Tonight the steel goes to Sardinia. Swordfish is island food, pulled from the water between Sardinia and Sicily and cooked simply: hot fire, lemon, capers, olive oil. The fregola underneath is the island's own pasta, toasted semolina pearls that drink up the caper butter, folded with blistered tomatoes and mint the way a beach kitchen in Alghero would do it. Your bottle is from Gallura, the granite north of the island. This is that table, cooked in Fort Worth.
If the fregola came through, it cooks like pasta, about 11 minutes in salted water. If you're using pearl couscous instead, toast it dry for 2 to 3 minutes until golden before the water goes in, that's what gets you fregola's nuttiness.
If you ever find bottarga, Sardinia's cured mullet roe, a fine grating over the finished fish is the island's greatest flex. Not required tonight. Worth knowing it exists.
The fregola starts first because it holds beautifully and everything else moves fast. The tomatoes blister on the steel while the water works, and the two meet in a bowl with olive oil and mint at the end.
Swordfish is the steak of the sea and it cooks like one: hard sear, one flip, pull it before it's done and let carryover finish it. The one way to ruin swordfish is overcooking, it goes from juicy to sawdust in about two minutes of inattention, so the thermometer earns its keep here.
This is the sauce from your inspiration plate and it takes ninety seconds on the steel. The capers fry lightly in the butter and get crispy-salty, the lemon cuts it, the parsley freshens it. Made right where the fish just cooked, over all that fond.
Fish and caper butter on both. Chris eats over the fregola, Lauren goes fregola-free with the asparagus doing the work underneath.
Spoon the caper butter over the fish at the table, not in the kitchen, so the capers stay crisp and everyone sees it happen. If bottarga ever makes it into the house, this is where it gets grated.
Volare to open because it's the sound of an Italian evening starting anywhere on earth. Carosone while the fish sears, then Tazenda, actual Sardinians singing in the island's own language, for the course that belongs to them. Paolo Conte and Mina carry the table to the last glass.
You bought the exact right thing. Gallura is the granite northeast corner of Sardinia, and its Vermentino is the island's only DOCG wine, citrus and white flowers with a saline edge that tastes like the air off the water. It was made for this fish, literally, this is what they pour next to swordfish in the towns in these photos. Chill it well and open it when the fregola water goes on.
The IPA is your griddle-side beer tonight. Its citrus-hop bite gets along fine with the capers and lemon, just keep it to the cook and let the Vermentino have the table. The wine is the point of this one.
Generous plates, that's a 13-ounce steak each off a 1.68 lb cut. Lauren's fregola-free plate runs about 190 cal and 34g carbs lighter, around 570. Swordfish itself is lean, the fat is the butter and olive oil. Wine and Sculpin not counted, obviously.