Fish

This weekend begins National Fishing Week in Canada.  As I recently visited Canada and have now met some of my wife's family who live in Canada, it seems a fun thing to take note of.

I remember in my youth, I fished several times:  a few times with a grandfather, and a few times while in Boy Scouts.  However, I never got into it enough to want to do it all the time.  In fact, I found it to be rather uninteresting.

However, I love working with fish. While I tend to do most of my work with saltwater fish as opposed to freshwater, I will work with any fish or any other seafood that comes along.

Give me a nice salmon filet, a fresh piece of red snapper, or some scallops (I prefer sea scallops but I will take bay scallops as well), and I am happy man in the kitchen. 

I love eating a McDonald's filet of fish sandwich, and I've often thought of trying to replicate that and improve on it in my own kitchen. But it's one of those many things on my cooking to-do list that I haven't gotten around to yet.  

One of my very favorite things that I have done more than once, which I did completely experimentally, was to purée scallops, then freeze them in small little medallions (miniature patties), coat them afterwards in a breading and grated parmesan cheese and then deep fry them.  They are so incredibly good.  I haven't codified the recipe or the process yet.  It's also another of those things on my to-do list that awaits my attention.

One of my true pleasure in working with fish is a simple piece of clean red snapper.  The meat is white although the skin is red and silver.  And I simply sautée it slowly with butter and seasonings.  It doesn't need much added to it as the flavor is mild and can be easily overpowered, but the flavor is very nice even if mild.

I won't be out fishing during this National Fishing Week, but perhaps I will go to the seafood counter and find something interesting to cook.

Enjoy these first days of summer, everyone!

Frozen banana purée

 

Some time ago, I puréed some over-ripe bananas and froze them.  It's always a bit of a time-planning adventure to figure out when to acquire bananas so that they have long enough to over-ripen in time for the day I want to have banana bread.  If you make the bread with bananas that aren't ripe enough, then the flavor is simply not strong enough.  In fact, when made with bananas that are at peak freshness for eating, which also means no dark spots anywhere on peel or fruit, then the finished bread doesn't even taste "banana-y", in my opinion -- maybe a tiny bit, but that's all.  So I got some bananas, let them ripen until the they were soft and mushy and darkening nicely, and then I peeled and puréed them, and then froze it all .  Hmmm.....

Well, I never like to assume anything.  Good cooking means planning and testing and tasting.  So I did it.  And you know what?  It worked very well.

Freezing some things which are meant to be thawed later and mixed with other ingredients doesn't always work for every food.  So for banana bread, one of my most favorite of all foods, I had to be really sure.  And I have to say I was happy with the result.  

I think that when I ate the loaves, the power of suggestion (knowing that this was from frozen banana purée) made me think that perhaps there was the tiniest of tiniest differences when made with fresh, but I can't really be sure.  

However, all things considered, the banana bread was excellent.  It's good to know that I can take this shortcut in the future.  I like to be able to ripen those bananas a good long time, and then when I think they are ready, I still let them ripen one more day.  Now I can do it and freeze it and always have this ingredient ready for spur-of-the-moment banana bread baking.

Food on vacation

 

Well, it has been a number of days since I last posted.  I have a good excuse, though.  My wife and I were on a trip, a road trip to Toronto, Canada, and then to Niagara Falls.

In the photo above, you can see one of the boats that goes right up to the falls.  We weren't on that one, obviously, but a couple hours after this photo was taken we were on the Maid of the Mist and were sitting in the same place as the boat in the photo and wearing blue ponchos (blue ponchos for those taking a boat from the American side, red ponchos for the Canadian side).  It was memorable, for certain.

While we were on this trip, we ate lots of food.  Some of it was fast food as we went for "quick and easy" while on our driving days.  Then other times it was lots of good food from sit-down restaurants, both in Toronto and Niagara Falls.  

In Toronto we ate some excellent dishes at a couple fantastic Pakistani restaurants, an Italian bakery, and a wonderful ice cream shop.  Then in Niagara Falls, we got to try some things from a couple small street food vendors and a wonderful burger places at the hotel where we stayed.  I was impressed that in both places a large cultural diversity meant there were numerous excellent restaurants to try.

And I picked up a couple ideas on things I want to learn to make from these restaurants.  Hopefully you'll see them on my menu in the future.

For now, though, my wife and I are reducing our food intake for a few days because we stuffed ourselves.  And it was sooooo good.  I would do it again.