Just for the Halibut... I mean, butterfish :)

During the first week, if not on the first day, of school I let all my students know what my favorite color is: yellow. I LOVE yellow. It is so bright and cheery and you can't look at it without it putting a smile on your face. So, as I looked through my "Platter of Figs" book, trying to decide which recipe to try, my eyes were drawn to "The Yellow Hunger". The picture of the grilled halibut with the yellow tomatoes was the most beautiful and eye catching picture I had ever seen in a cookbook. I knew right away that that was the dish I wanted to prepare.

There was one simple problem... The dish is called "Grilled Halibut with Indian Spices and Yellow Tomatoes". What's the problem you may ask? Well, I live on an island in the middle of the pacific so we don't really have any "seasonal" items and most of our groceries are imported. And so today I discovered while at the store that both halibut and yellow tomatoes are two things that are NOT imported to Hawai'i.

I was not dismayed nor disheartened however. I decided to make yellow zucchini in place of the yellow tomatoes (which Safeway has imported from Mexico :) which is also part of the "yellow hunger" menu. However, instead of doing the recipe in the book I decided to make just grilled zucchini with olive oil and a little salt and pepper. As for the halibut, I had contemplated doing chicken instead, I mean, you can never go wrong with chicken. But I couldn't overcome the guilt of NOT cooking fish when I live in a fishing community. So I departed from Safeway and their totally overpriced and slim pickin's on fish and made my way to SackandSave where things tend to be more local and therefore of a better quality. There I found exactly what I needed: butterfish! So my Grilled Halibut and Yellow Tomatoes was now going to be become Grilled Butterfish and Yellow Zucchini.

The first part of the recipe calls for making your own spice. I had to toast the seeds and then grind them up. It was totally awesome and I was super proud of myself ! I have to admit though, I didn't grind it by hand... my roommate has a magic bullet :) I also made the yogurt sauce to go with it, which was super easy, and turned out superb!

I then had to decide how to cook my fish. I have a grill at my house, but I am not super confident in using it. I was debating between baking it in the oven, broiling it, or cooking it in a pan. My roommate suggested that I use her Japanese portable grill (yet another great contribution by my totally awesome roommate). It worked beautifully! The food was all cooked perfectly and even had those dandy little grill marks on them!

Cooking just for yourself is never fun, so in addition to my roommate I had three other friends over to enjoy the meal with me. And they all loved it :) Also, one of the garnishes for the dish is mint leaves, which inspired me to make mojitos too. So, I think it is fair to say, we had a really great time!