Transatlantic fusion

It was finally time to cook the rockfish I picked up from Whole Foods last month.  When I seasoned it this morning I realized that it wasn't as big as I had remembered.  It was 4lbs, essentially the size of 2 whole fish, enough for a typical night's dinner.  I had invited a friend over for iftar and it was possible that my mom would stop by so I needed to figure out a plan to make the food stretch. 

I was tempted to go to the regular market to look for a reasonably priced wild caught fish but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  After my morning walk I went to Whole Foods and there was nothing available at a price point I was willing to pay - other than wild caught shrimp, which I happily bought for suhoor.  I decided that I would go with salt fish and pumpkin as my filler and that's when I realized that winter squash was not yet in season. 

I can't remember where I bought my last pack of baccalao so I headed to the Caribbean grocer and began to panic that it would be some farm raised crap from China.  It was - $3.99 for Atlantic cod from China (I was confused by that) and $6.29 for wild caught cod from Canada.  Of course I went for the wild caught.  I also picked up a kabucha (a starchy pumpkin reminiscent of an acorn squash). 

I did okra, corn muffins, and the salt fish...I cooked the fish on convection roast then sauteed a topping that had influences from my experiences with the Caribbean escabeche and the Malian poisson.  Everything was very good and surprisingly plentiful.