Healthy Fish and Sweet Potato Grits

Healthy is a loose term to be sure.   In Southern circles grits aren’t grits if they don’t have a big hunk of butter and cheese.  Healthy to some people means to cut out all the fat, going from 60 to 0 and maybe even cutting out the salt.

In Spinach Tiger circles healthy is good old fashioned food, fresh ingredients, and nutrition sensibility. It doesn’t mean low calorie; it means lower calorie, which in today’s world of overeating, equates to the right amount of calories to sustain a reasonable weight, kicking out the extremes of feast and famine mentality.

It also means not using artificial ingredients and chemicals which abound in many “diet” foods.

My inspiration for this dish comes from the Southern Oyster & Steak Restaurant  I posted about here.  When I love a dish, I try to figure it out, and  make it more suitable for home cooking and everyday eating.

Restaurants tend to put a lot more fat into food than we would at home. Where they use a stick of butter, I’ll use a tablespoon, opting for the trimmer, lighter fare that I can control, but I wouldn’t dream of using margarine or butter substitutes or trying to make food that has no fat.

No fat, no flavor, and deprivation leads to overeating.

It starts with these sweet potato grits.

This is the lighter, scaled down version of Southern comfort food, the kind of dish that you can work out hard for an hour and come home to, and feel like you are eating real food that satisfies and nourishes.

I used red snapper as my fish of choice, but you could use whatever you want. Halibut was in the original inspired dish, but tilapia or even flounder would work as well.

The key is to slim down the grits, add in the sweet potatoes  which are a filling, yet good complex carbohydrate and top with a buttery fish that wasn’t cooked in butter, but flavored with high impact.

I didn’t use any tasso or sausage in this version, but I’m sure there will come a day when I will make a dinner party version, pumped up with  the traditional fat trinity, pork, butter and cream. In the meantime, enjoy a balanced, lighter, taste of the South.

You might also like these Fish Dishes

Red Snapper with Pistacho Pesto

Sword Fish Agridolce

Salmon with Shoe String Sweet Potatoes

Sole Meuniere

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Healthy Fish and Sweet Potato Grits

A slimmed down version of a Southern Classic, made with red snapper and sweet potato grits.

Course Entree

Cuisine American

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 3

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 pound red snapper (or any milk white fish) boned with skin on, cut into 4 serving pieces.
• 1 tablespoon olive oil coconut oil or avocado oil
• 1 tablespoon cajun spice such as Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning

Red Cabbage Slaw

• 2 cups sliced red cabbage
• 1 onion sliced
• salt and pepper
• Sweet Potato Grits Recipe Here
• 3 tablespoons grated cheddar or gouda cheese optional.

Instructions

• Make Sweet Potato Grits Recipe Here
• Add gouda cheese as option during cooking time to grits.

Fish

• Heat heavy bottom frying pan with olive oil or coconut oil.
• Rub fish on both sides with cajun spices
• Heat pan to medium heat. Place fish in hot pan.
• Cook for 2-4 minutes skin side down, until skin is crispy and fish easily moves. Turn over, cook for 2-4 more minutes.

Red Cabbage Slaw

• In another pan, saute onion and cabbage until wilted about 6 minutes.
• Add in salt and pepper to cabbage.
• Arrange fish on top of grits garnished with red cabbage.

Serve the snapper over these sweet potato grits.

The post Healthy Fish and Sweet Potato Grits appeared first on Spinach Tiger.

I gravitate to the savory and like my grits for dinner. I made my first grits and dish here pairing a creamy tomato based dish of grits with osso buco. That is still one of my most memorable fancy comfort food dinners to date.

I’m a big fan of the tried and true southern dish, shrimp and grits. If it’s on the menu, I usually order it. I have my own fantasies about how it should taste and this dish at the Mad Platter comes pretty close.

The grits should be creamy and there should be heat and lots of flavor and smokiness.  I’m beyond disappointed when a place tries to be hipster and serves shrimp and grits with a grits cake. It has to remain a comfort food.

This is part one of the dish, and meant to be a cushion for a great piece of fish.

Savory sweet potato grits are creamy and deliver a big sweet potato flavor. As a stand alone side dish, I garnished with some roasted, salted pumpkin seeds. It’s best to buy those raw and roast them because they just taste better and  you don’t want them too salty.

I’ve purposely kept this dish savory. I’ve looked at recipes and saw the addition of cinnamon and ginger, but I wanted to stay true to the natural goodness of a sweet potato.

Of course, you can make it sweet and add those spices in if that’s where your mood takes you. You can even make it spicy by adding some cayenne pepper or the heat of your choice.  You could go more Italian and add in 1/4 cup grated parmesan or pecorino cheese, but I wouldn’t pair that with seafood. That might be nice as a side dish for pork.

I’m going out of town for a culinary adventure with a group of bloggers for the next few days, and when I return, I plan to cook and feature part two, my version of fish and grits.

Tell me, do you eat grits and how do you like them? And do you have any new wild hipster dishes recreating the comfort foods of the south.

More Recipes You Might Like

You may like more sweet potato recipes. One of my favorites comes from my mom, Retro Rose.

Retro Rose Candied Sweet Potatoes

Fish and Sweet Potato Grits

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Savory Sweet Potato Grits

Sweet Potato grits, made savory. Great as a side dish or a base for seared seafood or shrimp.

Servings 6

Ingredients

• 3 cups water
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 large sweet potato roasted
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoons white pepper
• 1 cup grits
• 1/2 roasted pumpkin seeds for garnish optional

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375.
• Bake sweet potato until thoroughly cooked, about 45 minutes.
• Bring water, milk, butter to a boil.
• Peel sweet potato. Take through a ricer. Add to liquid. Add salt, pepper.
• Wash grits off, but placing in bowl with cold water. Swirl around and allow the light bran to come to the top. Discard and pour off water.
• Add in grits and bring to boil, stirring.
• Once the mixture is boiling, turn to the lowest possible heat you can. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes until most of liquid is evaporated.
• Saute pumpkin seeds with a little bit of olive oil and salt for five minutes, making sure they don't burn.

Notes

You can skip milk and add in a cup of chicken broth for added flavor.

I followed the directions for white stone ground grits on their package. If you have a different kind of grits you might want to use their recipe and add in sweet potatoes.

The post Savory Sweet Potato Grits appeared first on Spinach Tiger.

So if I tell you that these grits are flavored with pecorino romano, and a slow cooked veal-based, tomato wine sauce from Marcella Hazan, would you still turn up your nose? I think not.

Now, how in the world did this California Yankee decide to use grits as my base for my sweet, aromatic, milanese ossobuco? WelI, I couldn’t find polenta and some might even argue that grits and polenta are the same thing, they are similar, but not the same. I had polenta in my mind, in my heart, and yet not in my grocery bag. But, I had just cracked open my bag of Falls Mill White Corn Grits, ground by water power right here in middle Tennessee for a shrimp and grits dish and I had a cup of grits remaining. Isn’t this really what a true Italian would do? Grab the freshest local ingredient and make it work. But, you might be thinking, they are the same thing. Grits are much finer than their courser counterpart, but yes, you can certainly cook them in very similar fashion, and so I did.

There are two ways to do this. You can make the grits and top it with the veal and sauce, or you can make the grits and take half of the sauce, an extra cup of broth and chopped tomatoes and cook the grits in the sauce. It’s good either way. Just make sure you realize how much liquid your grits will be absorbing (like rice or pasta) when added into a dish uncooked. Add lots of liquid for that absorption.

Falls Mill
Falls Mill, located in Beveldere, Tennessee, they travel by wagon to a local farmer to purchase white hybrid corn. Then using only water power, they make the grits, including powering the elevator. I am so smitten with this company, I plan on making a trip to visit their museum and country store on my next sunny day off. You can order from their website and please note that their corn grits are perishable and must be refrigerated, as there are no preservatives. I nearly missed this because I am so used to throwing any bag of grains right into my pantry.

The Ossobuco
Traditionally, ossobuco (braised veal shanks) is made with risotto milanese, sometimes mashed potatoes or creamy polenta. This tells you right off the bat that this is comfort food, the kind of comfort food that supersedes any fancy pants, couture cuisine. Veal, and veal bones in a braise means exceptional flavor that does not overpower anything else in the pot. It’s the quintessential rustic elegance that is more and more become the Spinach Tiger calling card.

This is the first time I’ve ever made ossobuco, which is sometimes spelled in two words, osso buco, but it won’t be the last. I’m not afraid to embrace veal; it’s part of my heritage, and while it can be expensive, I was able to get two very meaty shanks at Fresh Market for $14. I now wish I would have bought 4 because we could easily eat this two days in a row. Although, after having eaten this meal, I think the four shanks would have disappeared in one night.

There are a lot of recipes for ossobuco on the internet. What is the same in all of them is browning the veal shanks, and using vegetables, aromatics and white wine to braise for several hours, until the meat falls off the bone, which is why you tie it with string (something I forgot to do). The traditional garnish is a gremolada, a compound of parsley, lemon zest and garlic.

Marcella’s recipe calls for 8 veal shanks. I only used two, but did not reduce any other ingredients. I wanted a lot of sauce, knowing I would be using it for the grits. I also added in fresh thyme. I used a can of San Marzano tomatoes, a little more expensive than other brands, but taste like you just took them out of the garden in August, and worth it. The sauce tasted bright, fresh and a little sweet in teh way a good tomato can taste sweet.

Ready to go into the oven, white wine, chopped tomatoes, parsley, sauteed, carrot, onion, celery, fresh thyme, bay leaf.

Optional: Ossobuco atop grits that are already mixed with sauce. Rustic can look beautiful.

Gremolada, the traditional garnish of parsley, lemon zest and garlic.

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Cooking Italy: Ossobuco with Falls Mill White Corn Grits

Adapted from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Italy meets the South with Veal Osso Buco with White Corn Grits.

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Total Time 2 hours hours 30 minutes minutes

Servings 4

Author Angela Roberts

Ingredients

• 1 cup onion
• 2/3 cup carrot finely chopped
• 2/3 cup celery finely chopped
• 4 T butter
• 1 teaspoon garlic chopped fine
• 2 strips lemon peel I used lemon zest
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 8 veal shanks Note: I only cooked 2 meaty shanks and used all the rest of the ingredients
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup meat broth
• 2 1/2 cups canned plum tomatoes coarsely chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• several sprigs fresh thyme
• several sprigs parsley
• freshly ground pepper
• sea salt

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350, for two hours of braising
• Choose heavy pot that can be put in oven, large enough to put a single layer of veal shanks.
• Put onion carrot celery and butter on medium heat, cook 6-7 minutes, add garlic and lemon cook few more minutes.
• Put some vegetable oil in skilled and turn on heat to medium high. Coat veal in flour, and when pan is hot, brown veal on both sides. Once browned, put veal in pot over chopped vegetables. With only a little oil left, add wine , reduce and scrape bottom. Pour over veal. Put broth in skillet, simmer and add to pot.
• Add in tomatoes, thyme, bay leaf, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper. You want the veal to be covered 2/3 in broth. Place in lower third of oven for two hours, basting every twenty minutes. If using a self-basting cast iron enamel pot, the frequent basting is not necessary.
• Once you are close to the two hours, make grits picking one of the ways discussed below.
• Serve with a garnish of gremolada.

Notes

Gremolada

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon garlic chopped finely
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Cooking Grits
Place grits in a bowl. Pour cold water over and swirl and pour out water. The light bran will float to the top. Carefully pour off water, reserve the grits. I do this a few times to make sure. Then proceed with package directions. The grits will typically double, and will require constant stirring on low heat to avoid lumps.

If you choose to make this as separate from veal, add in 1/2 cup grated pecorino romano, 1-2 T of butter and season to taste with salt and pepper.

If you choose to cook this in the sauce, for every cup of grits, add 1 cup broth and 1 cup chopped tomatoes with juice. If it seems too think, add in a little more broth.

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