Cooking With DFM

I had spent all week preparing to make a meal of grilled Basa fish. I had my fish, my garnish, my sauces, etc. There were just two problems. 1) My most elaborate meal to date has been an omelet, and 2) It's winter and I didn't want to stand outside bar-be-cuing my fish when I wasn't even sure how best to grill it. Subsequently, more "rational" thinking prevailed and I decided to do what I normally do in situations of uncertainty: blindly jump into the deep end head first and rely on my time-tested powers of Optimism to get me through.

First I grabbed a frying pan. Next to boiling water, stirring things around in a frying pan is my most common method of preparing food to date. I chopped my Basa fillet into bite-sized pieces and threw the lot into the pan. It then occurred to me that while tasty, fish alone would not likely be considered a "complete" meal. So I chopped whatever I could find in my refrigerator - which happened to be some mushrooms, tomato, spinach and parsley. I added this salad to the frying pan to cook along with the fish. Now I had my vegetables and my meat, so I was halfway there. My next step was to cook up some potatoes. Although my experience with potatoes ends at peeling them in large quantities, I suspected that it may take longer to boil a potato than it would to complete the frying of my fish (especially since I'd have to take the bus to the grocer's first). Instead, I settled upon the next best thing: Tator Tots. I had luckily already pre-heated the oven and so I prepared a baking sheet and threw these in. Three down, one to go. The last choice was obvious. The cherry on top of this fish cake would be none other than God's favourite fruit (or at least mine), the apple.

It must be said that my timing was a bit off. My fish/veggie delight finished three minutes earlier than my Tots, and so the vegetables were a bit cold by the time I had the whole meal ready to go. Unsurprisingly to those who know me, I couldn't resist and started a bit early on my apple. All-in-all it wasn't a bad meal though. I'm sure the cooks/chefs among my reader base have a fancy name for what I've done, but as Hank Hill would say (and do), "I just fell back on natural instinct."

Here is the meal before it was masticated beyond recognition:



I fear the presentation may need a bit of work before I go on Iron Chef though (yes, that is a half-eaten apple).