After the semi successful failure of what was the perch experiment, I wanted to continue my trek into seafood week. As such, and again thanks to Winn Dixie’s B1G1 sales on all things frozen fish, I pulled from the freezer a packed bag of grouper. Having worked with grouper in the past, I knew how to fry it, bake it, and grill it. Basically, grouper it’s a great meat with lots of flavor. The trick was looking inside the pantry and finding side dishes. Scouring into the world of canned vegetables, pasta boxes, and bottled sauces, I pulled a can of unsalted cut green beans and zesty chili flavored cut tomatoes. Figured I can cook something that’d be both tasty and healthy.

Grouper. Pan fried with oregano. This was the exact thought process on how I was gonna cook the grouper. I didn’t want to add too many spices as I had with the perch the night before. And the meat of the grouper is excellent on its own. I knew I wanted to pan fry some the tomatoes and lay the grouper on top, this way it wasn’t getting direct heat from the pan itself.

Green beans. I’m not gonna lie, I had no idea what I was gonna do with this can. I knew I like the taste and I knew it would compliment the grouper really well. Desperate, I scanned the side of the can and found the recipe for Green Bean Salad. The salad called for the green beans, tomatoes, onions, olive oil, and oregano which of course I had all these ingredients! Time to cook!

• Firstly, I added the olive oil on the pan and let it heat up. Next I drained and added half a can of the tomatoes on the hot pan.* After things settled down, I reduced the heat and let the tomatoes sit for a few minutes. After which I placed the grouper on top of them, sprinkled oregano and covered the pan with a lid and let it cook for a few minutes. Next I flipped the fish over carefully and let it sit until it was fully cooked.

• While that was happening I drained the green beans in a strainer. I added more olive oil in a rice bowl (I don’t have a sauce pan), placed it on another burner adding sliced onions and let it cook and sauteed few four minutes until tender. Next I added the green beans and the rest of the tomatoes, while adding a generous amount of oregano and mixing them all together. Turning down the heat to low, I let sit until hot and warm.

When it was all said and done, the grouper tasted excellent. The green bean salad, of which I never had, was better tasting than I could have imagined. They paired excellent together and if I had a glass of white wine, it would have topped the evening off perfectly. In the end I think this was an excellent use of the items in my pantry and by luck was able to make an great green bean salad I’d gladly make again.

* I have to include this story. OK, so not knowing that I had put the heat up to high/medium the oil in the pan was actually very very hot. So hot in fact when I scooped the tomatoes with a serving ladle and put them on the pan, the oil, and the water from the can, erupted in a flash of hot red tomatoey oil. It covered everything in a 6 inch radius. The heat was so intense it set off the fire alarm in the house and I had to take a phone call to reassure the Brinks folk there was no fire in the house. Lesson learned for sure. No water in a extremely hot oil pan.

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