At least that's what I thought when I sat down to eat and saw Chopped on Food TV and realized that I'd basically just done the same thing they were doing. It's more a case of having a vague idea while shopping for groceries this week, and seeing what I could do with it. The ingredient spread:
From left to right:
- Green onion
- Pineapple
- Sriracha
- Mahi-mahi filet, salted and peppered
- Lilikoi/Hawaiian pepper jelly
- Hawaiian "golden bread" roll (hot dog bun, whatever)
- Bag of macadamia nuts.
First step was prep: wash and trim the onion, skin and section the pineapple, slice roll in half (I was going to do it top-split style, but accidentally side-split it. Oops). Next was the butter: grind nuts in the food processor, and mix in some honey until it's a somewhat smooth paste. Roll under the broiler, slice of pineapple and onion stalks into the pan with a big gob of butter. When the onion is bright green, remove, and add mahi-mahi to the pan. Keep the pineapple there, rotating until it's browned on all sides. Remove roll from broiler when it's crisped, spread on macadamia butter, and return. When fish is done, remove everything and plate with a wave of sriracha and pool of lilikoi jelly:
The plating could have been improved, partially because I wanted to put the pineapple on top of the fish, but that made the whole thing too tall. I should have toasted the bread more as well, as I wanted a firmer base, but it never really got fully browned. The flavor was wonderful, though. Since this was a super sweet local pineapple, the outside had a caramel flavor on top of the soft pineapple-y center. That counter balanced the oils of the fish and the spice of the sriracha. It needed more onion, as I didn't have enough for each bite to get some. I was also concerned that the sriracha and lilikoi/pepper jelly would be off because it's two different types of spice. This wasn't the case, and they complemented each other well.
Definitely something to try again.
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