Let’s wake up this lovely Tuesday morning with a look back at Soul Train…

…some of you will remember the show, others will be thinking, “Dancing with the Stars” is so much… oh never mind.

This last weekend’s feature dish, the main course, a baked sole.

Those of you who’ve been around with me awhile might remember our first real trip to Peru and a visit to Sankuay, where we watched chef Javier Wong fillet a large sole, or lenguado.

Not a great picture, but one I took awhile back when I was thinking about getting together a guide to the local ocean fish to complement the posting on local freshwater fish. Might be time to get back to that idea.

This is how it ended up on the plate. The sole wrapped “en papillote” – well, really in foil, not paper, with a touch of butter, salt, pepper, and a couple of pinches of my blackening spice mixture just to “kick it up a notch”, along with some fine threads of zucchini and carrot. Served over a brown butter and balsamic daikon puree, topped with a roasted green pepper sauce and some smoked paprika oil. Basically brings together a couple of our past dishes in a combination that I really like. You’ll see this again.

The dinners this weekend started off with a revisit to my latest ceviche iteration from a couple weeks ago, though with just prawns and clams as the scallops in the market didn’t look very good this week, and neither did the calamarette, which I also considered adding in. From there we went to a returning beet and almond soup from earlier this year.

From there, it was on to a new take on our semolina gnocchi dish from our trial run at a casual night. Here, served over sauteed broccoli and cauliflower (just the very tip-tops) with a little chili. Then the semolina gnocchi cut in squares rather than long rectangles, sauteed until golden brown, and topped with roasted king oyster mushrooms (one night I couldn’t get any more and used a mix of portobellos and shiitakes), and an arugula salsa verde. After that, the above sole dish, and, ending up with last week’s new tart (well, I made a fresh one each night), apple, pear, brazil nut and cashew.

And, this coming week, for a change, a non-pescetarian series for the weekend. Bringing in a couple of twists on some classic Peruvian chicken and pork dishes.