So, we're gonna make a great dish. Roasted halibut with spicy black bean cakes.
And I have my ingredients in front of me, in the raw form. And then, we're gonna go through, actually
making these really nice black bean cakes, that can be done ahead of time and refrigerated.
And I have some fresh halibut. The season is just starting.
You can pair it with any nice white fish. I'm trying to highlight the flavor of the spices in the black bean cake.
So, looking at our ingredients here.... We're gonna have an onion, and garlic, some jalapeño, you can use Serrano, or any other nice spicy pepper....
cooked black beans, some sweet potato - that we're going to peel and grate finely.
A little bit of cumin.
And then we're gonna take these fennel seeds and toast them and crust them on our halibut.
So, all these flavors will come together. We have a little bread crumb, egg, and lime, that will tie
together the black bean cakes.
So, let's take a look at a the prep of this. So, the first thing we're gonna want to do is our onion.....
and our garlic, a little bit of olive oil, and our jalapeño....and our cumin.
We're gonna cut these here in a second, and this will be the base of the black bean cake.
Okay, so I've prepped my onions, garlic, jalapeños, and I want to cook it down. This is the base flavor of our spicy black bean cake.
So, I'm starting in a medium heat pan, quarter cup of olive oil....
our onions......
And we're gonna cook these down until they're soft and translucent, and just starting to color.
[sizzling sounds]
And then we'll add our garlic, and our jalapeño, and our ground toasted cumin.
So these flavors will kind of bloom, and this will be the base of our cake. In the meantime.....
what I want to do, is toast some fennel seed. And this is a kind of a classic technique of toasting spices to
bring out the flavor. And we're going to grind it, and this will be used to spice our halibut.
So, I just have a warm pan here.
And just over medium-low heat, dry.....
Toasting the spices until I can see a little bit of smoke coming up, a little bit fragrant, and they start to pop.....
then I'll just take it off the heat, a little bit.... I'll grind it in a spice grinder.
So taking a look at our onions, I just want to get the beginning cooking on here.
Slightly translucent. This is kind of called sweating the vegetable.
And then I'll add the garlic. I don't want that garlic to get overcooked otherwise we'll bring out a bitter flavor.
We can hear these seeds popping.
And starting to turn light brown.
I'm just gonna take them off the heat. See the smoke coming out of the pan?
And that's all we want. Kind of just to activate the flavor in the dried spice.
So, coming back to these onions, these looks nice, slightly translucent.
We'll add our jalapeño and garlic.
We've got about a quarter cup of jalapeño there.
And about two tablespoons of fresh chopped garlic.
And then our toasted cumin, ground cumin,
and I toasted this in the same way I did with the fennel seed. Ground in a spice grinder.
Okay, it smells great. Cumin is a spice that's a fat-soluble, so it's being activated by the olive oil in there.
So, that we're kind of bringing out.... blooming the flavor, as we say.
So, we'll let this go about two or three more minutes, until it's nice and soft and kind of concentrated....
In the process, you can see I'm evaporating the water and concentrating the flavor.
And then.....
We'll be ready to add our cooked black beans.
And the way I did this is I soaked them overnight in cold water, and then brought them up to a simmer,
and I added an onion, and a garlic, and uh....
.....a little bit of thyme, and cooked them until they were done, drained them on....
So, they already having a little nice base flavor. Kind of an earthy flavor.
We're gonna combine them with this, and then the sweet potato.
You can use a yam, which is darker, a garnet yam, or a sweet potato, either/or will work.
Alright, so coming back into these black bean cakes.... I've grated my sweet potato.
Looking at my base flavor right here, I'm just starting to et some color on the garlic and the onions. As this is a.....
....the sign that I'm getting great flavor development, and smells great. The cumin is really coming out, nicely.
So, I'm gonna add two cups of black beans.
Turn off the heat.
And this goes right into a mixing bowl.
[sound of spatula scraping pan]
And there's a couple ways you can do this.
With the back of a fork - I like to use a whisk - but I want to kind of a mash the beans. And this is going to be the the cake base kind of holding it together.
So, when I cooked my beans, I cooked them Al Dente, so there was still a slight bite to the skin,
but the interior of the bean is really creamy, and that's what I'm trying to extract right now.
So, a couple minutes of doing this.
All right, so these are slightly mashed, we've incorporated with our base flavor.
Now, I'm going to add my two cups of grated sweet potato.
I have 3/4 cup of bread crumbs, toasted seasoned bread crumbs, and two eggs to kind of hold this cake together.
All right, so I'm just gonna mix this until it's combined, for about a minute, and all the while, I'm
still kind of mashing the black beans. I'm going to season with my kosher salt and fresh black pepper.
And now, I'm gonna add some whole black beans, because I want the texture of this in the cake.
So, the final cup - one cup of black beans.
All right, then I like to chill this for about 15 to 20 minutes to firm it up and then we'll come back and we'll form our cakes.
Okay, picking up here on our cakes, they've been seasoned, chilled....
And now I like to form about a 2-inch cake. Dredge them with the bread crumbs once.
So, we have some nice black beans sweet potato cakes, and right now, we're about to cook them.
So, medium heat on one side, for about 2 minutes, then I'll flip it. And then I'll finish it in the oven.
So, we grated a sweet potato and went in *raw,* so we want to kind of bake it for about 5 to 10 minutes,
so that sweet potato has a chance to cook through, and tie this cake together.
So, let's take a look at the other components to our dish. We have our halibut.
I've portioned them into nice two-to-three ounce portions. This is kind of like a small plate presentation.
We're gonna garnish with a little bit of lime. We have our toasted fennel seed.
And I'm gonna season with a little bit of salt and pepper.
Coming back to our spicy bean cakes.
We've cooked one side. We're gonna flip them,
and pop them into the oven, preheated 400 degree oven, for about five minutes.
So the bean cakes are in the oven, and let's work with our halibut.
So, we've toasted our fennel, and you can see that it's a nice color. I want to grind the fennel.
And I'm gonna add a little bit of pepper, a little bit of salt. So, I'm making my seasoning for my halibut.
[Spice Grinder sounds]
And if you don't have a spice grinder like this, you could use a standard coffee grinder.
At home, I have a nice little coffee grinder that I just use for all my spices.
And when I'm done grinding it, I just put salt in there and kind of wash it out that way.
Another way.... You won't get it as fine, but you can take the back of a pan with your spices, and kind of crush them and then chop them fine with your knife.
So, let us work with our halibut.
Take our spice mixture..... And only a little bit.
And a touch of salt. I have my pan on medium low.
So, I'm ready to cook.
So, whenever I'm cooking fish, I want the pan hot.
And I want to add the salt to my fish at the very last second,
because salt draws out moisture, and I don't want a wet piece of fish going into the pan, otherwise it will stick.
A little bit of olive oil.
And as you can see, the oil is just starting to shimmer. And I want to add the fish before it starts to smoke.
Crust side down.
I'll season the backside of the fish with a little bit of kosher salt.
And some of our ground toasted fennel.
So, I'm gonna cook it on one side for about 3 minutes, and then flip it to the other side,
finish it in the pan our cakes will come out we'll present this dish.
So, let's take a look at the halibut.
I'm looking at.... to know that I'm ready.... I haven't even touched the halibut yet.
And I want to make sure that it's ready to flip without sticking, so I look around the edges.
And I'm seeing the edges are starting to turn opaque.
I'm kind of cooking this on medium/medium low heat, so....
it cooks slowly, evenly.... I'm not gonna overcook the spices, because if I overcook the spices, then it's bitter.
So, just kind of taking my spatula, and it is ready to turn.
So, if I was making this for 20 people, 30 people,
I would brown one side of the fish, and then take it off the heat.
And then I would go ahead and pop the fish into the oven and finish it.
But since I'm just doing one dish right here, I'm gonna finish my halibut in the pan.
Let's take a look at our cakes in the oven.
Okay, they're looking good. I'm gonna set this aside.
And work with the garnish, here.
I'm gonna present on this plate right here. I have a little bit of cilantro, I'm going to do some lime wedges.
Adding the lime to this final dish is going to kind of give it the acidic pop that we need.
So, the black bean cakes, a couple of wedges of lime....
We have our halibut, it's looking perfect, I've turned off the heat. Perfectly cooked.
I'm going to garnish my plate with some of the black beans.
So, a little sprig of cilantro in here. We have our fennel roasted halibut with spicy black bean cakes.
The lime here is going to be a perfect addition to our dish.
We'll squeeze it over. And this is kind of how I like to serve it to the customer. A little bit of interactive.
Enjoy.