miso-glazed sea bass and sesame-citrus massaged kale salad

San Francisco has some of the best dim sum around. On one of our trips, my mother took us to her favorite dim sum restaurant, not your usual sort of dim sum joint. This one was quite the experience, a tad on the fancy side, but serving up succulent dishes. Hands down, the best dish we had was the giant puck of miso-glazed Sea Bass. From that day on, we just had to know how to make it! After some research, I found a recipe for the miso-glaze on Epicurious.com, I included the link below. Along the way, we also discovered Patagonian Toothfish, better known as Chilean Sea Bass. It has the consistency of rich butter, it literally melts in your mouth. It was the perfect fish to glaze. This fish is endangered, so please find MSC certified fish--it is supposed to be a well-managed fishery. You could probably substitute another mild fish, but I promise you won't get the same effect as you will with the Patagonian Toothfish. We usually enjoy our fish with some steamed Japanese rice (Koshihikari), but since we didn't have any, we had whole-wheat couscous. On the side we had a citrus-sesame massaged kale salad--fresh kale from the garden...we aren't the only ones who love kale! You will see what I mean in the photo below. It took me a long time to inspect each and every leaf for tiny green crawly guys. But in the end, I got them all off, thank goodness. Here's a picture of the darned little critter: can you see him?

Miso-glazed Sea Bass
4 servings
Inspired from this recipe

Ingredients:
1/3 Cup Sake
1/3 Cup yellow miso paste (we use different kinds, depending upon what we have on hand, so I know that red paste works well too)
1/3 Cup Mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine)
3 Tablespoons packed brown sugar
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1-1.5 lbs Fish, cut into individual serving sizes

Directions:
1. Mix first 5 ingredients together, add fish and allow to marinate for 20 minutes to 4 or 5 hours maximum. I prefer to let it marinate for no more than 1 hour.

2.  Preheat oven to 350 °F, place fish in glass baking dish, discard excess marinade.

3. Bake fish covered for approximately 15-20 minutes or an instant read thermometer reads 130-135 °F. Whatever, you do, don't overcook it!

4. Turn broiler on, broil fish for about 5 minutes, or until the top of the fish is slightly caramelized. Watch closely, oven times vary and you don't want to burn your fish!

5. By this time, the instant read thermometer should say about 140-145 °F. Enjoy!

The fish was baked on end, here they fell on their side, so you can only see the edge of the caramelized side of the fish...

Sesame-Citrus Massaged Kale Salad
Servings 4

Ingredients:
4 cups Lacinto kale, chopped or as I measured it: 4 fist-fulls kale, chopped
2 small Valencia oranges
1 clove garlic, minced (or pressed)
1/4 small red onion, sliced paper thin
2-3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1-1.5 Tablespoons toasted sesame seeds (if you don't have toasted ones, just throw them on a warm skillet and toast until aromatic, keep stirring so they don't burn)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Wash kale, dry well, and chop. *Use a very sharp knife so you don't bruise the kale

2. Massage kale with Olive oil--use your hands and rub the kale, don't skip this step as it is what makes the kale more pliable.

3. Squeeze juice of 1/2 an orange, set juice aside.

3. Peel and cut (into chunks) remaining 1.5 oranges, add to Kale.

4. Thinly slice onion, add to salad.

5. mix salt, pepper, and garlic into orange juice. Toss into salad when you are ready to eat.

6. At the last minute, toss the salad with the sesame seeds, they will get soggy if you toss them in and let the salad sit, so be sure this is the last thing you do!

Lacinto Kale: there are differnt kinds of kale, so be sure you get Lacinto...it works really well for salads

And here you have it, dinner (you can see the caramelized side of the fish from this angle):