Recipe Results: Tom Douglas' Pan-Roasted Halibut with Toasted Breadcrumb Salad and Green Lentils

I was chatting with one of the cooking shop class assistants the other day as we tidied up after class, and she mentioned a cookbook from one of our local Seattle top-rated restaurants.  She said that the food was very delicious, but that many of the recipes were multi-component-oriented and complicated so she didn’t cook from it that often.

This statement was one of those innocently-delivered comments that nevertheless set off a nanosecond long maelstrom of intense thoughts.  This was the gist of it:

• Oh!  That’s a good idea, I thought, look for recipes that are simple and not complex.
• Wait.  I’ve totally had this conversation with myself before.
• Why don’t I ever remember to do this?  See how bright this person is, all careful in her recipe selection.  Why can’t I be like that?!  I’m so dumb sometimes!
• A visual memory of a short-and-sweet basic recipe from my favorite teacher drifted into mental view.  It’s dish that I loved when he made it in class.
• My immediate reaction to the idea of this short recipe was lack of enthusiasm, despite how much I liked the dish.
• I realized that my emotional reaction to completing a short and simple recipe is the same satisfaction I would get if I jogged around the block.
• I realized my emotional reaction to completing a punishingly long recipe is akin to the euphoric high you get after a particularly grueling workout.
• I remembered why I rarely pick short recipes and returned my attention to the conversation.

This is not to impugn the short recipe.  After all, if you have skillz, you don’t need a lot of ingredients or steps to make something amazing.

I don’t have skillz, though. 

So I gravitate towards the complex. 

Or maybe it’s because of the ADD, as counterintuitive as that might be.   It’s like how can’t ever read short stories, I bounce around too much and can’t relax my brain enough to pay attention.  But the long form of a novel seems to click me into deep focus and I have that lovely floaty feeling of loss of self (aka “being in the zone”) that you get from being really deeply engaged in the present moment of any activity.  The exact same state I enter in, oh, say, the third or fourth hour of a cookathon.

That big preamble is all to say that even I, though, have my limits, and Seattle food guru Tom Douglas just about reached them with his recipe for Pan-Roasted Halibut with Toasted Breadcrumb Salad and Green Lentils.

The title alone has too many words.  And it’s actually four components: there’s a Lemon Vinaigrette that’s used that’s not mentioned in that novella of a name. 

(You don't know the half of it.)

But if you think that’s as complex as it gets, you’d be wrong!

Because I also had to make stock in order to make the lentils. AND I had to make breadcrumbs to make the breadcrumb salad.  AND both the breadcrumb salad and the lentils are a two-step cooking process, where the main ingredient is cooked solo and then processed again with flavoring agents.  

(Approaching hour four)

In the recipe’s defense, I will say that other than the chopping of all the 1.2 million different ingredients, it was time-consuming , but due to a lot of unattended cooking time, not necessarily super labor-intensive. I realize this statement, coming from me, after reading the above preamble, is pretty meaningless.  Basically, although about four and a half hours elapsed between the time I started cooking and the time I actually sat down to eat, I didn’t feel completely exhausted and annoyed by the process. 

And I did choose to make two-step roasted vegetable stock and breadcrumbs from scratch on the day of cooking.  If either had been prepared prior, it would have cut down on the time considerably.  If you made a double-batch of lentils the first time, you could freeze them for another serving later, which would also make this dish a heck of a lot easier to serve on something other than a special occasion.

(Finished Breadcrumb Salad)

And you would want to because despite all the effort…this shit is delicious.  DEEEEE-licious.  There’s a reason why there are 1.2 million ingredients and 25 steps and four components in this dish.  Every component was tasty on its own.  I might take the lentil recipe and use it just for making plain old lentils for salads, etc.

(Finished Lentils)

And when you put them together, each complemented the other without any one asserting itself too strongly.  The crispiness of the breadcrumbs, the brightness of the parsley, the tang of the lemon vinaigrette, the seared smoky outside of the halibut, the tenderness of the inside, and the mellow earthy and herby lentils…it all worked together brilliantly.

(Yes, once again highly staged but this meal earned it)

I am fascinated by chefs for many reasons, but the ones who really get me going are those who seem to have something that really feels akin to magic, where you might know every ingredient in the dish, but when you taste it, it’s that mysterious alchemy of creativity where 1+1=3.  I’ve loved almost everything I’ve ever eaten at a Tom Douglas restaurant, and although I’ve only so far made two of his recipes at home (although I think this one counts as about seven), it’s pretty cool when you can achieve that alchemy yourself just by following some instructions.

But I’m not posting the recipe, mainly because lord.  This is long enough already.  It would take up the rest of this blog.  It’s in Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen.  If you have a spare weekend sometime and want to make it, email me.

Giving it 5-star Holy Crap rating for taste, but just with the caveat that you better be ready to log some serious kitchen time if you want to make it all from scratch..

Update on Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 01:31PM by Leslie Seaton

Looking for the recipe?  I see you Googlers!  Mr. Tom Douglas himself has now posted it.