What foods do you think of when you hear "unexpected combinations"? I had such trouble with this and couldn't come up with anything off the top of my head, so I looked at a bunch of different websites for inspiration. Unfortunately, the majority of the lists were either things I had no interest in making or things that were not the least bit unexpected to us. Kimchi and cheese? I've already made kimchi grilled cheese sandwiches (even if I haven't finished the blog post) and kimchi mac and cheese. Peanut butter and sriracha? They're together in the dressings we used for noodle salads and summer rolls. Eggs and beets? That's just an Aussie burger. Shrimp and walnuts? Get the mayo shrimp at your standard Chinese banquet. I guess maybe these are "unexpected" for some people, but not for us, which made this hard.
After much searching, I finally found this link with a recipe for a fish dish that included cheese and mayo. There's a certain cooking school of thought that believes that you shouldn't combine fish/seafood and cheese, so I thought that should work as an unexpected combination. I haven't had a ton of seafood combined with cheese (mostly Greek preparations with feta, but I feel differently about that), and as far as fish, it's mostly tuna melts, tuna casseroles, or the Filet-o-Fish. I thought this would definitely be an interesting experiment.
I mostly followed the recipe from the inspiration site, but modified it for the ingredients we had. Leading into the holiday weekend, we didn't want to buy a ton of new stuff when we wouldn't have time to use them up (like parsley), so I mostly went with dried spices and other pantry items. For the recipe, I used:
- 3 mahi mahi fillets ($7.39)
- 1 cup mayonnaise ($1.08)
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese (ran out before I got to 1/2 cup) ($0.50)
- 1 clove minced garlic ($0.04)
- 2 tbsp dried oregano ($0.15)
- 2 tbsp dried parsley ($0.25)
- 2 tbsp lemon juice ($0.20)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.10)
This dinner wasn't that expensive, considering it included fish. The mahi mahi component was about $9.71, and the kale we ate on the side added another $3 or so, for a total of $12.71. Pretty affordable for dinner for 2. I'm sure we could have gotten better quality mahi mahi somewhere other than Trader Joe's which would have added to the cost, but TJ's was convenient and it worked fine.
To make the dish, it's pretty straightforward. First, make the mayo sauce. Combine the mayo, grated cheese, minced garlic, dried oregano, dried parsley, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Next, grease a baking pan (with sides) and add the mahi fillets and pour the mayo sauce over them. In a 425 degree oven, bake the fish until fully cooked (about 20 minutes). They should be golden brown on top. (Ours were kind of golden brown, but a lot of the mayo sauce apparently slid off the fish and was just cooking (or browning) on its own on the sides, which was kind of a waste.) We paired the fish with a side of kale with onions.
Overall, the experiment was fine. The big piece of mahi mahi cooked pretty well, but the two smaller pieces were a little bit overdone after 20 minutes. The flavor of the sauce was mostly just like slightly flavored mayo. Maybe it's because I ran out of parmesan cheese (I thought there was more left before the rind, but I was wrong) and didn't get to 1/2 cup of cheese, but it just didn't taste much like cheese. I don't know if that would have improved it though. I think there still would have been a pretty heavy creamy mayo flavor, and I'm just not sure I like that with fish fillets as much as other preparations. A actually thinks this sauce would work better for chicken breasts, and he's probably right about that. Overall, it wasn't a bad recipe, and it tasted fine, but I just don't think it's for us. I would probably make a different fish recipe (blackened mahi tacos come to mind) next time we buy mahi mahi.
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