Batter-Splattered

hot and spicy grilled portobellos with tomato olive tapenade

I think I'll do up a few posts with photos of the public use cabin we camped at this past weekend, and even better: I'll tell you what we ate 'round the campfire.

 

First dip of the day:

 
 
Our first course for dinner 'round the campfire one night was a recipe for grilled portobellos with tomato tapenade. I'm pretty sure I got it in an email newsletter from Splendid Table but I'm not sure now because I can't find it at their site or in my email account. I'm gonna have to hang onto this dog-eared paper copy of this recipe then because boy, was it ever a keeper.

 

The recipe follows -- I made a few changes here and there. I made the tapenade at home to bring along on the camping trip. The original recipe includes putting a bed or arugula on each plate and pouring a bit of the pepper/oil blend you mix together for brushing the mushrooms. That sounds lovely but wouldn't you know it, I couldn't find arugula the day I looked for it. Just the spicy-hot smoky mushrooms in combination with the tomato/olive tapenade was heavenly all on its own. It would have been even better with the peppery bite of arugula added in.

On a side not: I finally caught up on sorting through all the photos I've been taking of weekend adventures and they're posted now at flickr.

Hot Spiced Portobello Grill with Tomata Tapenade

Serves 6

The mushrooms:

1/2 c olive oil

1 clove garlic

1/2 t red pepper flakes

1/4t oregano

6 large portobello mushroom caps (save the stems for something else but whatever you do, don't pop one off and throw it into the bushes because Angie will scream at you)

Salt and pepper

Tomato tapenade:

2 medium/large tomatoes, 1/2-inch dice

10 pitted kalamata olives

2 T capers, drained

1/2 c canned, drained chickpeas

1 clove garlic, minced

Juice of half a lemon

For the mushrooms, in a blender or food processor, puree together the olive oil, garlic, pepper, and oregano. I bottled this up and took it along with me on the camping trip.

For the tapenade, I left some ingredients either whole (like the capers) or diced (like the tomatoes) then tossed the other ingredients (olives, chickpeas, garlic, lemon) in the food processor, then stirred everything together with some freshly ground pepper. After spending the day in the fridge it was wonderful. Not only did we pile it on the mushrooms, we were scooping it up with tortilla chips.

Either set your grill to medium-high or get your campfire to burn down to nice hot coals. Brush both sides of the mushrooms with the oil blend then grill on both sides until tender all the way through and slightly crispy, about 5 to 7 minutes per side. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Plate up the mushrooms and pile high with tapenade.

dipnet fever

I got to go dipnetting for the first time this past weekend and I now have more salmon than you can shake a stick at. It was crazy fun. Two of us fisherwomen netted about 55 big fat red salmon in a couple of hours, not to mention a king salmon and a flounder.

You can read all the details about dipnetting at the article linked to above and take a look at the slideshow here, but basically you take a gigantic net like this one and wade out into the water chest-deep and hope a salmon swims into your net.

It's something only state residents can do. The head of a household can catch 25 salmon plus 10 extra for every member of your household.

All those little dots in the water in the distance are dipnetters -- it's a circus:

Little fisherwoman (so stylish) checking out her family's catch, at the ready with a club to whack the wigglers:

Fishing from shore is apparently very challenging so it's nice if you luck out at the last minute like me and get to go out on a boat. It's way easier that way. And a bit dangerous what with all the boats zipping around and wakes and waves, which only adds to the crazy fun, of course.

So many boats:

 

You zoom upriver and then float down with your nets in the water.

Our catch:

Those are huge ice chests, by the way, and surveying our plunder led to the question: who the hell is gonna clean all these fish? Hmmmm.

Taking a rest after a successful fishing trip -- notice the fish scales stuck all over me. And fish slime and river water swamp in the bottom of the boat. Awesome.

 

Oh. And who had to clean and filet all those fish? We did. It pretty much sucked.

But two gigantic icechests full of salmon are now sitting in our chest freezers. I cooked up a couple of fresh filets and with the first bite I decided all that filleting was well worth the effort. Maybe. Anyone know a good fish processor?

come with me to cordova

We took the ferry for a long weekend of adventure in a place we'd never been before (gotta visit at least one such spot each year, don't you think?)

Pulling into the terminal, shot through a rainy ferry window.

 

Notice the bouquet of wildflowers?

  

Sweet potato fries grilled over an open fire.

Blueberry crisp:

They're all about salmon here:

 
  

roadtrip / grilled shrimp tacos

This weekend I took a little roadtrip down south to do a little float tube fly fishing. 

 

We stayed in a cute little log cabin on a lake.

The dock looked good enough to leap off the end of but then I'd step outside and the stiff breeze would hit me. It only looks nice and summery. In a month though, that dock will be prime for leaping.

Moose poop on the dock (I wonder if the moose leapt?):

At the lake for fishing -- check out the name and the shape of the lake at that link. I fished on its front toe:

 
 
 
 
For dinner, we had some really good grilled shrimp tacos.

Ready for the grill:

 

Ready to eat:

Highly recommended recipe!

Grilled Shrimp Tacos

Serves 8 as a first course, 4 as a main dish

1/2  cup  sour cream

3  tablespoons  mayonnaise

3  tablespoons  milk

1/2  teaspoon  ground cumin

1 1/2  pounds  large shrimp, peeled

3  tablespoons  butter, melted

2  large garlic cloves, minced

4  limes, cut into quarters

1/2  teaspoon  kosher salt

8  6-inch corn tortillas

2  to 3 cups finely shredded green cabbage

Bottled green tomatillo salsa

Whisk together sour cream, mayonnaise, milk, and cumin. Set aside. Skewer shrimp. If using wood skewers, soak them in water for 10 minutes beforehand. To keep the shrimp from spinning when flipped, thread them on 2 parallel skewers instead of one. In a small bowl, combine butter and garlic. Preheat gas grill to high; adjust to medium after 15 minutes. If cooking over charcoal, allow the coals to burn until they are covered with gray ash. Brush skewered shrimp with garlic butter. Place them on the grill with limes. Cook about 4 minutes on each side or until shrimp are opaque and limes are browned. Remove from grill. Lightly salt shrimp. Grill tortillas for 30 seconds on each side, then place inside paper bag to keep warm. To serve, pull shrimp off skewers and divide evenly among tortillas. Top with cabbage, sour cream sauce, tomatillo salsa, and a spritz of grilled lime.

Yay for sunny early summer days

I spent this one loafing in the yard reading a book all day.

 

 

 

birch syrup

Took a drive up to Talkeetna recently and noticed something new -- acres and acres and acres of birch trees with white plastic buckets sitting next to them. Syrup gathering season was underway.

I had visions of tapping all the birch trees in my yard but then I read the articles linked to above and learned that it takes 100 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. So maybe I won't be doing that after all! As if I need another foraging habit to add to my obsessive berry-picking anyway.

But I will be getting myself a bottle of birch-syrup infused vodka for a camping and float tube fishing trip next week. Vodka tonics around the campfire sound awesome. Read more about the company that produces the vodka here.