The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Native Brookies

 

We were originally going to take the kids fishing yesterday morning, before Easter brunch at my cousin's house.  But late on Saturday we changed that plan because it was supposed to be really cold Sunday morning.  Monday looked warmer, so we agreed we'd go that morning.

Well, it was definitely cold yesterday - the Easter Egg hunt outside was a pretty speedy process - the kids ran around snatching bright plastic candy-filled eggs from nooks and crannies outside and some of the adults stood around either clutching hot coffee or cameras or our own bodies, teeth chattering, shoulders up at our ears, commenting repeatedly, like total strangers on a bus, on the cold, cold weather, and how it wasn't this cold LAST year, and so on.

Bill and I were looking forward to a warmer morning today.

We're still looking, because WE SURE AS HECK DIDN'T SEE ONE THIS MORNING.

It was 28 degrees when we parked the truck at Frosty Hollow Pond.

At least it wasn't windy.  Yet.

Bill set the kids up with worms and daubers and we all stood there, watching the water, waiting. 

And waiting.

In the cold.  The freezing cold.  Actually, the below-freezing cold.

Eventually we let the kids sit while they waited.

Nothing, though.  No bites.  Just coldness.

So we packed up and headed elsewhere.

Everyone was glad to be in the warm truck for a while as we drove to our next spot.  This one is one of Bill's favorite spots to fish at Arcadia, and I am honor-bound not to tell you where it is. 

He ultimately caught 7 brook trout there - in the now-windy coldness of the morning - but he let 3 go because they were very small.

Brook trout are native trout - born and raised in the local rivers, rather than raised in hatchery and dumped in select ponds a couple weeks before the second week in April.  They are often smaller than the stocked trout, but they are far superior in flavor.

And so we headed home, 4 fish richer, to cook them up and eat either a second breakfast or an early lunch, depending on how you want to look at it.

Bill wanted to grill these little babies, so the first thing he did when we got home was to start the coals.  Then it was inside to clean the little trout.

While he did that, I whipped up a batch of baking powder biscuits (Julia really, really wanted an egg sandwich and I'm out of bread), and some blue-corn pancakes, some plain and some with blueberries.

The fish took less than ten minutes to cook - I was still cooking pancakes when the fish came off the grill.

 

Soon enough, the pancakes were done and I had the kids clear and set the table so we could eat.

 

Bill, Alex and I each had a fish.  Julia had the heads of two of them and her egg sandwich.  I didn't have time to set up a prettier shot of the meal - I was starving.

There's nothing better than fish caught mere hours ago. 

 

Or, if you're Julia, there's nothing better than the eyes of fish caught mere hours earlier.  The trout were delicious - slightly smokey from the grill but still tasting of fresh freshwater fish.  Nature's bounty on a plate.

This next shot is a picture of Alex - he said "Mom, take a picture of me" and struck the following pose.  Unfortunately it's not all that sharp an image, but you can see the suave, so-fish-ticated expression on his face...

 

Julia, meanwhile, got a great kick out of cracking open the little skulls and looking for brains.

 

She's not squeamish at all, that one.

 

There was one final trout left, and Bill showed Alex how to carefully peel away the skin and gently pull the flesh from the bones. 

Trout, like salmon, have a row of pin bones on each side of the fish, kind of perpendicular to the spine and rib cage. 

The pin bones are easy to locate and remove if you're working with a large filet of salmon, but on a tiny little brook trout they're about as thin as a human hair, and therefore harder to locate visually.

And they're not pleasant to eat. 

So it's important to understand the bone structure of the fish you're eating, if you want to have as pain-free a meal as possible.

 

And there it is.  A small yield, but a whole lot of flavor.

Because They'd Look Silly Mounted on the Wall...

 

We sauted them in sage butter.

Saturday, April 11th, was Opening Day of Trout Season 2009.  For my husband, this is THE Holiest of Holy days in the entire year. He will not book performances on this day.  he will not make plans to do anything with anybody no matter who they are, unless it is his nephew, Joe, or his friend John, and the plan is to be up super early and be on the water, rods baited and lifted, fingers holding the line still until it is exactly 6:00 am Eastern Standard Time.  And then it begins.  The casting, the jigging, the reeling, the catching, the cursing - all of it.

This year wasn't as good as  last year.  For one thing, it was raining and cold.  A little drizzle isn't a bad thing, overcast is good, too.  But this year was just cold and wet.  Whether that was the reason for the minimal catch is debatable.  Bill said it didn't look like anyone was catching much, and definitely nothing big.  Joe caught the largest two fish - the biggest, which he hooked on his first cast, was 14.5 inches.  They've caught bigger.  Bill caught the smallest trout and a sunfish, which he released.  They tried several spots, but it was not to be.

But anyway.  Joe kindly gave us the two he caught, and after Bill filleted them I simply pan-fried them and served them with macaroni and cheese (for Julia) and pasta with butter and herbs for the rest of us.  (And actually, for a change, Alex LIKED the mac and cheese, and so did Bill.)  

We also - as usual - saved the heads for Julia.  Mainly she eats the eyes, but there's good meat in the head as well, so we cook the whole thing.

 

Fish heads are very nice in sage butter.

Sunday Morning at Chepiwanoxet Point

 

Chepiwanoxet is a Narragansett Indian word that means - depending on who you ask - "devil's island" or "at the small separated place."  Personally, I like the latter.     

  

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the picture above, Alex was sitting there when an older gentleman with a bucket went by, chomping on a cigar.  Alex - because he is six - announced loudly to Bill "I feel bad for that man - he's smoking!"  Later on, when the man came back past us again, he stopped to make sure we'd heard Alex.  He seemed kind of pleased, actually.  And he showed us the baby crabs in his bucket - bait for tautaug fishing, which he planned to do the next morning, when most people would be at work.  And then he re-lit his cigar and went on his way.

 

 

 

I get such a kick out of watching my kids fish.

 

 

Oops.

 

That's better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's a heron.

 

 

 

 

Seaweed - not a fish.

 

Do you need help, Julia? 

No, Mom, I can do it myself!

 

 

Dumping water from her boots.

 

Replenishing the water in her boots.

 

Time to go home.

The Blues

Sometimes, you just have to listen to that little voice.

It's easy to ignore.  Easy to find a reason to say no, not today, I don't need this today.

But sometimes, sometimes you have to listen.

And that's what my husband did yesterday.

He listened.

He listened when the little voice whispered "Go buy a new surf bag...go buy a new surf bag...." 

He listened, and drove down to Quaker Lane Bait & Tackle and got this one, by AquaSkinz.  Then he came home and showed me all the cool little compartments for lures and leaders and whatever else he might want to put in there.  And then he went downstairs to look through his tackle box.

A little later the voice whispered to him again.

It said "...If you cast it, they will bite..."

Okay, no, it probably didn't say that exactly. 

But it did suggest - ever so strongly - that he might want to take that new surf bag and a pole and take a few casts somewhere.  (I am sworn to keep the exact location secret, but I can say that it's somewhere in Greenwich Bay.)

And, not all that surprisingly, he listened.

And you know what?

The voice spoke the truth.

Here's what Bill came home with:

Three bluefish, ranging in weight from four to seven pounds.

Now, I was downstairs with my ankle propped up and didn't really feel like hopping up the stairs.  Very uncharacteristic of me, but I really just wanted to stay off that foot.

And so my son brought out HIS camera so that Bill could have some photos of his catch.  Bill took the above picture, but before that he took this one of Alex:

This is the seven pound fish, and Alex had been standing there, holding the fish, while Bill tried to figure out how the camera worked. 

And here's Julia holding that same fish:

Alex took this one.  Look how big that fish looks compared to my baby girl!  You can see that she's braced her elbows against her stomach in order to hold the fish up long enough for Alex to get a good shot.  The look on her face is saying "Can I put this down now???"

So, as you can see, it is a good thing to listen to that little voice. 

And what, you may be wondering, did we do with those fish?

I'll tell you tomorrow.

Scupcakes

Earlier this week we went fishing off the rocks - the East Wall in Point Judith.  Bill actually did most of the fishing, as it's a little dangerous for the kids to be reeling fish in and standing on the wet rocks while the waves crash against them.  But the kids played on the sand and calmer water on the other side of the wall and occasionally Alex would get to reel in a fish part way, and then Bill would take over so the fish wouldn't smash and scrape against the rocks.

Most of the fish we caught (okay, I say "we" but like I said, Bill did most of the actual fishing and I took pictures and kept an eye on the kids) were too small to keep, but there was one scup that, at 10 1/2 inches from lip to tip of tail, was a keeper. 

Scup (Stenotomus chrysops, if you want to get technical), also commonly called porgy, are a mild-tasting fish found along much of the Atlantic coast.  They're usually found along the ocean floor or alongside rocky areas, and they are pretty agressive little feeders.  Fun to catch and nice to cook - you can do just about anything with them.  We've even had scup sashimi with our own freshly caught fish.

Back to this lone little guy... 

Bill cleaned it while we were there,

and on the ride home we were trying to figure out what we'd do with the small amount of actual flesh we'd have to eat.  I suggested fish cakes, because that's what I tend to do with any small amounts of leftover fish (or lobster) we have on hand.  And then I thought "they'd be scupcakes!" and that was pretty much that.

 

And here's the recipe I came up with:

1  1/2 cups white cornmeal

(I used Kenyon's, which I use for johnny cakes, because it's produced right here in RI and it's what I grew up with.  Hm.  I need to do a johnnycake post, don't I?)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

a few grinds of black pepper

a sprinkling of dried tarragon

1 cup boiling water

3 eggs

and the diced flesh of one scup

The water needs to be boiling hot in order to soften the stoney-hard cornmeal.  I should have waited before adding the baking powder to it, as moisture and heat activate the powder, but it didn't seem to affect the outcome, so maybe not.

Anyway, whisk all the dry ingredients together,

add the boiling water and let it sit for a bit to soften the cornmeal.  Stir it around a bit to cool it down, and then mix in the eggs. 

Spoon the batter into greased muffin or cupcake tins (I used mini-muffin tins)

and bake at 400 degrees F until a toothpick or sharp knife inserted in the center of one comes out clean.

Mine didn't brown as I was hoping they would, but they browned a little.  I also brushed the tops with some melted butter partway through the baking. 

I mixed up a quick "frosting" of mayo and ketchup and red pepper relish and some finely diced onion, though they didn't really need a sauce - they tasted pretty good on their own.  Kind of like a cornmeal muffin with bits of fish mixed in.  Only not as sweet as a muffin.  (I know, my descriptive powers are stunning.)

Not a bad way to use a single small fish!