We’ve got a couple of great reader submissions this week, including frequent Food Fighter Koldkut’s gravlax redux, this time with fresh caught trout. His competitor is Upland_Canuck, a Wild Chef reader who’s getting in the Friday Food Fight for the first time. Good luck to both!
After more than a year of anticipation, I finally got my hands on an advance copy of the new "Remington Camp Cooking" cookbook. Chef Charlie Palmer first clued me into the project when I sat next to him at dinner during the 2012 SHOT Show.
As I mentioned in that post, Palmer is one of us, a hunter and all-around regular guy, despite the fact that he’s responsible for more than a dozen restaurants around the country, as well as a handful of wine shops and boutique hotels. You wouldn’t know it by sitting next to him as he relates stories of hunting with his boys. True to that everyman style, the recipes in Remington Camp Cooking aren’t out of reach for most home cooks.
This dish, a riff on an ancient Chinese method for cooking fish in which the flavor of steamed whole fish is turbocharged by a drizzling of smoking-hot, skin-crisping oil, is great at home, but even better on the beach after a muscular day of surfcasting. All you need, besides a campfire, is a wok with a lid, a heatproof plate, an oven mitt, and a few packable garnishes. Any whole fish will do, so long as it’ll fit inside the wok.
The perfect way for an angler who loves to cook to show off his fish is serving it whole, fresh off the grill, with crispy skin and moist flesh. Problem is, that’s not usually how it happens. Here is how to grill a whole fish so it’s juicy, smoky, and beautifully intact.
Here’s a primitive but fantastic way, from Finland, to “grill” a fish: Butterfly it, then nail it to a board and cook it by the reflected heat of a campfire. The meat derives flavor from the woodsmoke as well as the blistering, blackening board onto which it’s nailed. Even better: no pan to clean.
If you're trout fishing in the lochs of Scotland, your catch may end up like this: batter-crusted with that ubiquitous Scottish staple, oats; and served beside a generous mound of stovies, Scottish slang for stove-roasted potatoes. Round it off with a beverage of your choice to make your British Isles fish fry complete.
When Jeff McInnis—the chef at Yardbird Southern Table & Bar in Miami Beach—isn’t cooking, he’s likely fishing. In this recipe, the Florida native combines his passions, creating a summertime symphony on the plate. At Yardbird, McInnis uses Arctic char, but any fresh fish will shine here, even a lunker bass.
Roasting fish that’s encased inside a salt crust is a centuries-old method of ensuring moist, ultra-flavorful flesh. The dramatic presentation is just a happy bonus. Nearly any fish benefits from this treatment, and feel free to adjust the herbs as desired. For an easy side, toss some cut potatoes in olive oil with salt and pepper, spread them on a roasting pan, and put the pan in at the same time as the fish.
Draper and I have been talking about adding another regular on the blog — something to help wash down all of the great game and fish that’s served here. So, we present The Toast. Every now and then we’ll bring reviews, recipes and stories of our favorite drinks (and, no, not all will be booze) to enjoy with a meal or just to celebrate a good day outdoors.
I’ll kick The Toast off with some notes about a new whiskey I was lucky to enjoy over the last month: Crown Royal Black. I’m definitely more of a bourbon and rye guy, but I enjoy Canadian whiskey now and then. I’ve always liked classic Crown — but now I like Black more.