Camping, Princess Style

[ElsieD]

We use Bullseye Bold.

[Smithy]

Fun with Salmon 

 

I love salmon. It may be my favorite fish, except for almost any fish that was in the water only an hour or two ago and is now Shore Lunch. But we're far from fishing grounds and shore lunches, and we're still carrying some of the shipment from Wild Alaskan that arrived just before we left for the winter.

 

Although salmon is one of my favorite fish varieties, it's one of my darling's least favorites. Too dry, he says, or too fishy. He almost visibly flinches when I announce salmon for dinner. I keep trying to find recipes using salmon that we'll both like. So far, with years of trying, about the only success has been pecan-crusted salmon with browned butter or, better still, sorrel sauce. Still, I persist...at least until I work my way through our present stock. Then, I think I'll stick to smoked salmon when I can find it; we both love that.

 

A recipe from our Duluth newspaper crossed my newsfeed a few days ago, and I've had it up on a browser tab ever since: Sicilian Baked Salmon. It ticked a lot of boxes for me: easy (ha) with strong flavors that I thought might augment the salmon or, better still in his eyes, mask it. You cook a sauce of finely chopped onions, garlic, an anchovy/caper paste, tomatoes, broth, crushed red pepper, oregano and basil. Pour it over skinless salmon -- her recipe was for one large filet; I used two small -- and bake at 400F until done, 15 - 20 minutes. 

 

She says it's easy. Don't they always say it's easy? It would have been easier if I'd made the sauce in advance, as the recipe says can be done. I didn't, and evenings are often times of great distraction. And I have very little counter space, and had a lot of elements to pull together: mash the capers and anchovies together, mince the garlic and onion, and so on. He demanded that I take a picture of the Workspace In Progress; this collage shows it as he saw it from his desk, and again closer up. 

 

 

I was partway through assembling the sauce when I recognized it for puttanesca sauce. That's one of my favorites, and these proportions are pretty darned good. I'll keep the sauce recipe.

 

Here was the sauce, the fish before and after, and dinner. We had leftover rice from a few nights ago, and the fish and sauce went over that.

 

 

Yep. This was just what I needed. The sauce had a nice heat from the red pepper, and good salty tartness from the other ingredients. The salmon stood up to it reasonably well, but in truth the sauce would work well with chicken, lamb, a good sausage, or no meat at all.

 

"What do you think?" I asked him.

 

 

He thought the salmon was wasted because he couldn't taste it!

 

🤣

[Anna N]

10 hours ago, Smithy said:

He thought the salmon was wasted because he couldn't taste it!

Let us know if you need help with bail. 

[Porthos]

On 1/27/2023 at 12:13 PM, kayb said:

I like Sweet Baby Ray’s, but I never tried the Visalia onion version. Traditional has just enough sweet for me.

The Sweet Visalia Onion was made for pork IMHO.

[Porthos]

@Smithy we're now living about 3 1/2 hours north of your campsite.  We're just in the process of ordering blinds for our windows. The master bedroom faces north.

When I wake up in the middle of the night I've been enjoying seeing those planets in the western sky, and how they shift as I wake up again.

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

@Smithy

I had very clear skies for three evenings and had very good western views (not much light pollution here).

Quick question. Do you use any sky mapping software? I've been using Stellarium on my laptop and been quite happy with it

 

[Smithy]

4 hours ago, Senior Sea Kayaker said:

@Smithy

I had very clear skies for three evenings and had very good western views (not much light pollution here).

Quick question. Do you use any sky mapping software? I've been using Stellarium on my laptop and been quite happy with it

 

 

I began using Stellarium on my (Android) phone a couple of days ago. Still hasn't helped me see the comet, though. 🙂

 

[Smithy]

No photos of last night's dinner: we cleaned up most of our leftovers. He finished off his last batch of hash; I had the remains of our broccoli dish; we split the remaining ribs -- and didn't even think of adding barbecue sauce until we were nearly finished! 😄 So, no additional taste-tests to report.

 

There's an impressive amount of room in our refrigerator, however!

[Shelby]

11 minutes ago, Smithy said:

There's an impressive amount of room in our refrigerator

Stop it.  You're making my fridge jealous.

[Smithy]

6 minutes ago, Shelby said:

Stop it.  You're making my fridge jealous.

 

Here, let me rub it in. 😉

 

[Shelby]

17 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

Here, let me rub it in. 😉

 

This is borderline abusive.

[ElsieD]

16 minutes ago, Shelby said:

This is borderline abusive.

 

@Shelby Your fridge should meet my freezer.

[Smithy]

I've pulled more stuff out of the fridge and freezer! So take that! 😝

 

It's a windy and grey day today. Most of you won't feel a bit of sympathy when I say it's "cold and windy" and it's 57F outside. The local weather service doesn't bother calculating a wind chill with that, so we've decided it must a wind chill of about 20F. 😉

 

The bad news is that I'm suffering from a cold -- test a couple of days ago said it isn't Covid (maybe I should test again) but when my nose isn't running I'm coughing. Most annoying! What I really want to do is curl up with a nice bowl of soup, and then take a nap. I can't; I have a business call in about 10 minutes and that's just enough time to post about this morning's food.

 

First, the aforementioned soup. I decided simply to try a spoonful of chicken "Better than Bouillion" in a cup of boiling water. No gussying it up. Well, I did squeeze half a lemon's worth of juice into it. Perfect.

 

 

Because of the cold, grey weather, my darling has been agitating for cinnamon rolls. I haven't gotten round to making any bread dough, but there's been a box of puff pastry in the freezer awaiting my experimentation with a tarte soleil. (There's still one half left for that!)

 

Our housesitter sent us along with a jar of her homemade, home-smoked maple syrup. We love the stuff. I spread a layer of melted butter on the pastry, then sprinkled it liberally with cinnamon, then drizzled some of the syrup over it. You can see the result in the collage below: as I rolled the dough up, stuff oozed out the end. No problem; after I cut the slices I dipped them in the oozage and made sure it was all over their tops and bottoms.

 

 

20 minutes later, we were enjoying breakfast.

 

[ElsieD]

@Smithy. No added sugar, just maple syrup?

[Smithy]

1 hour ago, ElsieD said:

@Smithy. No added sugar, just maple syrup?

 

That's correct.

[Smithy]

Today we're in the midst of a wind- and dust-storm, and the mountains are disappearing. Fortunately we don't have to go anywhere. We've had nonstop action for the past several days, so this is a welcome break.

 

Sunday was our most recent stay-at-home day. My aforementioned cold was beginning to abate, I thought, although it was developing for him. ("Don't bring home any more 'presents' for me!" he begged.) In no particular order, I began a loaf of bread, cleaned out and defrosted the freezer, and did some other stuff that I've forgotten. Paid bills. Napped. Here's the before-and-after freezer:

 

 

No visible gain in room, but the burger and hot dog buns that had been sitting outside in a cooler now fit.

 

A beautiful lake trout filet resurfaced after being buried in the freezer far too long. It's been vacuum-packed and kept frozen, but it was a special treasure from friends who spend a lot of time in northern Ontario. I haven't been able to visit them there for some years, so they gave me this treat. It deserved special treatment. But what? 

 

Back when we traveled a lot more in the Princessmobile than we do now, I picked up this lovely cookbook in the gift shop of some National Park. Don't ask me which one any more, but it's traveled with us while I fantasized about reproducing some special dish from the Ahwanee in Yosemite, or the fancier lodges in Death Valley, or...well, there are a lot of great-looking recipes and photos. I haven't tried many of them.

 

 

Aha! I've had this book's recipe for Orange Pecan Trout flagged for a long time. I have pecans I bought in Llano last November.

 

 

The recipe is really quite easy, and begins with marinating the filet in orange juice.

 

 

(Isn't lake trout gorgeous?)

 

While it was marinating, I struggled to get my bread dough through stretches and folds so it would turn into some semblance of bread. This is an easy recipe for soft bread rolls from Peter Reinhart, and I've made it many times. You couldn't tell it by the way the dough behaved. I'll tell more about it in another post, so consider this a teaser:

 

 

Back to the fish recipe: after it's done marinating, you dip it in a mixture of chopped pecans and panko crumbs. (This might have been the most difficult part: they didn't say anything about how to make that coating stick. I think I dipped the fish quickly into the heating butter, then really mashed the fish in the coating, then piled more on top.) Saute the fish filets, flip partway through, serve.

 

I will say that the crunchy panko and pecans, browned in butter, really made this dish. They also made a beautiful topper for the pilaf I made, and the asparagus spears I'd roasted in butter in the baking dish I'd used for the marinade. Two burners and the oven were going for this, and we both were really too tired to enjoy the result, but we both agreed it was good and well worth doing again.

 

 

While all this was going on, the sun set and the full moon rose at just. the. right. spot. to come up behind our neighbor's motor home. 

 

 

It looked for all the world as though his rig had blown a big bubble!

 

[ElsieD]

2 hours ago, Smithy said:

Today we're in the midst of a wind- and dust-storm, and the mountains are disappearing. Fortunately we don't have to go anywhere. We've had nonstop action for the past several days, so this is a welcome break.

 

Sunday was our most recent stay-at-home day. My aforementioned cold was beginning to abate, I thought, although it was developing for him. ("Don't bring home any more 'presents' for me!" he begged.) In no particular order, I began a loaf of bread, cleaned out and defrosted the freezer, and did some other stuff that I've forgotten. Paid bills. Napped. Here's the before-and-after freezer:

 

 

No visible gain in room, but the burger and hot dog buns that had been sitting outside in a cooler now fit.

 

A beautiful lake trout filet resurfaced after being buried in the freezer far too long. It's been vacuum-packed and kept frozen, but it was a special treasure from friends who spend a lot of time in northern Ontario. I haven't been able to visit them there for some years, so they gave me this treat. It deserved special treatment. But what? 

 

Back when we traveled a lot more in the Princessmobile than we do now, I picked up this lovely cookbook in the gift shop of some National Park. Don't ask me which one any more, but it's traveled with us while I fantasized about reproducing some special dish from the Ahwanee in Yosemite, or the fancier lodges in Death Valley, or...well, there are a lot of great-looking recipes and photos. I haven't tried many of them.

 

 

Aha! I've had this book's recipe for Orange Pecan Trout flagged for a long time. I have pecans I bought in Llano last November.

 

 

The recipe is really quite easy, and begins with marinating the filet in orange juice.

 

 

(Isn't lake trout gorgeous?)

 

While it was marinating, I struggled to get my bread dough through stretches and folds so it would turn into some semblance of bread. This is an easy recipe for soft bread rolls from Peter Reinhart, and I've made it many times. You couldn't tell it by the way the dough behaved. I'll tell more about it in another post, so consider this a teaser:

 

 

Back to the fish recipe: after it's done marinating, you dip it in a mixture of chopped pecans and panko crumbs. (This might have been the most difficult part: they didn't say anything about how to make that coating stick. I think I dipped the fish quickly into the heating butter, then really mashed the fish in the coating, then piled more on top.) Saute the fish filets, flip partway through, serve.

 

I will say that the crunchy panko and pecans, browned in butter, really made this dish. They also made a beautiful topper for the pilaf I made, and the asparagus spears I'd roasted in butter in the baking dish I'd used for the marinade. Two burners and the oven were going for this, and we both were really too tired to enjoy the result, but we both agreed it was good and well worth doing again.

 

 

While all this was going on, the sun set and the full moon rose at just. the. right. spot. to come up behind our neighbor's motor home. 

 

 

It looked for all the world as though his rig had blown a big bubble!

 

 

Lake trout is lovely.  I caught an 8 1/2 pounder once.  It was the record size fish taken from that lake that season.  First time fishing

[Smithy]

9 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

Lake trout is lovely.  I caught an 8 1/2 pounder once.  It was the record size fish taken from that lake that season.  First time fishing

 

Yes. I've said that salmon is my favorite fish except for the shore-lunch catch. When I've had lake trout made into shore lunch -- oh, those were the days, at my friends' place up near Dryden, ON! -- that's been the best of all.

[ElsieD]

Here he is:

 

 

[Smithy]

He's a beauty, Elsie! What fun!!

 

 

[heidih]

3 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

Here he is:

 

 

Wow! funny it was your first time. My first time ocean fishing I caught a big beautiful tuna while new hisband got skunked How did you prepare that big boy?

 

@Smithy I see the white flesh on yours - skin side down? Did it crisp or was it left behind?  Trout was first fosh I cooked on my own and the fish guys atr Grand Central de-boned it for me and told me to keep it simple as it was a delicate flavor. I thin i stuffed it with a creamy spinach mixture. 

[Smithy]

So, the bread.

 

I couldn't get a good texture for this stuff on Sunday. As I noted before, I've made this particular recipe many times. This time it didn't want to cooperate. Maybe the flour was too dry and I needed to add more liquid. Maybe the canned condensed milk really should have been diluted. (Carnation claims that it's a straight-up substitute. I don't remember whether I believed them in the past.) Maybe the yeast was too old. I think that package is about a year old now. At any rate, it went together...

 

 

 

...but it did not want to loosen up enough for any stretching and folding. I tried. And I waited. And I gave it time. And my "stretching" amounted to aggressive pulling, just to get it to stretch out enough to fold over.

 

After several hours -- it was a busy day and I was running out of energy -- I rolled it into the best ball I could.

 

 

I put it into an oiled plastic bowl, covered it lightly, and left it to rise.

 

It didn't rise much that day. I put it out on the deck to stay cool, and decided this would be a "retarded" fermentation.

 

On Monday morning, it hadn't changed much. Maybe a little? I brought it inside but went away for the entire day on planned outings.

 

On Monday night, it might have risen a little but was nowhere near double the size. I put it back outside. On Tuesday, we spent the day away on unplanned outings. On Wednesday, it might have had a bit of life but we were gone all day, on outings delayed by Tuesday's excursions. So every night it sat outside and every day it sat inside, in the shade.

 

Today, Thursday, I had time to deal with it. It might have doubled in size by this morning. It was certainly firm: not overproofed, but with a pleasant "give". I had intended to cut it in two and make bread rolls with one half and sweet rolls with the other. My first sweet roll batch convinced me that i needed more practice, so I made two batches of sweet rolls: melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, chopped pecans and slightly rehydrated craisins as the filling. Lots of melted butter drizzled over the top, and in the second case more sugar and cinnamon as well. This is the second batch before baking:

 

 

And the finished product.

 

 

Surprise! They're good! There are way too many for us to eat at once. I hope they freeze well.

[Smithy]

18 minutes ago, heidih said:

Wow! funny it was your first time. My first time ocean fishing I caught a big beautiful tuna while new hisband got skunked How did you prepare that big boy?

 

@Smithy I see the white flesh on yours - skin side down? Did it crisp or was it left behind?  Trout was first fosh I cooked on my own and the fish guys atr Grand Central de-boned it for me and told me to keep it simple as it was a delicate flavor. I thin i stuffed it with a creamy spinach mixture. 

 

It was cooked both skin side up and skin side down (up first, I think, so the flesh could be cooked with that crunchy cover). The skin stayed with the fish, unfortunately. If we hadn't both been sick and literally tired I'd have tried to peel the skin off, but that was a bridge too far that night.

 

I was surprised at how good the simple orange juice marinade was, and how it complimented that particular fish. Your creamy spinach mixture sounds like a nice touch. I wish I had access to a really good fish market, but we're way too far from the ocean and from urban centers to make that feasible.

[heidih]

Happy your rolls came out well. Was it really condensed milk which I  associate with a sweetened product versus evaporated which is also 60% reduced but not sweet?

[Smithy]

23 minutes ago, heidih said:

Happy your rolls came out well. Was it really condensed milk which I  associate with a sweetened product versus evaporated which is also 60% reduced but not sweet?

 

Sorry! I don't mean sweetened condensed milk, but evaporated. Funny, I could have sworn the can said "condensed" but I don't have it now. It definitely wasn't the sweetened stuff.