Alaskan Halibut Thai curry stew

 

It's winter in Alaska and my book club is tonight, so I wanted to make a large batch of something warm. My freezers are still stocked with last summer's catch, so I got some halibut defrosting and gathered all my ingredients. (I don't normally use recipes, so I'll post quantities and amounts to the best of my knowledge).

 

I pulled all the flavors of Thailand I could find from the pantry and fridge. The great thing about soups or stews is that you can throw in so many different things, so just stick to a flavor profile (in this case - Thai) and you'll be all set! 

This recipe makes about 1.5 gallons of stew.

• Coconut oil - 1 TB
• Coconut milk - 2 13.5-oz cans
• Red curry paste - 2-3 TB to taste
• Chicken stock (although I ended up using seafood stock instead) -1.5 32-oz TetraPak containers
• Lemongrass - 1 stick sliced lengthwise
• Cilantro - like 1/3 of a bunch chopped, plus more for garnish
• Lime - 1 tsp zest, then slices for serving
• Ginger - 1 thumb-sized piece, peeled and sliced in half length-wise
• Shallot - 1 whole, diced
• Potatoes (I used Alaskan-grown gold) - about 6 or 7
• Spinach or any green vegetable you have like chard, kale, zucchini - 3 handfuls
• Salt and pepper - to taste
• Alaskan halibut or any firm white fish like cod or rockfish would maybe work, too - 3-4 pounds
• Serve with Jasmine or brown rice if you like

 

1. I defrosted about 3-4 pounds of halibut in the sink. Jim caught this last summer in Prince William Sound and we fileted and vacuum packed it at home. (Side note: these wire racks that sit on the bottom of the sink work so well for weighing down frozen items for defrosting.)

2. In a heavy dutch oven or pot over medium-high heat, saute one whole diced shallot in about a tablespoon of coconut oil until they are translucent. Next, add about 2 soup spoons' worth (or more or less) of red curry paste and let it saute with the shallots for about 1 minute.

3. Add 2 cans of coconut milk to the pot, as well as 1 container of seafood stock (or any kind of broth).

 

4. Next, peel about a thumb-sized piece of ginger (I have pretty big hands, you might need more or less). Cut it in half length-wise, also slice a piece of lemongrass in half length-wise (or use lemongrass paste) and add both aromatics to the pot. Add some lime zest and some chopped cilantro, as well. Let the soup reduce by about 1/3 to 1/2.

5. While the liquid is reducing and making your house smell like heaven, peel and cube about 6-7 gold potatoes (not pictured) and add to the pot. The mixture will boil, when it does, turn the heat down to about medium to keep it simmering.

 

6. Prep your fish which goes in very last to prevent it from falling apart or drying out. I removed the skin and any errant bones in these filets, then I seasoned them with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, then cubed them into bite-sized pieces. 

7. Add the halibut when the potatoes in the liquid are tender and the mixture is reduced. The liquid should just barely cover all the fish and potato chunks like in the photo above. I needed to add more stock.

 

8. Last, add about 6-8 sliced green onions to the pot, cover and let the halibut poach until it is just finished (start checking after about 4-5 minutes).  This is also the stage when you can add green veg if you like - 3 handfuls of spinach or kale, sliced zucchini. I'm warming mine up later so I'll add spinach just before serving. Finish soup with salt and pepper to taste.

9. Serve with chopped cilantro, more green onion, Thai basil, lime slices and chili paste or sauce if you like. (Watch out for lemon grass and woody ginger pieces, or just pick them out.) Enjoy!

Master bedroom before & after

The master bedroom is still a work in progress in terms of decorating and arranging the furniture. I'd like to finally make that tufted silk headboard I have all the materials for, and Jim wants to build a wooden platform bed so we can lose the box spring. But it's to a place now where it feels restful and pretty organized. 

This room is a very elongated rectangle because it used to be two smaller bedrooms (you can see in the "before" photos the remnants of the old dividing wall which we removed). I had this vision of making one side of the room the sleeping space and the other the kicked-backed loungy space, but because our king bed is so large it doesn't work anywhere else except smack in the middle. So now we have this really big side spaces for twirling in large skirts or, more realistically, piling up loads and loads of laundry... (Also, we don't really need another lounge space with a living room and a huge downstairs family/TV room.)

Decor--wise, my vision was to create an upscale beachy feeling, like a Nancy Meyers movie set, with white linen and and sea glass greens and blues. It didn't quite work out and, like ALL my decorating intentions, ended up taking on the "global eclectic" look that I think is just what's in my soul, i.e. more Moroccan or Mexican than Cape Cod. 

I DIYed the light fixtures for this room by combining a hard-wired pendant light kit with an upside-down lamp shade. I used small, clear bulbs meant for a refrigerator since they are somewhat visible and also so they don't protrude below the fixture.

 

A note about a really good purchase for this room was the duvet cover and shams - they are heavy, high-quality washed linen, exactly what I wanted from the Eileen Fisher Home collection...but for hundreds (yes, hundreds, less). So I found these at H&M online for $100! I love the easy wrinkled look of them. 

Kitchen remodel before & after

 

 Of all the rooms in the house, the kitchen area was by far the biggest change...and also the most work. I think most kitchen remodels are, though, because of the plumbing, exhaust, electrical, and basically the room's furniture is attached to the walls. 

We started with a teensy galley kitchen tucked behind a ginormous and fugly fireplace that took up about 1/2 of what is now the kitchen. Because the house is not big (totaling about 1800 square feet, 900 on each level) we knew we wanted to do an "open concept" for the living/dining/kitchen area to maximize the small upstairs for both family time and also entertaining. 

We have people over a lot and we've learned for certain that they always congregate around a kitchen island or bar, so for this remodel we planned for a big one. The finished kitchen island is about 8 feet square and is literally in the middle of the upstairs cooking/living area.

I'm going to illustrate this room step-by-step because it required so much work...

This is how the kitchen looked when we bought the house, missing cabinet doors and all. I guess in the '70's is was grooviest to not have to watch your old lady do the cooking? Now days with cooking as an important part of family time (and dinner parties!), it made sense to bust out the fireplace and make it all open.

So, bye-bye fireplace wall...

...and hello open-plan kitchen!

Next came ripping out the cabinets and flooring, new sheet rock, rebuilding the soffitt over the window (which conceals the sewer vent to the roof) and rewiring the electrical to make sense for our new appliance and island layout. (All of our sheet rock was done by Eric at Denali Painting and Drywall).

 

The cabinets. Because we're intending to do a "slow flip" on this place, we were just going to install the "in-stock" cabinets from Home Depot, however it turns out that they aren't actually in stock in Alaska (something they didn't tell me until I'd already paid for their kitchen measurement service). Of course. So we had this 3-day window when we needed to get the cabinets in and by a miracle of good timing, I found these floor model cabinets for sale on Craigslist by Builder's Bargains in Wasilla. The set ended up fitting perfectly, they were the style we liked, already came with stainless steel hardware and they could deliver them the next day. The best part, though, is that we couldn't have afforded these beautiful, solid-wood cabinets new, so it felt like a score even though we're still paying them off...

 

Next came the gorgeous concrete countertops which Jim did himself (with some help from his brother and a friend). We went with black dye for the island and no dye, e.g. natural, for the wall L-shaped counter. Jim ordered plastic countertop forms from ZFrames and used those to pour directly in place. The whole process made a GIANT mess (I think I hyperventilated at one point) and I don't recommend pouring inside (as opposed to pouring elsewhere and transporting a slab into place after its cured) unless your house is already a construction zone.

The counters were poured over this super deep stainless undermount sink (the second one we've bought, the first was an identical one in our last house) from Krauss. Because the window handle is so low we couldn't do one of those tall swoopy modern faucets that are so popular, we had to go with a shorty model and there are not many modern-looking shorty faucets. But, I searched high and low and finally found this Italian-made one that is so pretty and fits nicely.

Next, we did some back splash tiling with mosaics of quartz and glass and installed some new stainless steel appliances. The fridge is from Home Depot, the dishwasher from Lowe's and the slide-in range is from Allen + Peterson, which I cannot recommend highly enough to locals - they beat every price in town and price matched to national online sale prices when I went in to browse their ranges. I also ended up buying our washer and dryer there.

Then came this SS and glass range hood (Alaskans cannot beat the free shipping via Amazon Prime - we brought our heavy sink and this very large boxed range hood up this way and probably saved about $500 in shipping costs.) The light fixtures are handmade by an artist in Israel. I also found these on Etsy after weeks of searching, and the first batch broke in the mail but she quickly sent a replacement. They are gorgeous in person. 

Lastly, here is the finished product with flooring (click any photo to enlarge)...

Upper bath before & after

The upstairs bath is kind of an odd space because it's not a dedicated guest bath although it's on the same floor as the main entertaining space, and neither is it a master bath although it is next to the master bedroom. I use this bath (the guys use the downstairs one), so I wanted it to be easy to clean up quickly for when peeps come over.

Basically I don't keep any of my stuff in here except tooth paste, tooth brush  and shower stuff. ALLLL my other many many products are in the hall closet just outside the bathroom door and this works fine.

So, remodeling this space meant gutting everything (even rebuilding the floor which was rotting into the utility room below). I left the tile surround and the tub (which is white, the before is the actually the downstairs bath flipped horizontally because I didn't take a "before" of the upstairs bath, but they are identical except for those horrid pea green fixtures).

Anyway, I splurged on the floor tile in here because the space is so small, but even so, $350 for special-order penny tile still seems steep to me because I'm so cheap. I LOVE this tile, though, and will probably always use porcelain tile in remodels in the future because a) it doesn't scratch and is tougher than ceramic; and b) it always looks shiny even when I haven't mopped for days. I also laid this tile myself and I found it really easy to work with because instead of using a saw to cut the tiles to size, I could just snip the mesh backing with scissors to re-size the tiles as needed.

Guess what the (three) shelves in here are made from? Go ahead, I'll wait... Okay, I'll just tell you because you'll never guess - I made them from cheese boards I found at Target for just under $20/each! And then some brackets I bought at Lowe's for 3-4 bucks each. I love how they look, kinda rustic but polished.

Last comment, swapping out the grimy glass shower doors for a curved shower curtain rod made a huge difference in the interior of the bath/shower area. It just feels a lot more roomy inside.

Living area before & after

 

The living area, while one of the larger spaces in the house, was also one of the easiest to redo. It's all paint, floors, trim and curtains. Oh, and new ceilings (we said "hells no" to popcorn ceilings, ick.) The rest of the "after" is decor. 

Upper entry before & after

This is the area directly over the entry way one floor below.

I wanted to find a light fixture for this space that looked good from beneath, straight-on and also from outside looking in. After searching for weeks, I finally got this one on a whim at Home Depot in the clearance section (on clearance for "slow moving" i.e. no one wanted it, how sad). It's modern with the lucite embellishments but also has a clean classic look that I thought wasn't too fussy and could blend well with my eclectic style of decor. So we kept it. Plus, my husband said there was no way he was taking it back down after holding it up with one arm while wiring it into the ceiling - that thing's not light. Well, it is light, but it's not not heavy.

Here's another (blurry) shot of the area, this time decorated for Christmas (and, oops, I see it now - before the trim was put on by Jim and my dad)!

Dining nook before and after

In June last year (2014) we bought a fixer-upper home in Anchorage, Alaska. It has 3 bedrooms on two floors arranged in the very basic 1970's "split-entry" style. It needed a LOT of work. So for the first 2 months we owned it, we lived in a borrowed RV in the driveway while we demolished and gutted and sheetrocked, plumbed, did electrical work, painted, laid flooring and so forth. Someday I'll post photos of that chaos, but for now as we get closer to being finished, I'm excited to post Before & After photos!

The dining area is part of the upper level combined kitchen/living/dining area. Really, this area just got paint, flooring, new curtains and a beautiful woven wood veneer light fixture that I obsessed about finding for weeks. I finally bought it from an Etsy shop called Oaklamp. Oh, and a "new" set of 6 leather Crate & Barrel chairs I got for a screaming steal on Craigslist for $200. We keep the table pushed back unless we're having guests, then we pull it out. This space really needs a round table, but this works, too. I like the simplicity of it.