Halibut with Green Bean and Shiitakes

I highly recommend the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In it, the main character, Oscar, uses the word "shiitake" to curse. Say it out loud. Go ahead. It works, and it's funny.

So halibut is a lovely, meaty fish, low on the "fishiness" scale. I have a frozen bag of fillets in the deep-freeze, which is definitely not as good as fresh, but hey, it works. It works especially when your fishmonger isn't a hop, skip and a jump away. I recently discovered that there is a halibut season, which I should have figured out on my own because there are salmon seasons for the various species, aren't there? The season for wild halibut ended about a month ago. That would be an instance where my fishmonger - whom I have maligned in the past for not offering advice on fish substitutes - offered interesting, useful and unsolicited information that I appreciated. So he's just at -1, instead of -2.

You make the cilantro sauce there and roast everything else together. It's simple and delicious. And a good example of a meal made for two that comfortably serves just two. I haven't been including recipes because they can be tedious to type out, especially when someone still has to look at her hands to type. What?! I took Art instead of Typing in high school. I can recognize the Impressionists' work, but I don't stick to my homerow. Sue me.

Sauce: Blend/mini-cuisinart together 2 cups cilantro, 2 T lemon juice, 1 green onon, 1/2 jalapeno, 3 T veg. oil, 1 tsp. sesame oil, and 1 tsp. soy sauce. That's your sauce to serve over the fish.

Fish-veg. bake: 2 -8oz. halibut fillets, 1 lb. green beans, 1 lb. shiitakes. Prep those, like you normally would. I put them in a glass baking dish and nestle the halibut in among the veggies. The original recipe says to place everything on a baking sheet in a single layer. Then pour over the following all blended up with a whisk: 2 T veg. oil, 1 tsp. sesame oil, 2 tsp. soy sauce. I pour a bit over the halibut and the rest over the veggies. Then I mix the veggies around a bit to make sure they all have sauce on them. Sometimes I get a little overzealous with my veggies and include over a lb. of each, so I double the sauce here.

Bake at 450. The time to bake depends on the thickness of the fish. If yours are only 3/4in. or so, then 10 minutes might be enough. My fillets here were fat and they needed 15-17 minutes. I like to remove the fish when it's done, mix the veggies, and send them back for about ten minutes more.

Serving with rice is advisable.