Hah!

My in-laws are visiting for the weekend.  This is considerably more restful than you might think, as the children love spending time with them.  I had originally planned steak for last night's supper; instead, my in-laws said, "Let's go out to dinner."  Given how often I have ended up doing the dishes after cooking a meal, I wasn't about to say No.  We had an enjoyable meal at Not Your Average Joe's in Arlington.  Steak got pushed off by a night.

This afternoon, we all visited a festival taking place off the Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford.  On our way out, I told my father-in-law, "You have a choice of beef or beef for supper.  Would you like a steak or a burger?"

He deadpanned, "I'd like a swordfish steak."  He knew we didn't have any swordfish in the house.

I still needed to get some foodstuffs for cooking the lasagna I am bringing to a gathering after a funeral tomorrow, so I made a stop at Whole Wallet Foods to get some chopped spinach.  While I was there, I went by the fish counter.  Hmmm... fresh swordfish steaks on sale for $9.99 a pound.

Guess who got swordfish for supper?  Yup: my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and me.  The latter two of us also had some of the ribeye steak I'd cooked too, me more than her.

Cooking fresh swordfish scares a lot of people, and sometimes it worries me too.  Fish is easy to overcook and easier to dry out.  It takes time, technique and practice.  Still, I have a few tips:

• Swordfish can be grilled, but you can also fry it in a frying pan.  More people have frying pans than grills.
• While butter can be wonderful on a swordfish steak, don't use straight butter to fry it.  Use an equal amount of canola, grapeseed, or toasted sesame oil.  The latter choice adds some nice flavor but isn't everybody's favorite.  
• Use a relatively high heat to cook your swordfish on both sides.  The thinner the steak, oddly, the higher the heat; you'll want to get a proper sear, and since you'll have less time to cook the fish before it cooks through, you need to juice it up.  Don't get too thin a steak.
• Sprinkling a little salt on your swordfish while it cooks helps the flavor.  I am fond of a particular lime-flavored salt, called "lime fresco," that I can find at Christina's Spice Shop in Cambridge.  You can marinate fresh swordfish, but you might lose some of the flavor you can only get from fresh swordfish.
• Fish steaks have considerably less fat than a good beef steak.  You can get away with a smaller amount of fish for a serving than you can with beef.
• For the love of seafood, do not put a crumb topping on swordfish.  It's fine for haddock and cod, but those kinds of fish are considerably more flaky and can use the added crunch.  Firm fish like swordfish don't need it.
• If possible, you should stick to fresh swordfish.  If it's not possible, be careful about the previously-frozen swordfish you buy.  The closer you get to pink, the better it was frozen.

I don't get to cook fish often enough in my home, and I miss it.