When
I bought the halibut you see in this video, the last thing I wanted to
use with it was bacon. If I'm not mistaken, every other halibut recipe
video I've posted has bacon, and I was determined to do something
different.But there I was, staring into the refrigerator, daylight fading, needing to get the fresh fish cooked, filmed, and on a plate while I still had time. Having recently traveled to New Orleans, the fridge was a barren wasteland, inhabited by little more than a few assorted condiments – oh, and two slices of bacon.While halibut simply seared in bacon would have certainly made for a decent dinner, the idea wasn't exactly inspiring my inner Tarantino. I really wanted to do something a bit more creative than that.
Then
I remembered I hadn't checked my Roma bean vines since returning to San
Francisco. I was happy that despite our city's typical gray-icy summer,
I was able to harvest a small handful. That's when things got crazy.Instead cooking the fish in the bacon and serving the beans as a side dish, I decided to try a sort of hot vegetable relish. I figured by slicing the beans thin and cooking them raw in the hot bacon fat I could concentrate that great bittersweet flavor, and turn what was in danger of being a very mundane plate, into something new and exciting.
How exciting? Well, they're just beans, but I loved how this came out. A little lemon was used to make a sort of hot bacon dressing, and together with my gratuitous hot sauce design, the plate came together wonderfully.
Roma beans seem to be in season right now, but I think this would work nicely with regular string beans, or even sugar snap peas. If you want to make this "meat-free," just substitute some diced shiitake mushrooms for the bacon and proceed as shown. Either way, I hope you give this a try. Enjoy!