Recipe the second...

Yes, I'm back from a long Independence Day holiday weekend - that holiday in the US where we honor booze, slacking, and sleeping in...

We also made the recipe for the week, featured last week on Jenn's blog. (You're keeping up, aren't you?)

Here's the recipe, in case you forgot:

"Halibut" in Lemon-Ginger Marinade

2 lbs halibut steaks (1 in thick) - this might be good with chicken or salmon if halibut isn't on sale.

Lemon-Ginger Marinade
1T finely minced lemon zest
1/3 C freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 C dry white wine or dry vermouth
3 T flavorless cooking oil
2 T thin soy sauce
1 T Oyster Sauce
1/4 Tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 C Minced green onions
1 T Very finely minced ginger - for this Jenn used a Rachel Ray trick. She peeled the ginger (about an inch of ginger) then squished it with my knife to release the flavors and stuck it in the marinade. This releases all the ginger flavor without all the mess.
2 cloves garlic, finely minced

Combine all the marinade ingredients. At least 10 minutes but not more than 30 minutes prior to cooking, pour the marinade over the halibut and turn it to evenly coat. Keep refrigerated.

Cook "halibut" either via grill, broil, bake - however you want.

There you go... but first, a little background.

We cooked this on Monday night, which was not necessarily a great day for me. I didn't sleep the night before so my brain wasn't really what you might call "connected". So, I proceeded with caution.

This being a marinade, I just chopped, poured, and scooped everything right into a zip-lock bag. I'll spoil the surprise now and tell you that I used chicken, because I just find it easier to BBQ. (NOTE: Correction. See the "Making mistakes" entry later today.) We purchased a couple of these incredible, organic chicken breasts from Henry's and were good to go.

So, I began.

Lemon zest... how do you finely mince zest? It's tough! I took my smallest paring knife and just chopped the shit to death!

Lemon juice... having zested the lemon, I rolled it and squeezed the crap out of it - nearly 1/3 cup!

White wine... We picked up a bottle of Kendall Jackson chardonnay and found that it was more fruity than dry. Not a bad wine, though, and we used it anyway.

Cooking oil... pretty much self-explanatory.

Soy sauce... again, a no-brainer.

Oyster sauce... Vicky and searched the "asian foods" section of our supermarket and found two bottles hidden amongst a community of sauces. Not knowing what the hell oyster sauce is, we just bought the one that looked "more asian".

Black pepper... rather than buy another sauce, I threw in some black pepper and (diverging from the recipe) a heavy pinch of essence.

Green onions... chop chop choppity chop chop, and we're done.

Minced ginger... I had no idea what Rachel Ray's trick was so I took some fresh ginger and, again, chopped the hell out of it.

Garlic... yeah! Chopity fucking chop! Done!

So, all of this was thrown into a zip-lock bag, along with the chicken breasts. All the air was squeezed out and the whole thing coated the chicken. (And with how hot it's been in southern California, how dare I say "coat"!)

Following Jenn's instructions, I only let this marinade for half an hour - but I think I'll let it go for an hour next time for more punch.

These breasts barbequed up so nicely - plump and juicy - yum! We served it with some barbequed corn and had a nice dinner outside. Mind you, we ate around 9pm because that was when it was finally cool enough to go outside... hating this summer.

Stay tuned next week!