I’m going to cover that. Put that on the back back burner so that you guys can see the so we have a nice sizzle on the swordfish. We’re getting a nice sear. We’re going to do it on both sides and then we’re going to put it in the oven for about 12 minutes, which is going to coincide nicely with our timer for our biscuit. All right. So, that we’ve done about a minute. I want to turn that over. And you can see this is about an inch and a half thick piece. This is a pretty nice thick piece of swordfish. Turn that over. And again, we’re just getting a little bit of color. Nice sear. That’s what we want. We want to make sure we’re not losing juices when we put it in the oven. We want it at kind of a higher heat. Your oven should be set to 450. We’re cooking at pretty high temp. We actually that’s funny enough like most people like, “Oh, do I want to do that?” Don’t be afraid of high temp sometimes because you know what? You can flash cook something a little bit better at a higher temp. Takes less time if you actually don’t want the middle to dry out. That’s the biggest thing. And with regular like a thinner fish, it could be done in minutes. Like literally no time. Scolops a matter of a couple of minutes. Most people way overcook them. I feel like fish in general, that’s what people are afraid of. They’re like, “But is it cooked?” So this is again locally caught, wild caught, beautiful fish. You don’t need to overdo it. So, and here’s the deal. You can always cook it a little more. You can’t undo it. So, all right. So, we’ve had this in on both sides for about a minute. I’m going to take it. I’m going to put it in the oven again. I’m at about 450. We’re going in the oven because cast iron, this is one of the reasons cast iron is one of my favorites. Right in the oven we go. Here we go. All right. So, our couscous is still going. We’re cooking that off. That’s fantastic. Now, let’s talk about the salad, right? What are we going to make? What are we going to put in this? And that’s what’s so awesome is it actually is so easy. So, we just put our protein on. We put our um we put our couscous on. Now, let’s bring out what we’re going to put on in it. Now, cucumbers, again, local to Cape Cod. They grow in a lot of places. The European cubes. Some places grow them here. Some places do not. Um, the reason I like European cubes, they tend to be very small on the seed side. They do not kind of interfere with the flavor. And best yet, you don’t have to peel them, which is so awesome. So, when I was dealing with the nerve injury in my elbow, I peeling was really, really hard for me. So, we’re just going to take the puke. We’re going to go ahead. I’m going to take about two/3 of this. You could do the whole thing if you wanted. Now, you’ve heard me probably say this before if you’ve seen the show. You want to give yourself a flat surface when you’re cooking. I have a nerve injury in my elbow. My knife skills are nowhere near what they used to be. But the most important thing, there’s two things actually. One, the most dangerous piece of equipment in a kitchen is a unsharp knife. So, you want a sharp knife, but you also at every chance you get give yourself a flat surface. So, I’m cutting down. See? And I’m going to do it with this. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to cut little pieces. And this all this is is like cutting some bite-siz pieces for the salad. I like it a little bit on the finer side. Not too fine, but a little bit. So, I’m kind of doing what I would call a slightly fine dice. And again, very few times in the world are people judging you for everything being exactly the same size. I live with somebody that does do that, so I understand. But you don’t need everything to be exactly the same size for it to taste good. So, I care more about you cooking and eating real food than you measuring your slicing. So, we’re just cooking up some of our cutting up rather some of our English cube. And you know, I’ve mentioned this before. If there’s an ingredient you don’t love, use less of it or don’t use it. If there’s an ingredient you love, you can add a little extra. No one’s making the rules whatsoever. But I will also encourage you at the same time, try things that you enjoy, but also try things that maybe you don’t know whether or not you enjoy because you don’t know if you like something until you try it. So, we have our cucumber done. Let’s do a little bit of bell pepper. The red I’m using red mainly for color now and I will tell you one other thing red I’m using for color and you know you get different vitamins and minerals from different colored foods. I talk about this all the time. So you should always try and give yourself you know a decent amount of variety in color. However, it also is a lovely alternative to tomatoes um from a color standpoint. Now, I put tomatoes in the list because I love tomatoes and they’re delicious. But if you are making this in order to serve it tomorrow, I would use red pepper, not tomatoes, or at least don’t put the tomatoes in until afterwards because the acid in the tomatoes is going to degrade the food a little bit faster. So, you want to make sure if you’re serving it right now, we’re cutting tomatoes, we’re putting it in it. you’re serving it tomorrow, you can either add tomatoes tomorrow or sub out red peppers because it’ll get you the color. It gets you that look. However, it will not degrade the quality of the couscous. So again, I’m not cutting large pieces for me. I don’t want anyone ever to choke on anything. And that happens a lot more often than you think. So, you want to make sure that you’re cutting things according to how easy is it to eat. Certain things can be cut larger because that’s what people are anticipating. That’s what you expect. But for something like this, I honestly like to cut it a little bit smaller. You could eat this with a spoon if you wanted. Most people are going to eat it with a fork, which is what I would usually do, but you could eat it with a spoon. So, we’ve got our red pepper. Now, our swordfish is in the oven. Our couscous is cooking. And we’ve got some red pepper. And again, it doesn’t have to all be completely uniform, but you want to create sizes that make it manageable for you to eat. So, if you like it a little bigger, cut it a little bigger. Like it a little smaller, cut it a little smaller. Again, not right and wrong as much as a lot of people would like you to believe. You can bury it. So, this is a fairly small dice. It’s not a fine dice, per se, but it’s a fairly small dice. So, and I love red. So, the last thing, we have our tomatoes, but we also have red onions. So, I love red onion. Again, it gives you some color. I’m not going to need all of this onion. This is a decent size onion. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to cut it in half. I’m going to set half aside. I’m going to work off of this half. And again, you’re going to see me I’m going to give you a flat surface because again, I deal with a nerve injury in my right elbow. It impacts almost everything I do with my right hand. So, I’m gonna give you a flat surface. And I’m only going to use about half of this, maybe a hair more. So I’m going in on the side. Again, a fairly fine dice, not super fine. So I went with a little bit more than half of that. Again, keeping a flat surface. Oh, there’s our timer. So, we’re going to pause what we’re doing. We’re going to check our couscous. Looks done. I’m going to go ahead and strain that over here. You can see this is thericolor. So you have all the different colors in it. I’m going to put this aside. Turn off my burner. Finish cutting my onions. You want to make sure you never put your fingers in front of the blade. This is where most people get Oh, I missed a little one. All right, so now we have our red onion. We have our pepper. All the only thing we have left right now is our tomatoes. We have our cucumber. All right, we’re going to go ahead and cut up some of our tomatoes. And honestly, on my side, all I do is usually cut them in half. If they’re larger, you can go ahead and cut them in quarters. That’s completely up to you. Again, no right or wrong. I would not leave them whole only because they do tend to get a little bit of explosion when you go and try and bite a baby cue a baby tomato rather. So this helps with that. Your diners will en you know be very grateful. So we’re just cutting those in half. That first one I did in quarters. And then this last one I’m going to do in quarters because it’s a little bit bigger. All right. So, there we go. Now, all of the ingredients other than our lemon. So, here’s the deal. I brought fresh lemon. I also have lemon juice. If you have lemon juice in your house and that’s easier for you, go ahead and use it. I always prefer to use fresh if I can. So, I roll it to kind of loosen up the juice first. I’m going to go ahead and cut it in half. Perfect. All right. Now, what we have is we’re going to check on our swordfish because it should be just about done. I’m pressing on the top. I’ll show you what I’m doing. I’m pressing on the top. So, a quick test is how firm it is. So, if it was still a little bit squishy, you would be like, I might need a little bit longer. It’s pretty firm. I’m going to cook it for about one more minute, but it’s just about done. So, all right. So, now what do we do next? I’m going to go ahead and plate this. All right. I’m going to go ahead and plate. We’re going to do a little bit of the couscous. Now, you can go ahead and mix this up in a bowl or you can do it individually. I’m going to squirt on some lemon. I’m going to add a touch of salt, a touch of pepper. I’m going to give that a little stir. Then we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to add a little bit dropped it. A little bit of our cucumbers, a little bit of our red onion, and you can make this the day before. So, flavor is nicely sit. A little bit of our fresh. And again, this is a super fresh, super light, not hard to make, and really visibly beautiful dish because of all the colors. And then we’re going to add in a couple of our tomatoes. Now, just for fun, for plating, I’m going to go ahead and put a little bit of micro greens around the edges. Now, you could do greens under the whole thing. You could go ahead and put arugula under this. You could go ahead and, you know, put micro greens under the whole thing. But visually, it just adds again to the plating. All right. So, now we’re going to take out our swordfish. Oh, that’s gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. All right. So, I’m going to go ahead and take a piece of this. You can see that it’s not breaking up when I cut it nice and firm. And I mentioned in the recipe, you could add feta to this. You could add goat cheese to this or you don’t need any of it. Add this right on top. I’m going to add a little bit of micro greens right to the top. And that, my friends, is a beautiful, delicious, tasty local dish. I mean truly start to finish. This is something that takes less than a half an hour and it’s so delicious. Now, something else you can do that I do all the time, you can give a squeeze of lemon right over the top. You also can go ahead and give yourself a lemon slice. Give yourself a lemon slice. Go ahead and slice. You’re going to see I just sliced a little piece of that so that I can turn it. And we can go and do a lemon right on top. That is a nutritious, delicious, mostly local, very simple to make meal. It doesn’t get better than this, people. This is what it takes. Here’s the deal. Not all food is created equally and it matters because healthier people create healthier communities. Health is wealth. Cooking doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and it doesn’t have to take a lot of money. But the benefits will not just feed you today. They’ll feed you as you move forward. This is what matters. Our health depends on us doing this. So from me to you, thank you for joining me today on fun with food. I hope you come back next month and every month thereafter. And again, from me here at the Family Table Collaborative, from Tony and the entire Hyannas Public Library staff, we thank you for joining us and I hope to see you back here again soon for Fun with Food with me, Jenny Wheeler. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. You can send them to Tony in the chat. You can send them to any of us. My email is jenny genifamilytablec collaborative.org. We love to hear from you. We love your feedback. We also love recommendations on things you’d like to see us make. And stay tuned because coming up, we’re going to start having an instudio audience that gets to eat with us after we cook it. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. on what is I think the second day of spring now um of fall um of fall which is my favorite season. I love fall. So thank you for joining us. We can’t wait to see you back here next month in cooking with me fun with food with me Jenny Wheeler. Thanks so much everyone. I hope you enjoy this meal as much as I do. Thank you so much Jenny. That is honestly one of the most beautiful dishes I’ve seen here so far. So, thanks everybody. We’ll talk to you soon.
Dining and Cooking