Dismal?

No, not really. Not as dismal as it looks anyway.

Saturday 29 March. Yahoo!
You see, it was a little sloppy in spots. It was cloudy overcast most of the day. It was breezy. Even starting to rain. But...for most of the day...it was near 60°F! I felt like we haven't been out riding in *ages*. That's probably because..oh, it's been weeks at least. It's been bitter cold, windy, snowy, icy, then when we did have a couple of seasonal days the mud was like soup everywhere.

Yesterday was as nice a day as we've had in a very long time. And L was, of course, a rock star. We didn't do anything hard. A little flexing and bending. Some transitions. She had the nicest slow jog going for a couple hundred yards. We both need to get ready to work in the weeks ahead. There are still some snow piles in the shady spots and the woods are downright swampy, but we found enough firm footing to have a good time.

We were out for about an hour so when the wind and the rain picked up and I think the temperature dropped almost 20° in just a few minutes. I felt really good with L between me and the ground even if for just a short while.

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And look! Halibut season!

Pan seared oven roasted halibut steak
With steamed leeks. Halibut is my most favorite fish. Halibut steak, seasoned and seared in a scary hot cast iron griddle and finished in a 425° oven for a few minutes is sensational. Pinot Grigio went very well with it. And would you believe I've never had leeks before?! Loved them. I made a lighter vinaigrette than the recipe. I thought the red wine vinegar might clash with my wine and the fish might be overpowered by the balsamic vinegar. So I used white wine vinegar with a little rice wine vinegar. With a little spot of maple syrup. I should have thought to use a little squeeze of lemon.

That's the very first halibut of the season!

Daisies!

Saturday, the 19th of May was a positively stunning day. Even the daisies were out! I don't know that I've ever seen them out this early.

Barn Daisies. 19 May 2012
One thing that isn't early this year is tack cleaning. I'm going to have to clean some tack in the next week or two!

Between the rain and the sun the grass is growing like crazy. L and I hit the fields and the grass is past her elbows. Try keeping your horse out of the grass when it's chin high! It's a challenge. Challenge or not I enjoyed a most awesome ride. And...I think we're going to have some new neighbors! Stay tuned..

I had to stop and get something special on my way home. This time of year is wheat beer season. What better way to celebrate?

Dreamweaver wheat beer
I enjoyed this beer. See how nice and cloudy it is? It has a nice frothy head too but I still prefer Allagash White.

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A very special dinner as well. This is a (Great Lakes) Brown Trout fillet beside some mixed greens. I oven grilled it at 450 degrees. Ten minutes per inch. This went about 9 minutes. I mixed up a glaze with equal parts lemon juice, grainy Dijon mustard and horseradish with some wild flower honey. I glazed the trout at around 7 or 8 minutes and reserved some to drizzle around the plate. That's a salmon recipe. Brown Trout is just sensational. I scattered a pinch of dill over it. Any fresh herbs will do.

I thought the mixed greens were especially nice on a perfect Spring day like today.

Honey mustard glazed Brown Trout
Oh. I had a Charles Smith 2009 Cabernet with it. My wine of choice this time of year would have been white. Maybe a Riesling. Or a White Zinfandel. But I had the Cabernet left sitting around and had to finish it.

Get out the good stuff

I've been saving this...
I look forward to my friend T's fishing trips as much as he does.

I have salmon fillets and a brown trout fillet. He had a *huge* steelhead fillet I just didn't have room for in my freezer.
I always do a simple maple syrup or teriyaki glaze on my grilled salmon so I decided I'd try a mustard glaze for a change.

A treat money can't buy
Did you know wild salmon turns mostly white when you cook it? Farm raised salmon gets its coral pink color from dyes in the food pellets. It keeps most of its pink color when it's cooked. So I'm told anyway.

I mixed up a honey Dijon mustard sauce with a splash of soy sauce.

I painted the glaze on the salmon for its last minute in the oven. I drizzled a couple of tablespoons over the salmon on the plate. Some fresh dill would have been excellent with the honey mustard but I just happened to have some fresh cilantro I wanted to use.

I think honey glazed carrots with parsley is *perfect* for salmon but I didn't want to overdo the honey so I had peppermint peas with it. Good choice. In the wintertime I always have a red wine with salmon. Sometimes in the summertime I'll have a white wine with it.

I have two recipes I want to try. One is a parchment baked treatment. I've never done a parchment baked fish. And the other is a simple baked treatment. I've wanted to try the simple baked recipe for I don't know how long.

The path

How on earth did I get here?!

Sushi - Mandarin Garden Platter
I first tried Sashimi maybe 30 years ago in California. I didn't care for it much. I vaguely remember trying Sushi maybe 10 or 12 years ago locally. I didn't care for it much.

Then while having Chinese food some weeks ago I had a view of the Sushi bar and the chefs were fixing some of the most beautiful things.

My date and I had uni for dessert.

Uni. Delicious.
I had to go back for more.

Our Sushi was exquisite and I swear I could have nibbled on Sushi all night long.

Tempura shrimp maki. Crab. Tuna. Nigiri.

The salmon Sashimi? There on the right. It was flavorful and just melted in my mouth. It's up there with the best things I ever ate. The white fish behind the salmon is white tuna. I'd never heard of white tuna before last night. I liked the red tunas better.

My tastes have changed or my fondness for seafood has really taken over my palate. It wasn't always this way.

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Up until about 3 years ago I don't think I'd eaten fish 3 times in 10 years. It sort of started here:

Not really from Gloucester any more
After losing a lot of weight I became more mindful of healthy eating habits and I wanted to improve my diet. I decided to try the Gorton's breaded fish fillets. I got the parmesan crusted fillets and I liked them. So I tried some others. I liked them too. I think everyone would agree they're probably better for you than Hamburger Helper. I love Hamburger Helper.

After eating the Gorton's stuff for a while I decided I'd try my hand at preparing fish. No wonder I didn't like fish much. I didn't know how to cook it.

Pan seared halibut fillet
Once I learned how to cook fish I found I liked pan seared halibut, oven baked haddock and Flounder Meuniere better than Gorton's! It's not hard. Use the 10 minutes per inch rule.

I'd always liked pickled herring.

Re-discovered herring tidbits
And with my new found confidence even took to liking smoked salmon.

Have crackers and yogurt with this
I even think this is a treat!

Here I'm a greater Boston native and I never liked fish much up until about 3 years ago. Thanks to Gorton's? I sometimes eat seafood for weeks at a time. And I thoroughly enjoy every single bite!

Oh. And I think now I'm going to have to practice using chop sticks!

Under the (Cuban) Influence

Cuban Style Halibut
This was lick the plate good. I'm just sayin'.

Many years ago we had a Cuban influenced seafood restaurant not far from here. I went there often enough. I liked the food. They prepared the second best calamari I ever had. Then they took banana flan off the menu. And I never went back. I'm sure they had some really good data that said the banana flan wasn't making them any money. I find that hard to believe. They folded a year or two later. Well ya. I don't know whatever possessed them to take banana flan off the menu.

So anyway. Here I've been craving Latin style Island Food for a week and I figure I should be able to make something to satisfy my craving. So I researched Cuban fish recipes. I found...nothing. Because they don't eat fish in Cuba. Not much anyway. No really. Cuba is a poor country. Until recently they didn't have refrigeration inland, so they don't eat fish there. The fishermen are the poorest of the poor and they're about the only ones that eat fish. This is what I read anyway. Ok, peasant food works for me and I'm sure they have some lovely dishes but apparently the Cuban fisherman aren't writing cookbooks.

So. What's so Cuban about my halibut? Nothing really. But it was so delicious.

Peel some tomatoes. Put a little cross slit in the end opposite the stem, dip them in some boiling water for 30 seconds and then dip them in cold water. I used Campari tomatoes. They're about the size of ping pong balls and packaged in a plastic box. They're expensive but they're delicious. I used 6 of them for this. Chop them.

Sauté a chopped yellow onion, 4 cloves of finely chopped garlic and a teaspoon of red pepper flakes in some olive oil for a couple of minutes, just until the onions are soft.

Add a cup of dry white wine. Reserve the rest for drinking. I used pinot grigio. Reduce it by maybe half and add the chopped tomatoes. Make sure you get all their liquid. Add a pinch of salt and cook for a few minutes, until the tomatoes start to break down.

Rinse and dry your fish. I used halibut but you can use cod or haddock just as easily, maybe even striped bass. Halibut is just my favorite fish.

Edit: Season your fish with a little salt and pepper!

Add your fish to the cooking liquid, reduce the heat to low and cover it. This is more braised than poached. I'd say start checking to see if it's done in about 7 or 8 minutes. My halibut was done in about 8 and a half minutes. Just use a fork to gently poke at it and see if it's starting to flake. Finish with a liberal amount of chopped cilantro.

I had rice and green beans with my fish.

Don't be afraid to try new things in the kitchen. I over-reduced my braising liquid beyond my intent. It was still delicious. It just didn't run into the rice like I wanted. Next time I'll be a little more careful. I also forgot to finish the braising liquid with a bit of butter. That would have made the sauce a little more silky and luscious.

Still celebrating

Chardonnay poached rainbow trout. This was just crazy good!

This is a 10 oz. whole rainbow trout. Well over an inch thick along the spine. So, how do you cook something like that? I would love to have butterflied and broiled it but I don't have the skill to pull that off. Poaching is the best (easy!) way I know to get the thick part along the back and the thin part along the belly both properly cooked. And trout I think takes to poaching really well.

I sweated chopped carrots, celery and onion, about 1/3 of a cup each, in some olive oil to bring a little more flavor to the poaching liquid. When they were soft and translucent I put in a cup of chardonnay and after that boiled off a bit I put in enough water to cover the fish. After boiling that for 5 or 6 minutes I turned down the heat and got out a thermometer. Liquid at 190 degrees looks exactly the same as liquid at 160 degrees. So I use a thermometer. I like to put the fish in around 180 degrees and let it drift down, keeping it between 160 and 170.

I poached the fish for 16 or 17 minutes. I put maybe a teaspoon or so of dried thyme into the liquid and gave the pan a gentle swirl.

That's brown rice and zucchini with it. Underneath the fish is a bed of lettuce and this stuff:

I don't know what that's called. It's Cuban or Puerto Rican. It's equal parts of finely chopped jalapeño and red onion, a pinch of salt, covered in lime juice. It starts like this:

It's *wonderful* stuff and I have it with salmon, tuna, swordfish, and I have it on hot dogs and hamburgers.

Oh and another thing! My sister has this knack for always finding the perfect gift. She sent me a Penzeys herb gift box for my birthday!

I was going to put some fresh thyme in my poaching liquid but the dried thyme from Penzeys is just so good. Definitely two thumbs up!

Best thing I ever ate? Maybe!

Homemade fish sticks!


These might very well be just about the best thing I ever ate.

Halibut fish sticks.

Cut a halibut filet into fish stick size strips. Rinse and dry them. Coat them with flour, shake off the excess, dip in whisked whole egg, coat with seasoned bread crumbs. I use bread crumbs from homemade bread. I think it makes a world of difference. So much so that I make homemade bread sometimes just to make bread crumbs with it. In a pinch use some bread from the bakery. Don't *ever* use those things in the can. Panko might be pretty good but frankly the homemade crumbs are so good I haven't tried panko.

I put the breaded halibut sticks in a cast iron skillet with maybe a quarter cup of hot canola oil. Fry them for 2 to 3 minutes on each side.

I had them with tartar sauce and fennel/apple slaw. And a lemon wedge. And some parsley. Just for looks.

Now, the tartar sauce - I make my own, basic stuff, pretty much equal parts Hellman's lite mayonnaise and sweet pickle relish but I add a little finely chopped preserved lemon and chopped cilantro. Chopped cilantro in tartar sauce is OMG good. I have it on crab cakes all the time. Try it.

What's with halibut this year? It costs a fortune!

Oh. Pinot grigio goes great with them. I'd think a chardonnay will too.