Friday Night Home Cooking

This week's Friday night meal was home cooked Baked Panko Sea Bass and Fusilli with Pan-fried Asparagus. Sounds fancy heh...it's not, it's all about how you name them, right? I generally don't follow recipes when I cook for different reasons (baking, on the other hand, is different). Mainly because I'm too lazy to complete the ingredient list so I often substitute. Besides, I'm not inclined to buy an atypical ingredient to make one dish. I'm too cheap and lazy for that. So I usually get inspired by recipes instead and just let my creativity take its role. :) This time was no different but closer to following them than other times.

For the main dish, Baked Panko Sea Bass-- I was inspired to use breadcrumbs for a fish fillet. I didn't have the type of breadcrumbs nor the fish the recipe called for but close enough. I had Panko breadcrumbs and sea bass. My first time using the Panko. In fact, I have limited experience with breading anything. Somehow it makes me nervous. I baked the fish in the 450 degree oven. I also made the yogurt sauce for it which was also included in the recipe. I didn't have lemon yogurt so well...I just added some lemon juice. Both fish and the sauce turned out good. The fish was nicely browned outside and flaky, juicy inside. The sauce accompanied it quite nicely, gave a good balance of crunchy, creamy and slight tangy.

The side dish was Fusilli with Pan-fried Asparagus. The inspiration here was to use the asparagus, Parmesan cheese, and my pasta-craving. So thumbing through the recipe book...voila! I found a recipe that had all three. The recipe called for evaporated milk but I didn't have it, so I just used regular low-fat milk. This was actually my first time dressing up the pasta with milk and cheese so I was quite excited. It turned out very good. Thanks to my honey who grated the Parmesan. He's my favorite (and only) sous chef... :)

We accompanied the meal with 2008 Chateau de Sancerre. We really liked this French white wine. It was still crisp and tasty even after it was not cold.

All in all, I thought it was a great meal. A pretty good success for "almost" following the recipes.