A simple pan fried halibut recipe with a sweet kiwi berry salsa topping.

Kiwi berries….something I’d never even heard of let alone cooked with until last week when Ulysses brought them home from the store proclaiming he was trying to “broaden the culinary horizons of my blog readers”.

Isn’t he so thoughtful?

So this post is a family effort.

I kind of felt like I was on Chopped or something being handed some obscure ingredient I’ve never seen and basically being forced to do something with it and share it with the “judges (that’d be you guys).

First rule of Chopped…if you’ve never seen it before, taste it!

How many competitors have you seen forget this?!

As if those judges weren’t harsh enough, you best be tasting that damn unknown food just to show them you did!

Otherwise, no matter how delicious of a plate you put in front of them, they’ll tear it apart just because they think you’re an idiot.

So I tasted them.

And guess what? They taste exactly like a regular kiwi.

Kind of anticlimactic actually.

They do have one BIG thing going for them though vs. the normal kiwi. No fuzz. I hate the damn fuzz.

In Italy, the only fresh fruit we were served for breakfast for 2 weeks straight were severely unripe kiwis that I’d try (mostly unsuccessfully) to butcher apart from their fuzz with a butter knife every morning. So the fuzz hatred is recent and strong.

These no fuzz taste-a-likes were therefore immediately ahead of the game.

Here’s where the reality show and life differ.

Instead of racing towards some amazingly stocked pantry shelves, grabbing everything in sight just so the other contestants don’t take it first, I opened my fridge, saw the halibut I had intended to cook the night before but didn’t and this dish pretty much became a done deal.

A slightly less dramatic and exciting process.

If I could afford halibut in all it’s $19.99/lb glory every day, I think I’d be quite content eating it for the rest of my life.

It’s like the steak of fish.

I don’t know why they compare swordfish to steak all the time because that always tastes distinctly fishy to me.

Halibut is not.

It’s thick, buttery and practically screams to be lightly coated in flour and pan fried (like cod piccata). Don’t fight the screams, just do it.

Then top it with a non-fuzzy kiwi salsa.

Bam.

You won’t be on the chopping block.

And if you can’t find kiwi berries, my mango habanero salsa or pineapple habanero salsa would both make a great topping alternatives for the pan-fried halibut.

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