Anissa 1: Gordon 0

The fish was a bust. Maybe it was the (extremely expensive) halibut, which refused to pan-fry nicely but went rubbery on the outside while raw in the middle. Maybe the sauce just wasn't flavorsome enough to counter the blandness of this white fish -- although it tasted pretty good mopped up with some organic brown bread. Maybe I was just too stressed after blanching broccoli, frying fish, and finishing the sauce to truly enjoy it. I can manage two pans at once; three is pushing it -- much more suitable to restaurant cooking than to home. Gordon definitely loses out to Anissa's Moroccan flatbread in this particular culinary battle.

However, I should be fair: the piquant mushroom and vegetable salad was pretty good. It involved a lot of prepand ingredients earlier in the day (see photo below), such as skinning and pureeing tomatoes, and I'm coming to the conclusion that I really hate blanching vegetables, but it tasted good, with lots of bursts of coriander-ness coming through from the whole seeds.



I'm looking forward to having some more of that for lunch -- just one of the many joys of working from home. The others are that I'm able to blog and get the vacuuming done before starting work without feeling guilty. And unload the dishwasher, put a clothes wash on, and do some ironing. Hmm, maybe it's not so good after all.