ROUGHING IT
A 3 hour drive north of International Falls, 100 miles north from there in a float plane, a cabin on a lake with the nearest human beings over 10 miles away, no roads, no TV, no phone, no internet. Just 6 men and the 3 F’s, Fish, Fun and
Food. Our 2nd annual fly-in fishing trip in Canada. Accommodations provided by Verne at Slate Falls Outposts of Sioux Lookout, Ontario.
Last year was my first trip, I wasn’t involved in the planning of the food or location, I left that up to the veterans. Our first shore lunch that year was on an island with a great view. Everything was going great, we had caught enough fish to eat that morning, the fire was blazing the pan was ready, everything was perfect….except for one thing. We forgot the oil to fry the fish! OH NO, what would we do? Well Cuisine Capers Man to the rescue. We ended up poaching the fish in beer, onion, Lawry’s Season Salt and lemon. You would have thought the rest of the guys had never heard of poached fish before. From that point on I was assigned cooking duties (also known as Kitchen Bitch).
Fast forward to 2005. This year I and a fellow Foody Jim, planned the meals. We were going to be “roughing it” but we were not going eat poorly. In the forthcoming series of posts I will hope to share the recipes for some of the meals we enjoyed.
Baked Walleye with Pesto Fettuccini and Grilled Asparagus
We caught plenty of Walleye on this trip and there is nothing better then REALLY fresh fish. On the first night we planned on baked fish with pasta. Since our trip was in late May, Asparagus was the clear choice for a fresh veggie. After filleting the Walleye we arranged them on a broiling pan (it was the biggest flattest thing we had) coated with cooking spray.
The fish was seasoned with pepper and a wonderful blend call “Northwoods” seasoning. My co-blogger Irene gave this to me before my trip as a way of contributing in spirit to the culinary adventure. The blend contains salt, paprika, black pepper, thyme, rosemary, garlic and chipolte. If you would like to give it a try you can obtain it from Penzeys Spices. We also added slices of butter and lemon.
The pasta was your basic out-of-the-box fettuccini boiled in lake water (clean enough to drink after being boiled) with a home made pesto sauce from my Blogger Buddy Irene (we will have to get her to post her recipe).
The asparagus was coated with olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled on the gas grill provided at the cabin.
The resulting meal was a testament to freshness of spring and the northwoods. The uncultured savages in our party were seemingly impressed.
