Triggerfish

Growing up on Long Island, you get used to having fresh fish whenever you like.  If you’re not catching it yourself, there are plenty of fish markets where you can find almost anything you’re looking for. When I moved to Florida the first time, we moved to Tampa, where you could have fresh, wild caught fish whenever you liked. Living in Ocala has been more of a challenge in that department.  You can get fish at Publix, but most of it is previously frozen, or farmed, or just nothing I would want to eat.  I’ve been searching for a fish market for years and today… I found one.

In Dunnellon, Simply Seafood is a gem!  Immaculately clean, the fish is all on ice and covered and the people couldn’t be friendlier. I opted for a fish I’d never heard of… Triggerfish, which looked like tilapia, or any other white fish, I told the woman helping me (who was the owner, by the way) what I was planning to do with it and she thought that Triggerfish would be a good fit. I bought four filets and brought them home.

Here’s what I did:

8 zucchini quartered and chopped

4 yellow squash quartered and chopped

4 onions peeled and quartered

6 cloves of garlic chopped

2 pints baby portabella mushrooms sliced

56oz. canned diced tomatoes

olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Put all the vegetables in a large roasting pan

Pour the tomatoes on top, drizzle some olive oil and toss a big pinch of salt and pepper in and combine

Roast in the oven for at least an hour. There’s so much liquid here that it won’t dry out for days probably.

Get your fish out of the fridge.

look at this.  You should have smelled it, it smelled so fresh, just like the ocean.  I could have eaten it raw.

Take the veggies out of the oven. Take each filet and gently submerge it in the liquid.

Put back in the oven and cook another 5-10 minutes.  Check after 5, mine were done in 7.  You do not want to overcook this. When the fish is still moist, but starts to flake off in big pieces when you run a fork over it (gently!), remove the fish from the sauce and set aside. We made big bowls of vegetables and put a filet on top.

The filets had a light skin on them, which melted into the sauce only making it tastier.  It reminded me of monkfish, or even lobster, but really tender. Delicious.Similar Posts:

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