Well it’s summer time, for the kids anyway. It’s not officially summer until the 21st or something like that but the weather is getting warmer and the sun comes out in between thunderstorms. That means we all want to fire up our grills and get to burning off some tasty chow.
I’ve got plans to do a brisket or two and I want to try slow cooking large hunks of boneless chuck roasts on the grill as well. I’ll keep you all posted.
Also this year I’m going to do some experimenting with the trout me and the boys bring home. Actually me, the boys and little Christy. Christy is our youngest. She turned 4 last October. She caught her very first fish just this April.
I had a day off a few weeks back and I was going to go down to the reservoir, here in Ashton, to try my luck when the Wife says I should take Christy. Well I thought that was a great idea especially since the wife wasn’t really suggesting. So Christy and I go down to the boat ramp there and she catches her very first fish.
I had to help her a little bit. I was able to get a fish on and then hand her the pole. She was so cute standing there holding the fishing pole while this nice 13 inch rainbow was jumping all out of the water all over the place. I told her to reel him in and she did. Once he was in she got real serious and said, “Let’s get a big one.” Well I thought that was pretty good idea.
Anyhow I don’t have a lot of experience with grilling fish but I did do up some nice fresh from the ocean Coho salmon a couple of times that turned out pretty good. Back in the old days you could get silver salmon (Coho) in season pretty darn cheap. Now I don’t know if the commercial fishermen are even allowed to catch any silvers anymore. I haven’t seen any in the stores for sometime.
I do my trout the same way as the salmon. I like to fillet my fish if they are big enough. I’ll take some aluminum foil (remember when it was called “tin foil”?}, and lay my fish on it skin side down. Next I will melt some butter and sauté a clove of chopped garlic with a little bit of finely chopped onion until tender. Then pour the butter mixture over the fish and salt and pepper to taste. Then I place the fish on the warmed up grill on low heat and close the hood. It will take ten to fifteen minutes depending on the grill and the size of the fish. Of course the bigger ones will take longer but I don’t usually have to worry about that. The trick is not to over cook it so keep an eye on it.
Vickie (my wonderful wife} got kind of creative with a bunch of our small rainbow fillets after me and the boys cleaned the reservoir out one day. She laid the fillets skin side down on a sheet pan and then covered some of them with sauerkraut and some with some kind of honey mustard stuff and then some….well I had no idea. I thought she was crazy but the fish actually was pretty good. The sauerkraut fish was our favorite. It was nice and tangy as you might guess and kind of good in a weird sort of way. A nice pasta salad along with the fish and some hot rolls from the oven and we were in pretty good shape.
Another thing you can do with the nice trout that are so abundant around here is to make up some trout Alfredo. Put a little butter in a fry pan place the trout fillets in the pan skin side down and cover and cook on medium heat until done (about ten minutes}. Then make up some Alfredo sauce or open a jar and warm it up, or the packets work ok with a little help, and then gently fold the flakes of boneless cooked trout into the sauce and then serve over pasta with a nice tossed salad and some hearty rolls and you’ve got yourself some good eatn’.
This is going to be a great summer.
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