Baked Stuffed Fish and Spinach Pancakes

So I have to be honest, after the liver casserole, I was questioning my decision to eat Finnish food. That dish scarred me for life! 

The next day I attempted to make Hiivaleipa, Finnish Brown Bread. The recipe seemed pretty straight forward: mix hot water with butter, sugar, and salt. Let it cool to lukewarm. Stir yeast into lukewarm water and let it dissolve. Add to the mixture. Beat in rye and another unsifted flour. Knead for ten minutes, let it rise, and bake. Up until the holidays, I was baking bread once a week so I know enough about bread making to where I felt comfortable making this. I tried twice and I couldn't get it right. The first time the dough was super sticky so I had to chunk it. The second time it came out okay but after an hour, it didn't double in size like it was supposed to so I chunked that as well. By then I gave up on it and made another donation to the food bank. This disaster combined with the liver casserole made me feel like a failure. I know it's silly and really, there are bigger problems in the world, but it was still a blow so I really needed this fish dish to come out okay. I have feelings, okay?

The ingredients

For the stuffing:

1/3 cup rice

1/2 lb fresh spinach or a package of frozen chopped spinach

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2 eggs, beaten

Cook the rice and the spinach, separately, and then combine them. Season with salt and pepper. Blend in the eggs.

For the fish:

1 3 lb pike. I don't know much when it comes to fish. I've had the very basics, tuna, salmon, trout, tilapia; I had orange roughy once and it turned my poop orange. Won't do that again. Anyway, I decided to go to Quality Seafood Market to get my fish because 1. figured I wouldn't find pike at HEB and 2. actually that was the only reason. I thought there were two. I was wrong. I told the man behind the counter that I needed pike but if they didn't have pike, I would take something similar. He gave me walleye and he only had a pound of it in fillets, which was fine because I didn't think we'd eat 3 lbs of fish anyway. Also, it was $16.49 a flippin' pound. 

1 tbsp salt

1/4 cup butter

2/3 fine, dry breadcrumbs

about 2/3 cup hot water

Pre heat oven to 350

Rub the fish inside and out with salt. I didn't have an inside and out, I had a one side and another side so I just rubbed the fillets with salt.

From the book "Stuff with stuffing and sew up or fasten with skewers in the usual manner" Um, I don't have a usual manner for stuffing fish so I used what I had: toothpicks. Also, since I didn't have a full fish, only fillets, I sort of just rolled the stuffing in and secured with toothpicks. In case you didn't know this, fish skin in hard! I broke like ten toothpicks trying to pierce it!

Melt the butter in a casserole dish and place the fish in the dish; spoon melted butter on all sides. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and bake for five minutes. Pour hot water into the dish around the fish and cook for another 30-35 minutes. Baste fish when it turns brown.

So this looks weird because half of the stuffing leaked out but it looks a lot worse than it was. As a side I made Spinach Pancakes. I forgot to take a pic of the ingredients:

1 cup milk

1 tsp salt

1/8 tsp nutmeg. I am so over nutmeg at this point.

1 cup flour  

2 tbsp melted butter

2 eggs

1 tsp sugar

1/2 lb spinach, chopped, or 1 package frozen spinach

Season milk with salt and nutmeg. Sift in flour a little at a time, beating constantly. Stir in butter and let the mixture stand for thirty minutes to an hour. I let it sit for an hour. Beat eggs with sugar and stir into batter, Add spinach. Prepare pancakes as usual. They should be thin, not like big, fat, American pankcakes.

This meal TOTALLY made up for my previous failures. And the liver casserole wasn't even a failure, I just didn't like it, but regardless, this improved my mood drastically! I think this would be really good as a brunch meal since it has the basics and it's kind of light. I think the baked fish would work with any white fish but with this being my first time eating walleye, it was good. The husband looked up some facts about walleye (cause he's a nerd) and it turns out it's the most popular fish in Michigan. We have some friends who are moving to Michigan so I'll pass this along to them so they can blow everyone's mind with it.

And yeah, the kids didn't eat this. I think they had pasta instead.