Pan seared snook fillet with roasted turnip & lavender and sweet pepper & fennel

Down here in Baja Sur we have plenty of snook... which also makes for a great fishery. The catches are few and apart, specially with a fly, but they're BIG.

If you don't have snook handy, halibut, bass, striped bass, grouper will do as well, just leave the skin on.

Start by wrapping peeled and cubed turnips in a piece of foil along with a sprinkle of lavender seeds, S&P and a splash of olive oil. Place them in a medium hot oven until soft( around 25 minutes).

In a skillet saute in olive oil 1 measure each of thinly sliced bell peppers and fennel bulb and 1 measure of diced onion. Add a bit of garlic, a few fennel seeds to boost the flavour and season with S&P .
Once everything is nice and tender, blend the life out of it and add just enough sugar to balance the flavours. Check for salt and reserve.

Once the turnips are tender, in bowl, mash them like they were potatoes,add a liberal amount of room temperature butter (how much? Think Paula Deen....) and whip them nice and fluffy.

Season the fish fillet with S&P, rub a bit of vegetable oil on the skin and place it SKIN SIDE DOWN in a HOT skillet and leave it there undisturbed until you'll see the sides turn milky white.
At this point, flip the fillet over, shut the heat off and let the residual heat in the pan finish the cooking... for a 1 inch thick piece allow around 1 minute for medium... tough to say, so keep your eyes on the fish.
You're done! Assemble it like in the pic, if you like, and maybe serve a little fennel salad next to it

Recipe to come next...

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         Buon Appetito!

Half assed fishing report

The morning had all the signs of a great day on the water: the wind was finally gone, the air and water temps were on the rise and , as always, got kicked out of the marina...which is, for me , a good omen.
After covering a mile of beach I stopped at the dolphin pens to rest my arm and to steal a few pics of the poor bastards held captive for the amusement of tourists.

After walking down to the estuary I noticed a huge school of bait fish,  a hundred yards long, maybe more.
It was an all you can eat bait buffet for sierras, jacks, roosters, snook and pelicans.
As I approached the water, I saw the "Bad Company" guys hooking up and an old local man loosing a LARGE snook on a jump; good sign! I thought.
Once I zipped up my wading jacket ( a vestige of my PNW steelheader past ) and pulled tight the stripping basket, I walked into the surf up to my waist. Man it was great to be really fishing again..the waves, good long casts, bait jumping all over the place.

As I am trying to write a half decent report, Gfriend keeps showing up with laundry to hang to dry and I am having a true "The Shining" moment...

Anyway... after a few casts with a White&Red Whistler, I got into a couple little tiny baby roosters; I cast flies that are larger than them! This was another good sign, since a couple years ago, the week before Christmas I fished a thirty pounder rooster at Palmilla beach, after running into a bunch of juvies!
Change of fly, maybe something larger and generic : the HI-Tie Mack from last night might do...

Some time later and a few yards down the beach I got almost tipped over by a wave and when I started stripping line back into the basket it felt like it sank into the sandy bottom, until it started zipping through the guides!
In seconds I was into the shock absorber and maybe five seconds later, into the backing and then I saw the big dorsal fin of a large rooster slashing the surface way out there.
I played it for maybe five minutes and then, suddenly, the line went slack and that way too familiar feeling came over me.
The big gallo was gone because, I think, of a way too thick hook I used to tie the Mack fly on.
Oh well, this one would have gone back anyway...

Half bummed out I kept casting, retrieving, bobbing in the rolling waves for another couple hundred yards until my fingers couldn't hold the line anymore and my right wrist kept breaking on the backcast.
Thinking I am geting old for this kind of stuff, I started walking back home, longing for a long hot shower and a huge stack of papaya pancakes soaked with syrup.

Hasta la vista, Señor Gallo.

Fish fillet with yellow peppers "coulis", chayote squash and Swiss chard

This is a very good recipe for almost any fish.. I like it particularly with yellowtail (Hamachi), snook roosterfish or swordfish. The important thing is that the fish is thick enough to cut a nice loin steak.

Prepare the fish any way you like... on the grill, seared in pan, broiled, it doesn' t really matter.

Let's start with the sauce: toss in a bowl 3 parts yellow bell peppers ( deveined and seeded ), 1 part white onion, garlic to taste, a few stars of anise,  olive oil, S&P.

Put it in baking sheet and bake, stirring occasionally, till everything is nice and soft.

Pour the mix in the blender, reserving the star anise for the decoration. Blend it till fluid and add some vegetable or chicken stock as needed. Balance with brown sugar, till you get the sweet just right.

At the restaurant and at private dinners at this point I sieve the sauce... I personally like a bit of texture in it and never strain it at home.

 Dice the chayote ( with or without peeling it.. up to you) blench it and saute it with olive oil and garlic.. add some stock if needed and when it's ready add the chard long enough to wilt it.

Plate it like in the pic, for the "WOW effect"!

NOTE: You can also make a red version, which looks more dramatic, using red peppers and substituting sugar with grenadine syrup

This one ( snook ) had  charred eggplant and roast garlic puree "smeared" on top.. YUM!

Baja Tubes

If you fish from the rocks as frequently as I do, you've lost your own small fortune in flies , leaders and tippets, not to speak of the good ones that got away...
I need a costant supply of flies that are both effective and cheapand fast to tie.
Thinking of my salmon and steelhead angling days I decided to start messing around with Q-tips and tube flies.
All the materials come from thrift stores and such and to fasten the materials to the tube between steps, I use a glue gun and stick glue; this takes care of not having a vise holding my tube and the materials during tying.
I've been playing around for a while with these tube patterns and they all have caught fish ( jacks ,roosters and 'cudas).
They don't look like they're out of an Umpqua or Orvis catalogue...these are "journeyman" flies and I like them for their ruggedness and no nonsense "attitude".
Slide the tippet through, push a sleeve on and tie a hook.