Mario’s Fish with Lime Sauce

A few years ago, a group of friends and I went on vacation to Honduras. We were lucky enough to find an inexpensive house rental (I say house, but it was really more of an estate). While the house itself was a bit shabby and the horses were down right mean (I don’t particularly like horses), it did have two amazing things going for it: a lovely pool, and a… *drum roll*…personal chef! His name was Mario and he was basically the coolest Honduran I’ve ever met. His food was to die for and through my broken Spanish I was able to weasel out of him some of his recipes.

This one in particular, made with a white fish similar to a grouper that I can’t remember the name of, was super tasty. Honduran food ended up surprising me a little bit in that it was decidedly different than the Mexican cuisine I was used to, and seemed to have little hints of European flair. Mario hand wrote this recipe down, and I translated it using Google Translate, which isn’t very effective if the words are misspelled in the first place. Here is the straight translation, how he wrote it with my interpretation following it.

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Recipe from Chef Mario with love in Honduras

Fish and Lime Sauce

Ingredients:

1. Fish, Grouper or Tilapia or Salmon
2. Tomato chopped.
3. Chopped onion.
4. Sweet Chile chopped (bell pepper?).
5. Garlic, minced
6. Butter cream (heavy cream?).
7. Limon
8. Flour
9. Salt and Pepper
10. Mustard

Preparation:

1. Fish and passed by seasoned flour. Then put the pan or the fridera (frying pan?). After that, let it brown. Remove from the pan, and placed in the dish.

2. In another pan is to be lemon sauce as first fry the tomato, onion, sweet chili and cream the butter is incorporated. And the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste until you taste the sauce of lemon and add the (cooked fish).

Bon Appetite – Chef Mario of Masca

Like I said this is a straight translation and is therefore a little confusing. Mario’s instructions were pretty brief. I’m pretty sure that if you use a little extrapolation, common sense, and any combination of these ingredients, your end product will be delicious. I would rub the fish (I used thinly cut halibut, but I think rockfish would be fantastic) with a little whole grain honey mustard and coated it with the flour that has salt and pepper mixed in. Then I browned it in a frying pan. Then in another pan saute all of the veggies, which were chopped super fine. Deglaze the pan with the lime juice, about the juice of 2 limes, and then finally add the butter to thicken it up and the cream. It was pretty creamy so “butter cream” might mean heavy cream. Put the fish on your plate and pour your sauce over it. Yummy!