Two weeks ago I found a bag of almond meal. This isn’t finely ground enough to use for stuff like macarons or frangipane but it’s great for breading. So I’m using it to bread some mahi-mahi. I grew up calling this fish “dolphin,” which of course led to a lot of people briefly upset at the thought of eating the cetacean.

I started with a pot of basic coconut rice; just plain basmati rice with a can of coconut milk replacing the water, plus water up to the fill line.

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I also had some broccoli, which was mostly stem (the stem is good!) so I peeled and chopped the stem as well and pan-fried it in a little butter with garlic* and red pepper*.

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Then I dusted my filets in cornstarch* with salt and pepper*, dipped them in egg, and rolled them in the almond meal. I fried them in Crisco* then served them with the rice and broccoli, some of the tartar sauce I made for my crab cakes, and some chives**.

The almond meal is surprisingly not very nutty, and not really distinguishable from a bread crumb crust. It would work well for breading just about anything.

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*store-bought

**grown in my kitchen window