I often suggest recipes. This time I am suggesting a recipe that you should not – under any circumstance – try. It’s Blackened Bluefish in the kitchen.
Years ago, we belonged to a group called the Broccoli Bridge Club – so named because one night, at a potluck dinner, everyone brought a broccoli dish. We may have even had a Broccoli Pie, I don’t remember, but the name stuck.
One evening while dealing the cards, I suggested that our group rent a cottage at Nags Head and play bridge there a couple times per year. We did exactly that and a tradition was born.
About the third or fourth trip, and after a successful fishing trip offshore, we returned with some beautiful bluefish, and I volunteered to cook them. I decided to do my best Chef Paul Prudhomme imitation and Blacken our Bluefish Filets.
To blacken fish correctly, you get a cast iron frying pan red hot on the bottom and toss in the filets that have been well-coated with Black Magic Seasoning. Well, I did, and I really, really coated the filets, but I did not expect what happened next. Instantly, the room was filled with smoke and habanero-infused oxygen and all the members of the Broccoli Bride Club began tearing up and vacated the premises like rats on a sinking ship. As black smoke filled the upper half of the cottage and a few of us held our breaths long enough to and dash in and take the frying pan off the oven and outside.
It was about a half hour – with windows wide open and fans at full blast – before we could return to the kitchen. It no longer burned our eyes, but the place still reeked of Black Magic Seasoning. We had made a $400 security deposit, but that wouldn’t begin to cover the cost of repainting the entire upstairs and replacing all the furniture.
We left all the windows open that night and went through 3 cans of Febreze and fortunately, the house returned to a normal smell by the next day.
By the way, I finished cooking the Blackened Bluefish Filets outside on the grill that night and they turned out very well along with the broccoli we served as a vegetable.
So, let this serve as a warning – if you are cooking indoors at a cottage in Nags Head don’t use quite so much Black Magic Seasoning.
