Slow Roasted Halibut with Fennel-Lemon Oil

Dinner is my favorite meal, both to eat and to cook. I am positive this is because of how I was raised. Dinner was ceremony. Around 6:00 each night, martini in hand, Dad would start his kitchen ministrations–readying coals on the grill, boiling water, mixing sauces. Around 7pm we would get the call to set the table. Placemats, cloth napkins, fork on the left and knife on the right, dinner plates heated in the oven. Salt and pepper? Dad would call from the kitchen. Check. Candles? Check. Serving spoons? Hot plates? Check, check. From 7:30 to 8:30pm each night the four of us sat down for dinner without distraction. We were not allowed to answer the phone. There was no TV on in the background. We ate and we talked. This is where I learned how my parents met, that my mom once lived with 3 men in a basement apartment that had only a curtain separating the bathroom from the kitchen (scandal!), that my Dad wrestled an octopus in the Pacific Ocean. It was at the oval table over a favorite meal of steak, peas and couscous that my sister and I had our first sips of wine, that we admitted to a bad grade on a test or being asked to the prom. Could we go? There have been phases in my life where the formality of dinner has fallen by the wayside. But a day without the punctuation of a dinner lovingly prepared and shared sends me to bed wanting.  The plates of my childhood are what I think of as a three part plate, a plate anchored by an animal protein and rounded out by a “starch” and a vegetable. These days my dinner plates don’t always take that form and animal protein is not always the focal point. But this past Sunday night, craving comfort food, I found myself planning a three part plate in my head. Pete requested fish–a food absent from his diet in Argentina this past month–and, though I did not have a martini in hand, around 6pm, I started the happy task of boiling water, salting a halibut filet, zesting lemons and washing salad greens. This time, Pete set the table.