Caribbean Swordfish Steaks with Mango Salsa

Rum with Swordfish! Who'd a thunk it? The lime, cloves and rum marinade was excellent. When you take the swordfish out of the marinade, you pour the liquid into a sauce pan and put that on the grill next to the swordfish and brush some of it on the fish while it is cooking. The swordfish was nice and moist and full of flavor. I cooked it partially over indirect heat and for less time than the recipe said. It was yum. Emily cooked some rice with roasted slivered almonds which was a perfect side dish.

Our son Steve is staying with us for the weekend so we will try the calamari tomorrow. He loves it and everyone else in the house thinks it tastes like rubber. I'll have to make something else for them. The side dish with the calamari recipe is a slaw where you grill the Napa cabbage and red peppers, chop them up and then mix in with cucumber, green onion and a vinegar dressing. The dressing is rice vinegar, honey, ginger, olive oil, soy sauce, salt and pepper. I made this tonight and it will sit in fridge until tomorrow evening. It smells good. We'll see how it tastes with the squid.

Speaking of squid, since I had never purchased it or cooked it, I was not sure what to make of the little white ball looking things in the cookbook photo for this recipe so I went to Whole Foods to have a look. There, on display in the fish department, was something labeled "squid." It looked like a set of white tube socks made out of rubber. Hmmmmm? So, I went to YouTube for help and there were some pretty interesting videos of people taking something you could imagine swimming around in the deep and "cleaning" it down until it looked like ... white rubber tube socks. Since this "cleaning" process starts by pulling the head off and pretty much goes downhill from there, I thought I would skip that part. So I went to the Public Market where they have a very good fish counter and bought 1.5 pounds of white rubber tube socks which we will have for dinner tonight.

- Mark