CB Cooks: Pan fried trout with baconed mustard greens

Although at the beginning one of the main appeals of fishing was catching food to eat, I haven't done that so much. I rarely keep any fish I catch, mostly because the places I'm fishing are somewhat polluted, or because I don't have any way to get my catch home (especially if I'm fishing downtown before work). I'd like to combine my fishing skills and cooking skills more... To that end, I've been practicing some fish-cooking techniques so when I catch some fish worthy for the plate, I'll be ready!


I'm a total newbie at cooking fish, but I thought this turned out so great I wanted to share it with you. I'm sure many of you anglers have better recipes, if you have any tips leave them in the comments!


Full disclosure: I got the whole idea from the always great Serious Eats and this recipe

WHAT YOU NEED
- Some fish (filet). I caught mine at Meijer, using a credit card
- Corn meal
- Butter/olive oil/stuff like that
- Greens
- Bacon
- Onion
- Garlic
- Salt, pepper, crushed red pepper
- Cast iron skillet - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!


HOW YOU MAKE IT
For the fish:

1) Cover the fish with corn meal, covering as much as possible

2) Plop the filet(s), flesh-side down, into a hot cast iron skillet that has hot oil/butter/whatever in it

3) Leave it for about 5 minutes (don't move it)

4) Flip, then cook for a couple more










For the greens:
1) Put the bacon in a pan, get some of that bacon fat happening

2) Dump in some minced onions and get them nice

3) Throw in some garlic, and while you're at it remove the bacon, chop it up, and return it to the pan

4) When all that stuff is real nice, add salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, and the greens (torn into bigger than bite-sized pieces)

5) Cook for a couple minutes- the greens will turn super bright green and shrink a lot

CB Cooks: Falafel and pita bread

Falafel sammie with onions, poblanos, carrots, and tahini

One of my all time favorite foods is falafel, which is basically fried balls of some combination of chickpeas and/or fava beans. You might know I love anything involving beans, and the combination of beans and frying is a total winner. I'm pretty sure the healthiness of the beans and veggies totally outweighs any downside of frying stuff in oil. I tried for YEARS - literally - to make them at home, but they failed every time, falling apart in the oil, turning into fried hummus.


I think it was about a year ago I found another way, a method somehow I'd missed in my research. Don't use cooked beans! I found some recipe somewhere that suggested soaking the beans overnight, then grinding up the RAW beans for use in falafel. For whatever reason, this makes it much easier to keep the bean balls in one piece, and makes for a deliciously textured falafel.


I've also dabbled in bread baking (I love the book Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day) and tried making some pita bread for my falafel. It didn't really turn out like the super thin pita "pockets" found in many Lebanese restaurants, but it was still pretty awesome. It's more like normal soft bread, without a hard crust, kind of like hamburger buns or torta bread. 


There aren't too many things better than freshly baked homemade bread.


WHAT YOU NEED
For the CB falafel:
A bunch of chickpeas and/or fava beans, soaked in water overnight (I think I used 1 pound of beans, which yielded 11-12 big falafels)
Tahini (sesame paste- it's like a more liquidy peanut butter, but made out of sesame seeds)
1/2 big white onion
5-6 cloves garlic
Handful cilantro
Jalapeño
Cumin, salt, pepper, any other seasonings you like
A little bit of flour

For the bread:
1.5 cups flour
1 teaspoon dry active yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
Water
Cornmeal for dusting (optional, but helpful)

HOW YOU MAKE IT
The bread:
1) Mix the flour, yeast and salt in a big bowl

2) Add about 1 cup water, mix

3) With your hands, divide up the dough ball into 4 little balls, then hand-roll them out into little circles

4) Put them on a baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal (so they don't stick as much) and preheat the oven to as close to 500°F you can get. If you don't want to bake them immediately, cover them with a clean kitchen towel so they don't dry out

Ready for the oven

5) Bake for ~3-10 minutes- but watch closely! Once they puff up, they're pretty much done!

Doesn't that just look magical!?

The falafel:
1) In a food processor, process the beans, onion, garlic, cilantro, jalapeño (you might have to do it in batches)

2) In a big bowl, add about a tablespoon of tahini, a tablespoon of flour, and your seasonings. Mix well!

3) Grab a clump of the mixture, smush it together in your hand- if it seems like it will stay together, you're good to go! If not, add some more flour.

4) Form little balls in your hands, pressing them to make sure they won't fall apart. Place on a cookie sheet or something. I've found it helps to put the balls in the fridge for a while before frying.

Ready for the fridge, or the oil

5) Get 1-2 inches of oil hot in a pan, then fry the balls. Because it's not deep frying, they turn out to be more like patties instead of balls... But I think that's better for sandwiches anyway.

6) As soon as both sides of the patties are nice and brown, remove from oil and place on some paper towel to absorb residual oil. Immediately sprinkle with salt; repeat for remaining patties.

When you first drop the falafel in the pan, DON'T MOVE IT for at least a minute! You want to form a nice crust, which will help the ball stay together. Don't worry about it sticking to the pan- once the crust forms, it will become unstuck.

WARNING: Don't crowd the pan! You want to fry these guys, not steam them. 
SUGGESTION: If you have any cast iron cookware, this is an ideal time to use it! It will thank you later.

Mmmmm so crispy, salty, and chickpea-y

7) Serve immediately in your fresh "pita" bread!

WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO:
- I like my falafel in bread, with lots of toppings. This time I used sliced onions, raw poblano strips, and thin carrot strips I cut with a peeler. If I had any, cucumbers and tomato are great additions.
- Tahini alone makes a great sauce- I tried making a lime-garlic-tahini sauce for this, but it tasted like messed up candy...
- Falafel burger!

Apparently in Egypt or Lebanon (or both?) McDonald's has a McFalafel
I wonder if this tastes better than that...

CB Cooks: Granola

Walnut cranberry apple (sauce) granola

If I don't think about it, I'll drink an entire pot of coffee in the morning without eating a single thing. I love coffee, and often I feel like that's all I need to get my day started. I've heard it isn't the greatest idea to drink mass quantities of coffee on an empty stomach, so I've been on a mission to find something easy and quick I can eat with my coffee. Sometimes I feel like making some oatmeal (like this fine recipe) but lately it hasn't been doing it for me.


My solution? Granola! It's just baked oatmeal. This is easy and quick to make (I've been making it once a week for the past two weeks... so I guess that's only twice....) and it's a perfect accompaniment to my requisite coffee in the morning.


WHAT YOU NEED for the basic granola recipe
2 cups of oats - the old school kind, but not the steel cut kind
1 cup of syrup/honey/similar stuff in some combination
4-6 tablespoons smooth apple sauce - this is the secret ingredient in my recipe; it is a substitute for oil, and it makes the whole thing taste much nicer and enhances whatever fruit you add
-I bet other types of puréed fruit would be awesome here- even jelly or jam might work
Salt (to taste)

SEASONINGS: To taste, add whatever you want
Lots of cinnamon
A lot of vanilla extract
Ginger might be nice, if you're in to that
Unsweetened cocoa (might burn, so be careful)
Brown sugar (would definitely make things sweeter)
Ground coffee (I might try this next time...)
Ground chile powder (i.e. ancho powder- this would be for the daring- I haven't tried this, but dried chiles are really just spicy dried fruit, it could be amazing)

ADDITIONS: Then you can add stuff like
Walnuts
Hazelnuts (paired with cocoa it'd be like nutella granola)
Dried fruit (like raisins, cranberries, blueberries, pineapple, peaches, mango, etc)
Pecans
Pepitas would be awesome
Dried coconut (this is really great with coffee)
Peanut butter (not sure if this would work, but it could be great)

HOW YOU MAKE IT
1. Combine your syrup/liquid stuff, apple sauce, and seasonings- mix well

2. Pour your liquid mixture into 2 cups of oats, stir until extremely well combined

Plain old oats with light syrup ready for baking

3. Spread out the mixture on a baking sheet, bake for 15 minutes at ~300°F
- If you want toasty nuts, you can add them now
- You could also add any dried fruit now, but they might get kind of hard and chewy by the time your granola is done

4. After 15 minutes, pull the sheet out and stir the whole thing well
- If you want your nuts less toasty and your fruit softer, add that stuff now instead of step #3

5. Return to oven, cook for another
15 minutes: soft, chewy granola
20 minutes: darker, more roasty granola, might be crispy
25 minutes: watch out, you might burn it! It will certainly be crispy

6. It will crisp up a little as it cools

7. Store in something airtight, otherwise it will get stale fast (I use a big zip lock bag- this recipe fills about a third of a gallon bag, at least I think it's a gallon bag)

8. Enjoy!

OTHER IDEAS
Sprinkle your homemade granola on other stuff, like ice cream, yogurt, etc.
Form into bars, make your own chewy granola bars
Instead of baking in the oven, add more liquid to the mixture and then fry on a griddle- oat cakes!

On the lake with the family

Katie got a great shot of the clouds

 Coming fresh off a morning fishing trip fishless, I was determined to catch some fish.

After getting back to the parents' house, grabbing some subway, packing up the minivan, and driving a half hour east, we were at Lake Nepessing near Lapeer, Michigan - the probable location of our fishing redemption! This was our third annual family fishing outing; we rented a pontoon boat, took it out on the lake, and snacked and talked and drank and fished. Not exactly in that order.

I had been studying depth maps of the lake, and even uploaded a .kmz (google earth) file to my home server, so I could load waypoints on my iphone. (In the "maps" app, if you enter a URL in the search bar, you can load any .kmz or .kml file that's out there on the internet- or your own server. You won't get image overlays, but you will be able to see all of your markers.) There was a hump/sunken island right in the middle of the lake; on the east side, the depth went from 5' to 25' in about 10', and seemed like an ideal place to fish. I'd read reports of nice pike and bass being caught there.

We had several things working against us as we tried to position the boat in the sweet spot. First of all, pontoon boats are not easy to maneuver. Second, the lake was choppy, being stirred up by a relentless wind. Our big boat didn't stand a chance against the onslaught, and our tiny anchor just dragged along the muddy bottom.

After a few tries trying to get into position, we just decided to fish. We put the boat west of the hump, hoping that the wind would push us back over the hump, and we might have a chance of some fish. We dropped anchor, and although it didn't seem to stop our movement, it did slow us down a bit. It was about 3pm, so hopefully the fishing would get better as we approached sunset.

Walter is a pretty good ship's captain, for a dog

It was a great time, it's always nice to get outside and do some family stuff. I helped Katie (the sister) set up a dropshot rig with a nightcrawler, then decided to add a bobber. She just got her first fishing license, and this was her first time putting worms on the hook by herself. After quite a bit of convincing, she even cut crawlers in half so she wasn't using whole worms. Good work Katie.

We fished, we ate deviled eggs, tortilla chips, blueberries, subs; and I proceeded to empty a variety of IPA bottles. Good stuff, IPA's. The grocery store didn't have any Bell's Two-hearted IPA (you know, the label with a trout on it) so I got Huma-hopalicious, which I first enjoyed at our rehearsal dinner almost a year ago. (Whoa, almost a year ago!!) Fishing, and beer, two things I love. Oh yeah, and there was family too. :-)

We drifted around the lake, without much control over our location. The wind was relentless. Every so often, we'd get a tap or two, but nothing strong and no hookups. After an hour or two, I was frustrated. I remembered reading a post referring to Lake Nepessing as "Lake Not-a-thing." I thought about how skunk-tastic Busse Lake usually is, but my persistence has often paid off with big fish.

Eventually we repositioned ourself to be just upwind (I think that's the term) of the weedlines. The wind slowly pushed us back into open water, but finally we were able to land some fish!

First fish of the afternoon! That's Katie in the background

Small, and not especially feisty, but hey- at least we beat the skunk. Caught a few more little guys, but at this point honestly I didn't mind. As much as I claim to love fishing, I actually love catching, and if I don't have a choice I'd rather catch dinks than not catch monsters. Claire landed a veritable monster (it was tiny.. at least it was pretty) but unfortunately Katie and my dad weren't having too much luck.

Another itty-bitty guy

We saw some other boats fishing on the west side of the lake at the weedlines, so we decided to move over there. As we were approaching, we saw a guy on the boat posing for a picture, holding a fish. It looked big. As we got closer, we realized it was really big.

"What did you catch?" I shouted. The guy turned towards me, and we saw the full length glory of what he was holding. It was very big. "27 inch pike" he shouted back.

I won't lie, even though writing a second-hand account like this always provides the opportunity to get away with it. I was devastated. Up until this point, I was happy catching dinky little fish, it was fun, and we were having a good time. I figured that was the best we could do for now, and since nobody else seemed to be catching fish I didn't feel too bad.

But 27 inches of michigan pike, now that's something to be jealous of.

It was on. I grabbed a different rod and rigged a white spinnerbait, something I've heard pike are very fond of. I began to cast feverishly; oh man I wanted to hook into something longer than 3". We were in a perfect position, right at the weedlines, so I cast parallel to the weeds just along the edge. When that didn't produce, I tried casting perpendicular, from shallow to deep water. Nothing.

I switched to a medium diving crank. Did the same thing, and nothing. No follows, taps; nothing.

I looked back at the boat with the master pike-catcher on board. I squinted, trying to see what he had tied to the end of the line. I saw something spinning, reflecting the setting sun. It seemed smaller than a safety-pin style spinner, maybe it was a crankbait? For whatever reason I didn't shout out again to ask him what he was using. I didn't want to seem desperate, even though I was.

I felt a little bad at this point, as I was determined to catch a monster, and had stopped eating and drinking and talking with my family, and gone into fish-finding mode. I scanned the surface, trying to find anything that would belie the location of fish. I squinted through my polarized sunglasses, trying to see any tiny flash under the water that could be a fish, any fish. Nothing.

Eventually, we continued drifting around the lake, trying different spots. I threw everything I could think of- cranks, spinners, wacky-rigged senkos, tubes, minnow-tipped jigs- and nothing. I knew I could have probably landed some more baby fish with some nightcrawlers, but that was of no interest to me at that point.

The sun set behind the trees, creating a beautiful painting of a sky, a really great backdrop to our fishing. I wasn't going to catch a monster today. It would have been nice to catch a nice fish, and it was frustrating to see someone else catch such a specimen, but it was still a great day on the water. When you get down to it, you can't really beat fishing on a boat, on a beautiful day, with family, tons of snacks, and many many delicious beers.

CB Cooks: Salmon Dill Pasta Salad [experimental]

The finished dish

In an effort to eat more fish and get used to cooking fish, I've been experimenting on some new recipes. I'm a big fan of Kat Keers' Tuna Pasta Salad with Dill, and have made my own version a few times. I have high hopes of catching some Lake Michigan salmon this fall, so I'd better figure out how to use it! This is definitely an experiment- this is my first time making it.

SALMON DILL PASTA SALAD [experimental]

L-R: black pepper, salt, red onion,
dill, crushed red pepper, smoked paprika, mayo, mustard
not pictured: the pasta

WHAT YOU NEED

Salmon (I used canned salmon... FYI there are usually little salmon bones in there with the meat)

Red onion (diced)

Dill

Cucumber pickles (diced)

Mayo

Mustard

Smoked Paprika

Pasta (I like macaroni for this)

Crushed red pepper (optional, but you should really put it in)

Salt

Pepper

Peas (I didn't have any, but I love them in Kat's tuna pasta salad.. they would be a great addition)

Wild! There are little bones in here,
but I think most people just eat them. Calcium!

HOW YOU MAKE IT

1) Make the pasta al dente

2) Mix everything but the pasta in a big bowl

3) Add the pasta

4) Adjust seasoning to taste

5) Refrigerate, enjoy cold

The salad, w/o pasta - could work great on sandwiches

CHRIS' NOTES

I think it turned out great! It looks pretty fancy, with all the bright green dill everywhere, and the pink hue of the salmon. Nice color combination. The flavor combination is pretty great, but I could have really used some peas or some other texture in there. The raw red onions add a great crunch. Next time I'll add way more pickles- or maybe fresh cucumbers. Some hard-boiled eggs might be nice too. The smoked paprika adds a tiny hint of smoked salmon flavor. Straight-up smoked salmon would probably be awesome in here instead of canned. This mixture, sans pasta, would definitely be a pretty kick-butt sandwich, maybe on some nice dark rye with sliced red onion.

If you like tuna salad, and want to go for something different, try this! If you catch a salmon from the big lake, give this recipe a try.