Sasha's Kitchen: Asian Infused Sea Bass With Papaya Salsa

I actually wrote about this meal once before when I first started this blog, but I didn't give it the full attention it deserved, nor was there a photo.  This is my favorite seafood dish, so I wanted to give it a full, true Sasha-blog post.  I love the asian infusion of the Chilean Sea Bass, and the combination of the fresh, tropical papaya with the asian flavors in the fish.  If you are concerned with sustainability, you do not have to use Chilean Sea Bass - you could substitute Mahi Mahi, Cod or Halibut.  I can't help it though, occasionally I get a craving for the soft, flaky sea bass with the asian marinade and fresh papapya.  That's exactly what happened last night.

This recipe is one I derived from a very old cookbook called Taste of the Tropics by Jay Solomon, from a restaurant that used to exist in Ithaca, New York when I was a kid.  The restaurant closed years ago (my husband, a Cornell graduate, says it was closed by the time he got to Cornell), but the cookbook lives on.  I have modified the ingredients in the marinade, which the author of the cookbook says is for Mahi Mahi, and made some minor changes in the salsa recipe.  Here's the recipe that I use in my cooking:

Sea Bass With Asian-Infused Marinade & Papaya Salsa 

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup mirin or sake

1/2 cup pineapple juice

2 T sesame oil

2 T lime juice

1 tsp lemongrass

1 T fresh ginger

2/3 tsp red pepper flakes

pinch of salt

dash of pepper

1/2 papaya, seeded and diced (for salsa)

3 T lime juice (for salsa)

2 T cilantro (for salsa)

1/2 red onion, diced (for salsa)

2-4 filets of fish (sea bass, mahi mahi, halibut or cod)

Combine the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl.  Marinate the fish for about 4 to 6 hours in the asian-infused marinade.  You can use either mirin or sake for the marinade (the result is very similar).  Rotate the fish at the halfway point.

To prepare the salsa, seed and dice the papaya.  Combine with the red onion, lemon juice and cilantro.

Cook the fish in a bit of the marinade at 350 for about 30 minutes until flaky and cooked to your liking (this will vary a bit depending on the type of fish that you use).    I always serve the fish with a side of the salsa and a bit of the marinade.  It also tastes great with a vegetable risotto as a side, such as the green apple risotto, that my husband makes, or even a plain risotto.  This recipe remain one of my favorite dinner courses, and will quench our palettes any night of the week.

Chilean Sea Bass

Sasha's Kitchen: Asian Infused Sea Bass With Papaya Salsa

Sasha's Kitchen: Scallops With Papaya, Blood Orange Vinaigrette and Caramelized Shallots

Pan seared scallops are one of my favorite subjects for an appetizer.  I love the flavor of any pan seared scallop, whether it is prepared in butter, or in a healthier olive oil / canola oil.  In my opinion, scallops present nicely as an appetizer.  A couple days ago, I wrote about another scallop appetizer that I developed for pan seared scallops with organic mushrooms in a lemongrass-thyme coconut broth with pomegranate.  That recipe would also make an excellent scallop entree if it were scaled up a bit.


Last night, I created an easy citrus, sweet scallop appetizer that was just as satisfying to the palette using papaya and blood orange juice to accompany the scallops.  This recipe was very simple to prepare, and makes lovely eye candy as an appetizer for upcoming dinner parties.  The melange of flavors was perfect - it has a lovely sweetness to it, but not an overpowering or cloying sweetness.  I was really happy with the outcome.  Papaya and blood oranges are two of my favorite fruits, and I think both combined nicely with the pan seared scallop.  I even used blood orange olive oil, from Round Pond Estate in Napa Valley, to pan sear the scallops.  Feel free to double or triple the recipe, as this is perfect for parties and other gatherings.

Sasha's Pan Seared Scallops With Papaya, Caramelized Shallots and Blood Orange Vinaigrette
4-6 scallops
1 1/2 cups of blood orange juice
1/3 cup olive oil (plain)
several tablespoons of Round Pond's Blood Orange Olive Oil
pepper to taste
1/2 cup diced papaya
2 diced shallots
A couple teaspoons of pomegranate seeds


First, I prepared the blood orange vinaigrette by reducing the orange juice.  Add the blood orange juice to the stove and boil for about 25 minutes until reduced to about 1/2 a cup.  Mix the blood orange juice with about 1/3 a cup of canola oil or olive oil an season with pepper.  Put in a salad shaker and shake the dressing well.


To prepare the shallots, caramelize by sautéing two diced shallots in 1 tablespoon of Round Pond's Blood Orange Olive Oil and one teaspoon of sugar.  Dice the papaya and set aside.


Pan sear the scallops in about one to two tablespoons of Round Pond's Blood Orange Olive Oil.  Season the scallops on both sides with pepper first, and cook on medium heat until lightly browned.  Serve with the diced papaya, caramelized shallots and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds.  Drizzle a tablespoon of the blood orange vinaigrette on top of each serving.

Other Scallop Recipes On A Kitchen In Brooklyn:


My Scallops With Organic Mushrooms, Lemongrass-Thyme Coconut Broth and Pomegranate
Eric's Fettuccine With Scallops and Mushroom Cream Sauce

Stay tuned to a A Kitchen In Brooklyn for exciting upcoming giveaways in March!

Sasha's Kitchen: Scallops With Papaya, Blood Orange Vinaigrette and Caramelized Shallots

Sasha's Kitchen: Papaya Glazed Creme Brulee - Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!  I'm going out for dinner with my husband for Valentine's Day tonight, but first wanted to share our dessert from last night's home cooked dinner.  I've been doing a lot of creme brulee torching lately, and as you can see, I am not quite ready to be done yet.  It occurred to me that in addition to flavoring the creme brulee custard, like I have done with my other brulees, I could create a fruit sugar glaze on top of the creme brulee and caramelize the glaze, as long as it had a sufficient sugar content.  Thus, I decided to create some fruit glazed creme brulee desserts.  

This dessert is perfect for a simple Valentine's Day dessert, as long as you have a creme brulee torch.  If you want to be especially romantic, you could even use heart shaped creme brulee dishes like these.  I don't have the heart shaped dishes, so I made mine using my regular creme brulee ramekins.  It's been so cold and snowy here on the east coast, that I wanted to create a Valentine's Day dessert with a taste of the tropics, so I went for a papaya glaze using fresh diced papaya from my local market.  I also flavored the creme brulee with my homemade amaretto, rather than vanilla.  I made such a large quantity of amaretto that I expect to continue to find new and fun uses for it in my desserts.

Sasha's Valentine's Day Papaya Glazed Amaretto Creme Brulee (Makes 4)

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

4 egg yolks

1/4 cup sugar (for custard)

1/2 cup fresh papaya (or the fresh fruit of your choice - strawberries would be great too)

3 T amaretto liqueur

1/4 cup sugar (for the fruit glaze)

First, prepare the custard by mixing the sugar and the heavy cream over medium heat until all of the sugar is dissolved and bubbles form around the edge of the saucepan.  Take off the heat and beat in the egg yolks and the amaretto.  Place in ramekins.  Put the ramekins in a broiling pan surrounded with hot/boiling water going up halfway on the sides of the ramekins.  Bake at 350 F for 25-30 minutes until just firm in the tops (you can test with a toothpick).  Chill for several hours.

To make the fruit glaze, puree the papaya and mix with a quarter cup of sugar.  Heat for about five minutes on medium heat until the sugar melts and it thickens to a jam-like consistency.  Coat the chilled custard in the ramekins with a layer of the glaze (don't make it too thick or you will have to brulee forever) and sprinkle the tops with fresh sugar.  Use your creme brulee torch on the tops until caramelized.  This will take a bit longer than with a conventional creme brulee, but is totally worth it.  Enjoy this taste of the tropics while you cope with the snow this Valentine's Day.

Other Fun Creme Brulee Dishes on A Kitchen In Brooklyn

Banana Brandy Creme Brulee

White Chocolate Creme Brulee

Pumpkin Creme Brulee

Sasha's Kitchen: Papaya Glazed Creme Brulee - Happy Valentine's Day

Sasha's Kitchen: Carrot Papaya Coconut Cupcakes

Carrots, a perfect winter-themed vegetable are one of the December ingredients on this site that our writers are working on incorporating into their recipes. I wanted to include carrots in my next cupcake recipe, while mixing up some tropical flavors. So, I decided to create a recipe for carrot papaya cupcakes, and wound up throwing in some coconut, which mixed nicely with the other flavors.

I enjoyed decorating these cupcakes as well. This time, I made a pretty matching buttercream, dyed to the perfect shade of peachy orange. I created miniature carrots out of marzipan to decorate each cupcake and used an unused watercolor brush (I like to do a lot of painting - acrylic, watercolor and oil)to paint the carrots using water-based food coloring. More complex marzipan (and fondant) painting projects, which I plan to do in the future, will require investing in some professional food colorings, which I plan to purchase at my local store that sells cooking and baking equipment when I go out tomorrow. This will be perfect for upcoming projects including fondant-marshmallow Santa peeps and dreidel/Christmas tree cookies with Royal icing.

At any rate, these cupcakes really are not difficult to make, so don't be intimidated by the photos. It is worth giving a try at home, even if you have never worked with marzipan before.

If you cannot find fresh papaya to make your puree, (it's not exactly in season but you should still be able to get it, since it's not like papayas are ever grown in New York anyhow) you can substitute mango or pineapple.

Sasha's Carrot Papaya Coconut Cupcakes

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sweetened coconut
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
3/4 cup papaya chunks, pureed in a mini-prep or food processor
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
2/3 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup canola oil

I discovered that I only had organic baby carrots, which are quite difficult to grate with a peeler, unsurprisingly. To make the mix, combine the flour, coconut, baking powder and salt in one bowl. In a second bowl, combine the carrots, papaya puree, milk, sugar and melted butter. Combine all ingredients and fill your cupcake trays 2/4 to the top. I suggest using silicon cupcake trays with paper liners. This recipe should make about a dozen cupcakes.



I baked the cupcakes at an oven preheated to 350 F for about 28 minutes (took a little longer than I thought it would). You should test them with a toothpick or fork to make sure they are done on the inside.

While the cupcakes were baking, I molded little carrots with a top out of marzipan. I used a 50-50 mix of several drops of food coloring with several drops of water (slightly diluted) to create orange and green colors. I painted the carrots with a watercolor brush (one that had never been used in painting with watercolors!) I plan on experimenting in the future with more professional grade food colorings, but for this project, the grocery store standard food coloring did the trick.

After taking the cupcakes out of the oven they should be allowed to cool for at least 30 minutes. If you frost too soon, the frosting will melt on the cupcakes.
For my frosting, I decided to do a plain buttercream, which is the most common type of cupcake frosting. It is also exactly what the name implies - butter and sugar, and lots of both. So let's not confuse these cupcakes with anything too healthy just because I made them with fresh fruits and veggies. They are quite tasty and a great treat to serve at a party.

Simple Buttercream

2 sticks of butter
3 cups of confectioners sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
several drops of food coloring

First, beat the butter in an artisan stand mixer. You really cannot make buttercream without a stand mixer. Some people can do this using a hand mixer, but I never could because 1) I could not beat the butter to the right consistency and 2) food flies everywhere and it makes a colossal mess in the kitchen (literally - butter on the walls). You should beat the butter well on a high speed. Then add the three cups of confectioners sugar, which is loose powdered sugar. Don't press it in the cups, but keep it light and airy when measuring. Beat the two together until they form a frosting and keep beating beyond that for a minute or two at a high speed. It will take a couple minutes for the two to mix properly, as in the beginning it just looks like you added too much sugar. Then beat in the vanilla and add a few drops of food coloring. I chose to add three drops of yellow and 1 drop of red to make an orange colored buttercream.

To decorate the cupcakes, frost with a frosting bag fitted with either a plain or fluted tip, which will allow the cupcakes to have a really professional look to them. It's actually very easy to do and the frosting bags are inexpensive and surprisingly painless to clean when you are done.

Top with the marzipan carrot and enjoy! Next up: apple sorbet with poached quince shortcakes, so stay tuned.

Akitcheninbrooklyn.com is doing a roundtable on carrots for the month of December. For additional carrot recipes, click here for Amasea's carroty latkes or here for Amasea's sweet gingery carrots.

Sasha's Kitchen: Carrot Papaya Coconut Cupcakes

Sasha's Kitchen: Carribean and Tropical Cooking - Two Great Fish Recipes

When I first started to cook, I took an old cookbook from my mom called "A Taste of the Tropics" by Jay Solomon. We got this cookbook at a restaurant we ate at in Ithaca, NY in the late 80s and early 90s. The restaurant is no longer there and I'm pretty sure the cookbook is out of print, but it is a wonderful book which taught me a great deal about Caribbean, tropical and pacific rim cooking, as well as many wonderful ingredients used in cooking from this region. In addition, it is from this book that I learned what a chutney was, how great chutneys are with almost any food and how the possibilities for making a chutney with almost any fruit are endless.

At any rate, some of my favorite recipes from this book are Jay's fish recipes.

On page 49 of this cookbook, Jay has a recipe called "mahimahi with papaya salsa." When I first made this, I could not find mahimahi, but made it with Chilean sea bass. I was sold - this recipe tastes perfect with the soft flakiness of a good Chilean sea bass. Plus, it is super-easy:

Chilean Sea Bass With Papaya Salsa
Marinade:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup mirin or sake
2 T sesame oil
2 T lime juice
2 T minced ginger
1 T lemongrass
1 tsp red pepper flakes
several fillets of Chilean sea bass

Marinade from about 4 hours. Then top with papaya salsa:
1 ripe papaya, diced
1/2 Chile pepper
1/4 cup minced red onion
3 T lime juice
1 T cilantro
dash of salt

It's perfect. This dish is great when served with a nice homemade risotto, which is one of my husband's specialties.

Another great recipe from this book, which Jay says originates from the pacific rim, is red snapper with pineapple-tamarind salsa. Tamarind is such an interesting thing to cook with - I absolutely love it. In fact - it's so tangy and delicious that it's great to just nibble on. I once had a wonderful drink at an Indian restaurant (Indian cooking also often uses tamarind) that was a tamarind cocktail that was amazing. The recipe below is unchanged from the recipe in Jay's book, "A Taste of the Tropics."

To make the red snapper basically only requires making the tamarind-pineapple sauce, which is really no more than a chutney. First you must extract the substance from the tamarind. Tamarind can be bought in blocks, generally at an Indian market or specialty grocery store. First, take an 8 oz block of tamarind and combine with 1 1/23 cup water and simmer for 5-10 minutes, breaking apart the tamarind pulp. This will make a tamarind-juice which you will keep, and discard the remaining pulp.

The add the following ingredients to a saucepan with the tamarind:

Red Snapper With Pineapple-Tamarind Chutney

tamarind juice (see above)
2 cups diced pineapple
2 T butter
1 onion, diced
3 scallions
1 tomato, diced
2 T brown sugar
dash of pepper and salt
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice

Cook for about 15 minutes over medium to medium-high heat until it thickens to the consistency of a chutney (very jam like). The add about 1 T of cilantro, or leave it out if you don't like cilantro.

Now all you need to do is cook the red snapper and top the fish with the chutney and your trip to the pacific rim is complete.

These recipes are great because they do remind me of trips I have taken to the Caribbean and to Hawaii and I love the tropical and exotic flavors. Perhaps they are not 100% authentic (one of the contributing bloggers grew up in Hawaii and may write about some traditional Hawaiian cuisine at some point) but I love them and they do transport me to a wonderful, tropical place. Which reminds me - I so need a vacation.

Sasha's Kitchen: Carribean and Tropical Cooking - Two Great Fish Recipes