I can kick your butt in the kitchen

Salsa-marinated snapper, blue cheese-stuffed jalapenos make an interesting dinner

I’m now confident I could kick your butt in the kitchen. That includes you, too, Granny.

I’m impressive, to say the least.

I had planned on marinating some red snapper in a tequila-lime marinade and grilling it for supper on Tuesday. So, I ran through the grocery store and grabbed the few things I could remember from the recipe.

But, when I unpacked the groceries and began to prep the marinade, I realized I’d forgotten the most important part – the limes. No lime juice in the bottle, either. OK, so my memory’s not that impressive. But, read on.

So, I made something up, and it was, without a doubt, one of the best dishes I’ve ever made.

I chopped up some garlic, parsley, red onion and tomatoes. I put half of it into the food processor with some melted butter, olive oil, salt and pepper and processed it to make something that resembled a spicy (think garlic-and-onion spicy, not deli) mustard.

I rubbed the concoction on the fish and topped it with the other half of the chopped ingredients – like a pile of fresh salsa, I guess. I wrapped the fish in aluminum foil and let it soak for a couple hours.

The fish cooked well, although I did take it off the grill, open the foil and place it under the broiler for a few minutes, just to finish it off. The end result was probably the most satisfying fish dinner I’ve ever eaten. We simply pulled back the foil and dove right in. Hell, even the baby ate it.

But, by far, the most interesting flavor of the night was the jalapeno poppers I made. I cut the top off five peppers, cut out the seeds and membranes and stuffed them with a crumbled blue cheese, then secured the caps with toothpicks. The hot peppers and the savory blue cheese was one of the strangest and most satiating flavors I’ve ever tasted.