I am NOT a Baker

I have baked for 2 nights in a row with little success. My first attempt was at baking what started as a beautiful, thick halibut steak from Costco. It was meant to be succulent and moist and instead turned out to be...dry. Did you know that if overcooked, halibut can taste like tuna? The halibut was at least 2 inches in thickness. I first pan fried it for a total of 6 minutes, then baked covered in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. ARG! I probably should have halved the time in the oven...next time I will try for 10 minutes. My fiance is from Boston and informed me that the best way to cook fish is to leave it pink in the center, take it out then cover and let it continue to cook. This way it will be perfect. Since I had 5 steaks, I actually pan fried 2 of them which were a bit less thick. I cooked them for about 8-10 minutes total and then covered with foil on a plate until ready to eat. These were moist and much more palatable.

The only saving grace for the baked halibut was that I made a delicious fruit (white nectarine, mango, pineapple) salsa to serve with it. My fiance loved the salsa so will definitely be making this again. 1 mexican mango, a bit less than 1/2 pineapple, 1 white nectarine, 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 green apple, 1/5 jalepeno, handful of cilantro, red onion, juices of 1/2 small lemon, dash of kosher salt, dash cumin, dash of chili pepper. Best if made overnight or at least refrigerated for a few hours to let flavors blend.

Due to the dryness of the halibut, I made a halibut salad sandwich the next day: halibut, 1 ttsp light may, 1/2 tbsp curry, touch of creamy horseradish, 10 grapes cut in half. Spread this over a piece of toast witht a light spread of rasberry jam. It was Yummy!

My next attempt at baking was making a lemon bar. This was a first for me. I had just picked a ton of lemons from my parents' house and wanted to find a good recipe to use them up. I found a recipe for Lemon Lovers Lemon Bars by Julie at the following blog: http://www.aminglingoftastes.com/2008/05/lemon-lovers-lemon-bars.html

I attempted to make the recipe with half of the crust recipe and full filling recipe as I only have a small baking pan at the moment. I had to bake the crust for 13-14 minutes, then filled with almost all of the filling, leaving about 1/4 cup out. I baked for 20 minutes and AGAIN overcooked. The crust actually came out quite nice, but the filling was stiff and did not have that gooey texture that it should have. I would like to try this recipe again, this time only cook for 15 minutes and then check.

The lemon filling had great flavor and just the right amount of lemony-ness to it. I made the following changes: I used splenda for the crust, instead of making the lemon sugar, I used half c splenda and half c sugar and 1 tbsp of lemon zest, only 2 eggs and 1/4 c + 1 tbsp lemon juice. Next time, I will follow the full recipe making the splenda substitutions. I think this could be a winner.