Mayonnaised Grouper Scampi

Ingredients:

If you've ever gotten a broiled fish at a restaurant, you may have been disappointed—receiving a dry, shrunken husk of what was once a proud aquatic creature. In the poor fish’s defense you’d dry out and shrink up if you were put under a broiler long enough; just look at the old people on Miami Beach. Zing! Enough fun at our leather-skinned senior citizens expense, let’s get down to cooking.

1 1/2lbs of a firm flesh fish, such as grouper or snapper
1 stick of butter
4 or 5 cloves of garlic
Juice of half a lemon or lime
1 tablespoon oregano
1/2 c white wine
A few tablespoons of mayonnaise
Pepperidge Farm Herb Seasoned stuffing mix. About 1-2c

Step 1:

Go ahead start preheating your oven to 375F, drop the stick of butter in an oven-safe casserole dish and let it melt down. Meanwhile, mince up your garlic. I was actually making this part in advance so I could throw it all together quickly so I melted my butter in the microwave.

Step 2:

Once the butter is melted, add your garlic, the juice of half a lemon or lime, the tablespoon of oregano, and 1/2 a cup of white wine. Dried oregano is fine for this dish. When working with dried herbs, I always crunch it up in my hand before I add them. I forgot to have the white wine in the group photo at the beginning, so here’s a shot to help you remember that there is wine in this dish. I usually don’t measure like this, but a picture of me pouring fluid into a dish at an awkward angle would have been pretty boring. A picture of me pouring fluid into a cup which I will then pour into a dish? Pure excitement.

Step 3:

At this point, you’re prepped and ready to go. You can put this in the fridge and it will store for easily a few days. Prepping in advance will shave about 2 minutes off the total time it takes to make this dinner. I used those extra 2 minutes to do The Robot, which in retrospect was a ridiculous waste of time. The inset photo is enlarged to show texture, and it really looks disgusting, but relax-- it’s just garlic herb butter.

Slide the dish into your 375F degree oven and let the butter get good and hot. This is only strictly important if you made the sauce in advance. Like I said, you can do The Robot while you wait.

Step 4:

Put the fish in the dish, skin side up. The skin side is the smother side of the two. Now you can see why this is going to be so good, anything floating in butter can’t be bad. Well, bad for you maybe. Hey, no transfat though!

Into the oven! You want to cook the fish until it is just about done, which should take about 15 minutes, but will vary depending on how thick your fish is. You want to look for a completely opaque flesh surface but the fish should still stay together if pulled. If it starts to flake apart when you pull on it, you’ve cooked it too long. At that point it is completely done and you’re going to have problems doing the next step.

Step 5:

Remove your dish from the oven and flip each filet over. Be careful, because it is liable to break apart on you if you just use tongs. Also remember that you’ve got 375 degree butter in that dish, and flopping the fish into it will likely spread scalding hot oil everywhere. I’m not so big on frying myself. Once you’ve got it flipped over, coat the top of the fish with mayonnaise. Yeah, mayonnaise on fish. When I first heard of this, I was like “No way”, but trust me on this. The mayo melts down into this delicious creamy sauce.

Step 6:

Now coat the top of each filet with a handful of stuffing mix. Notice here that I’m replacing common breadcrumbs with stuffing mix, one of my favorite tricks. The stuffing mix has great texture you just can’t get from straight-out-the-can regular breadcrumbs. As a bonus, they’re seasoned too. (Note: you can always mix regular breadcrumbs, melted butter and seasoning to get a similar effect)

Step 7:

Now set your oven to BROIL and throw the fish back in. Leave the rack in the middle of the oven, we want to give the mayo a chance to melt, and let the fish finish cooking while the stuffing mix browns. Keep an eye on this! You go from delightfully browned to on fire in about 30 seconds. Here’s an example of what happens if you get distracted:

Step 8:

Not too bad, but darker than I’d normally want. Go ahead now and plate your fish up. I like to spoon some of the butter sauce across the top of the stuffing mix once the fish is on the plate. Between that and a little fresh parsley, you’d never know things had gone South in the oven, would you? I served with a little wild+texmati rice and lightly steamed green beans.