In Which I Have Sole

In my further adventures of cooking seafood, I decided to learn to cook sole.

In this endeavor, I relied on a cookbook that my mom's best friend gave me for my college graduation. This cookbook is written by Ann Romney.

You may disagree with the Romneys' politics, but notwithstanding Ann Romney's cookbook is an impressive cookbook. She really appreciates food. I especially like her scallop recipe because it's fast and easy but extremely delicious.

When I first saw the sole recipe, I was all, "I have never even seen this fish in my life and therefore this recipe has no value to me." But recently, my local grocery has suddenly started selling sole fillets.

Obviously, this was a sign that I should buy some and learn to cook them. So I did both of those things. Well, I bought them, but the cooking part had mixed results.

So Ann Romney warned me to only cook the sole for 1 to 2 minutes a side or else it would over-cook.

And I was like, "Whatever, Ann Romney. That's what you said about the scallops. And I ended up cooking those like 3 minutes a side before they reached perfection."

So I didn't immediately scoop up some of the sole fillets when they'd cooked for one minute and thirty seconds. I had a good excuse, which was that I'd touched the spatula to a piece of raw fish and needed to find a clean spatula to scoop the cooked fish. But nature doesn't care about good excuses, and by the time I found a replacement spatula the sole had started smoking.

Now, our fire alarm likes to go off willy-nilly. It goes off when there's steam. It goes off when I open up the oven to get something out. It even goes off when I open up the empty, preheated oven to put something in. And then it doesn't shut off unless we wave a dish towel in front of it. And sometimes it goes off multiple times during the preparation of one meal. And then our landlady comes to our apartment to make sure everything's all right. And then we're like, "Yup! Just cooking stuff! Heh-heh."

However, when the sole started smoking, the fire alarm did not go off at all.

And I was all, "Really? Are you actually ever going to be of use if there's an actual fire?"

And the fire alarm obstinately said nothing.

In any case, the edges of the sole were a bit black and crispy, but overall it was quite good. I ate it with sliced lemons on top, steamed asparagus on the side, and a delicious baked potato. Ann Romney couldn't do better.