Red Snapper w/ Sweet Mustard & Spinach

It's only two days before the big Thanksgiving Feast, here in the states.  My family is all over the place this year, with my dad visiting my brother in Florida, leaving the girls and my mom to fend for ourselves.  My sister is taking care of the main attraction (the turkey!) and I'll be doing all the sides.  I even plan to bust out a from-scratch pecan pie.  So hopefully all runs smoothly for us!  But not too smoothly, of course.  We don't want to end up having to put on Thanksgiving every year.  Hehe.

How do you all plan on celebrating the big Thanksgiving day?!

So I ended up taking home a 6 lb. red snapper yesterday from Whole Foods.  It just looked SO good.  Then I realized, what the heck am I going to do with a 6 lb. red snapper?!  After breaking it down, I ended up with 8 4 oz. fillets.  That's more than enough to feed us for a bit!  So I decided to give 4 of them to a couple close friends.  And with 2 of them I made this fantastic pre-birthday dinner for Andy (whose birthday is indeed today!).  He gobbled it all up without a problem!

Ingredients:

2 4 oz. red snapper fillets
flour, for dusting
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil

Sweet Mustard Sauce:

2 tablespoons dijon mustard (I used the whole grain variety)
3 tablespoons boiling water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1-2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon soy sauce
juice from 1/2 lemon
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
salt and pepper, to taste

1/2 lb. spinach, stems removed
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
 salt and pepper, to taste

Caramelized Apples:

1 Granny Smith Apple, core removed and cut into 8 wedges
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Make your mustard sauce first.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the dijon mustard and boiling water, adding the water in small increments in order to create a smooth emulsion.

Slowly drizzle in vegetable oil, whisking constantly, until all is incorporated.  Stir in honey, soy sauce, lemon juice, and parsley.  Season with salt and pepper, to taste.  Set aside, until needed.

In a medium saute pan, melt the butter with the brown sugar.  When the sugar is dissolved, add your apple wedges.  Cook until the apples start to soften and are warm.  Hold warm until needed.

Heat a large oven-proof saute pan under medium high heat.  Add butter and oil to pan.  Season both sides of snapper fillets with salt and pepper.  Dust with flour, shaking off any excess.  Add snapper to the pan and cook until browned.  Carefully flip fish over and transfer pan to oven to finish cooking, about 3 minutes was perfect on these.

During those 3 minutes you can quickly saute your spinach.  Add butter to a medium pan under medium high heat.  When butter is melted, add spinach.  Season with salt and pepper.  Cook spinach until wilted.  I find it's easiest to keep the spinach moving, to create steam.  This helps the spinach wilt faster, but you don't necessary have to do that if you don't want to.

To plate, arrange half of the spinach on each plate.  Top with snapper fillet.  Arrange the caramelized apples around snapper.  Finally, drizzle the sweet mustard sauce over top of the snapper.  Enjoy!

This is definitely a keeper dish!  Andy loves snapper more than any other fish, and I'm glad we've got a couple extra fillets in the freezer for when his craving strikes next!  I'm off to finish baking Andy's birthday cake - hope you all have a great day!