Fish on a cold night ~
Like magic. Yesterday it was hot and tonight a cold and fog-thick wind is up, the warmth is gone, and any desire to eat a salad of small tomatoes with string beans has left with the balmy night air. Halibut (the romance of far cold waters) along with potatoes and something or other else. Already the dinner feels very Baltic in mood or color. I don't know Baltic or North Sea much of anything, let me be the first to say.

I cooked three potatoes (yellow) in the pressure cooker. I smeared a little butter over the baking dish (red on the outside, a case in which the pan is more colorful than the food itself). Sliced the cooked potatoes and sprinkled with salt and paprika (I had only somewhat hot paprika and used it carefully but now realize that I was adding more color). On top of the cooked potatoes I plopped a thick piece of halibut, sprinkled it again with salt, more of that feisty paprika, and some dill weed. Without caution I spooned over all a half-cup of sour cream, shmooshing it over, around, and into. Another sprinkling of salt (I think I under-salt everything) and then a reckless toss of paprika. I dotted the dish with a few ragged pieces of frozen butter - it had been out to butter the pan and it seemed wrong to leave it at that, there on the counter. Into my toaster oven at about 350 degrees. After a while (say 15 minutes) I checked the fish -- not done. Back into the little oven for more minutes. Then it was done and it was very good. Fish over cooked potatoes, smothered in sour cream.

There's thunder in the distance, which is not a good thing in the forest after a dry year. It's time to get in bed and read more about Agamemnon. It's all that romance language of the deep sea fish and fog and red pans and spices.