We really love hogfish. Every few days we call the Eaton Street Seafood Market to ask if they have hogfish to set aside for us to come get. Failing that (and it does fail, because hogfish has to be spearfished by a diver usually and the water's been rough lately), we go to the Hogfish Bar and Grill in Stock Island. Until today, one of my favorite things to do to hogfish had been Hogfish Parmesan. It works exactly like chicken parmesan, because hogfish and chicken are mostly interchangeable ingredients: Coat the hogfish with egg, then bread crumb with parmesan cheese, fry it, then bake it over pasta with sauce with some mozzarella to melt over the top.
There's two things wrong with Hogfish Parmesan, however: The first is that it contains a ghastly number of calories per serving if done richly. Far more serious, however, is the fact that you can Parmesan a gym sock and still have it come out tasting delicious; I mean to say that the majesty of the hogfish is overpowered by the Parmesan steamroller, which seems a bit of a waste of the finest fish in the Atlantic.
To address these concerns, let me introduce Light Italian Baked Hogfish:
This is a non-fried version of the dish that saves a few hundred calories per serving, and is also less Parmesan and more Hogfish, to make better use of the gift of hogfish.
Instead of using egg as our adhesive, I started by melting 1 tbsp of butter (100 calories total) in a glass 9x9, then dipping the filets in it to coat them. Then I lightly dusted them with breadcrumb and parmesan cheese on both sides. Then, threw them back into the 9x9 and put a very small amount of sauce and mozzarella on top, and baked them in a 350-degree preheated oven for a little over 20 minutes. The picture shows it served over Uncle Ben's brown rice.
The result is fabulous: The Parmesan is toned down and the hogfish is allowed to speak more clearly with its buttery, flakey goodness. Now put those saved calories to use and wash it down with some Key West Sunset Ale.
-Chris