Fisherman's Ocean- Completed!

I have officially finished Fisherman's Ocean.  It was informative, and scientific.  Its scientific nature was its blessing and a curse.  Instead of straightforward hints and tactics, the author gives you an idea for how to gather data and results to make your own tactical decisions.  This makes it a lot more informative in the long run than any fishing book I have ever read before.  He teaches you how to figure out what to do in changing situations, rather than just how to handle specific situations.

Ultimately, I think this is the only strategy that can work.  Any fishing author can relate things that were successful.  This guy, instead, told how he built his strategy based on information, and how to gather that information.

Other fishing books: "Here is how you rig up to catch a mackerel."

His book: "Here is a list of factors that influence whether or not you will find a mackerel.  Even if the conditions are wrong, you may still find one.  Conversely, even if conditions are right, you might not find one.  If you find one, here are a list of rigs that might work, and why they might work.  They might not work though.  If not, here is a list of factors to consider.  Write down your experiences, log what works and what doesn't, change spots, change strategies, and eventually, you should catch more mackerel."

In a way, he is the only honest fishing author I have ever read.
Thanks, Sweets, for the well-thought out and informative read.

Next, I go through Charleston Grill cookbook with a highlighter, tagging anything that I think is at least 20 years out of style.  Woo!

A Culinary Hi-Wire Act!

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Last night I did something amazing.  We had 2 tables in the book, and the GM came back and told me that there was a 5-top VIP regular coming in, and he wanted me to just cook whatever.  Great, right?  Well, the kitchen was on sort of a short crew for the slow night.  Me on GM, a pizza guy, and my shakiest saute cook on saute, and no expo at all.  Plus, I had a trainee working with me on GM.  It was his first night.  Not second, or third, first.

I couldn't plan the meal until I knew what the wines were, but he didn't pick them until they all sat down.  So I have a VIP tasting, on a short crew, with no menu or prep.  Hmm....  This might get dicey.

So he picks two big, bold reds for his meal.  Dammit.  The only red meat I have in house is steak, so I start to look around for other things I can use that can stand up to these wines.  Chorizo, speck, mushrooms, cool, I have options.  I start to get a plan together.  Then, his server comes back and orders a round of apps "to get him started."  A chorizo and speck plate, a mushroom appetizer, dammit dammit dammit.  There goes my entire plan.  The server (a rather attractive young Viking named Carlie Van Horn) comes back and tells me to go ahead and get it started.  Then, we get crushed.  Walk-in 15-top, VIP 2-top, 3 4-tops AT THE EXACT SAME GODDAMN TIME (7:30, to be exact).

So my shaky saute guy gets clobbered, I am training my new guy who doesn't know how to do anything, and pizza stays busy, all while I make up dishes for this guy WHILE HIS TABLE IS FIRED.

And it all came out ok.

The menu:

First Course (while they were having a round of Champagne)
Seared Sea Scallop, Butterbeans a la Tourangelle, Onion Soubise

Second Course (CA Syrah)
Hot Duck Confit, Red Potatoes Cooked in Duck Jus Rotie, Buttered Green Asparagus, and Reduced Shortrib Braising Juices

Third Course (Cab/Merlot blend from Alto-Adige, Northern Italy)
Medallions of Flatiron Steak, Walnut-Truffle-Parmesan Farrotto, Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Vin Cotto, Shaved Bone Marrow Torchon

And for dessert (with their Alois Kracher Chardonnay/Welshreisling blend late-harvest white)
Heather the Elf's Passionfruit Panna Cotta with Lemon Jam, Bruleed Bananas, and Plantain Chips

All's well that ends well, but I really don't want to do that again.

V Day Sushi Adventures

Sushi made with the help of Nobu Now cookbook Rachel found in the donation pile at the library!

From left to right: avocado, home made picked carrots, masago, blanched baby bok choy, sautéed baby bok choy leaves, cucumber, seaweed salad, home made crab salad, asian pear, and panko. 

Roll 1: White fish, pickled carrots, seaweed salad, asian pear, panko, and home made spicy mayo.

Roll 2: Shrimp tempura, sautéed baby bok choy, crab salad, pickled carrots, cream cheese, cucumber, avocado, masago, and sweet soy with sesame seeds.

This was sooo much fun! I see why people go out for sushi though because it's not that it is too difficult to execute but MAN what a process! My favorite part was making the rice. I read the recipe and just at first glance for some reason I didn't think it would work but I decided to follow it to a T. I was soo happy with the end result and even more thrilled because I had to cook it on an electric stove. 

Sushi in a Bowl

OK so I realize that some Sushi Master is rolling over in their grave right now because of course the AMERICANS always find ways to bastardize things but this was created out of laziness/necessity. I unfortunately cannot take credit for being the 1st to make this atrocity. The next day I had to work a PM shift and Rachel wanted sushi again for lunch and so did I. I didn't have time to orchestrate rolling more sushi but I did have time to sear some tuna and then put all the ingredients I had from the night before in a BOWL! It was amazing and we ate sushi this way two times after that (I over prepped go figure) : ). 

AND FOR THE BONUS! 

Mock Turtle Soup is called "Mock" Turtle Soup because it usually doesn't have any turtle in it at all! Turtle is too expensive probably because they are hard to clean, yield very little meat for the effort, and because Rachel said you would have to pay her a lot of money because she loves them too much. It was created by the English in the 18th century as a substitute for Green Turtle Soup. It was usually made with the brains and organ meats of calves or even their hooves! The joke made in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is that the soup is made from Mock Turtle as if it was an actual species of turtle. P.S. Ask D to show you what Rachel made for me on V Day! Miss YOU!

F.O.P.R.

Fisherman's Ocean progress report, part 2.

On page 183, I have encountered the first real, non-theoretical fishing tip in the book.  It concerns using different sorts of lures on the same line.  The suggestion was to use a fly (the tiny, weightless lures used by the obsessive-compulsive psychopath philosophers known as fly fishermen) as a 'teaser,' tied only a line a few feet up from the main rig.

The article's main point was that fish feeding habits are variable, and very hard to observe, so giving them options is one way to beat them.

I here present my fishing goals for the 2013 season.

1) Attempt to get a sheepshead off the Cooper Pier at least 5 times.
2) Attempt to get a flounder of the bottom of Breach Inlet at least 5 times.
3) Go to the Folly Pier as often as possible, and every time I go, try at least 1 alternative bait set up on top of my normal shrimp/cut bait double-drop bottom rig.
4) Get the Trolley Line up and running.

This book is getting good.  Part 1 is all environmental theory, part 2 is all descriptions of types of fish, and part 3, which I will arrive at today, is all practical advice.

Miss you, sweets, we should try to talk soon.

Mardi Gras

So we can't really have a Mardi Gras party this year, cause D is still kinda broken, so instead we are having a small (well, smaller) scale dinner-and-drinks thing.  We are calling it the Krewe of Legba Founder's Dinner, Shrimp Boil, and Hammertime Shit Show.  I wish you both were here.

The menu this evening:

Carolina Calico Bay Scallops Raw on Nabisco Club Crackers with Sel Gris

Mock Turtle Soup

Shrimp and Andouille Boil (featuring Slap Ya Mama devil dust)

Chanda's Meat Pie (which we have formally re-named the Myocardial Infarction Pop Tart)

And my signature cocktail, the Cooter Brown (It's Rebel Yell Bourbon and Steen's Cane Syrup on the rocks with club soda).

And, I have an idea that homemade kahlua will be thrown down sooner or later.....


You give that Mardi-Gras hater Rachel a big hug and tell her I said she's a grouch, and if she was here, she'd be having a blast.  Tu es pas tu-ay WOOOO!


PS Bonus points if you can tell me what the meat is in Mock Turtle Soup, and what that has to do with Alice in Wonderland...

Fisherman's Ocean Progress Report

So I finished part 1 (of 3) of The Fisherman's Ocean.  It was a complete discussion of the marine environment, talking about tides, waves, currents, and salinity.  There was surprisingly little discussion of fish, and I started to get frustrated, but then I checked out the table of contents.

As it happens, the three parts cover different topics.  Part 1 is strictly on the environment, part 2 covers the fish themselves, and only in Part 3 does he actually get into functional tips on how to properly kick the fish's asses.  

So I started in on part 2, and it was immediately informative.  Not just on how fish work biologically, but how they think, too.  Its really starting to get good.  Here is a disturbing fun-fin-fact.  Fish look for eyes, because they are the least camouflage-able feature of a fish.  So a majority of fish-on-fish strikes are on the EYES.  Fish are weird.  That's why lures always have eyes.

In other fish-ass-kicking-related news, I bought a 12 foot surf rod.  It was actually pretty cheap, like 30 bucks.  I plan on using it to throw the anchor for the trolley line, but it will also be good for beach fishing, because it is so damn long it will be able to throw the bait a mile.

So that's what's up.  7 new dishes on this week at the restaurant.  There is 1 i am especially proud of, I'll post about it later this week.

(In other news, cool moment at the Moose the o

My problem with Fusion

Okay, so D and I went to Fish last night, and it was OK.  From an execution standpoint, it was really nice, but compositionally, I was left cold, and after a little while I figured out why.

I have a serious issue with fusion cuisine.  Technically, fusion can mean any 2 (or more) types of cuisine fused together.  (Mexican-Indian, Canadian-Vietnamese, whatever...)  However, most times it means using Asian influence in Euro-centric cuisine.

At Fish, they definitely took some of their stylistic cues from Asia.  There were positives and negatives.  On the positive side, the dim sum (pictured) was a great idea.  It was a way of allowing us to choose our own amuse-bouches.  They didn't necessarily use Asian flavors, just the spirit of dim sum dining, and they hit the nail on the head.

The negative is what struck me though.  Think about the great sauces of European cuisine.  Sauce Bordelaise is made by roasting bones, adding vegetables, caramelizing tomatoes, reducing wine, long, slow simmering, adding mushroom trim for depth, straining, skimming, and finishing with the flourish of bone marrow richness.  Ragu a la Bolognese is made by covering pork ribs and italian sausage with canned tomatoes and herbs (and other secret touches like parmesan rind) and letting it simmer slowly for an entire day, until the meat and tomato have become one silken entity, and all that remains is to remove the bones and bay leaves.

Now think about asian cuisine.  Red curry sauce is made by opening a can of red curry paste, mixing it with coconut milk, and seasoning it with ginger and lime.  I am not disparaging red curry sauce.  I love red curry sauce.  But to make it takes 5 minutes.  Any cheap, shitty Thai restaurant in a strip mall can still make an awesome red curry.  I require more out of my sauces at the fine dining level in terms of nuance.

At Fish, we had bread served with a sweet soy glaze that could have been had at P.F.Chang's, Snapper with curry sauce that tasted like a slightly more mild version of the one at Taste of Thai in West Ashley, and Triggerfish with a broth that tasted like the onion soup you get as a starter at Bushido.  It all tasted great, but Asian food is what I get for cheap lunch on the go.  It was all so... familiar, and not in a good way, when plates are $23 and up.

I feel like Asian flavors at western fine dining establishments are like Autotune in a song, or Photoshop Effects in a work of visual art.  They give a quick boost of awesomeness, but ultimately limit the heights to which that food can soar.  An amateur can make a simple, great sauce in five minutes for some shrimp, but may not be able to pull off Sauce Gran Veneur.  Similarly, a kid with an iPhone can make a cool picture, but a great artist would prefer working with more natural media.  Ke$ha can throw together a catchy, lucrative pop song in a modern studio with all the tricks and trimmings, but all Django Rheinhart needed was a guitar and eight fingers.

That is all.  For bonus points, what is Sauce Gran Veneur?