PANKO-CRUSTED PERCH

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Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of boneless perch fillets
• 2 to 3 large eggs
• ⅓ cup of all-purpose flour
• 1½ cup of Panko breadcrumbs
• 1 teaspoon of kosher salt, plus extra
• Freshly cracked pepper, to taste
• 1 cup of mayonnaise
• 4 teaspoons of Sriracha sauce
• 4 teaspoons of lemon juice
• Vegetable oil for frying
• Lemon wedges, for serving

1. To make the spicy mayo, combine mayonnaise, Sriracha, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Add or subtract amount of Sriracha to taste. Set aside.
2.  Assemble your dredging station: In a wide bowl, beat eggs until no whites are visible and mixture begins to form small bubbles at the edges. Pour Panko breadcrumbs into a shallow bowl/dish and season with 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper to taste. Then pour flour into another. Heat frying oil to 325 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
3.  First lightly coat a perch fillet with flour, shaking off excess, and then dip it into the egg mixture and then finally coat with Panko. Fry on both sides until golden and drain on paper towels or a cooling rack. Repeat with the rest of the fish, adjusting heat as necessary. As you work, keep fried fish warm in the oven on the “warm” setting.
4. Do not overcrowd the fry pan — oil temperature will drop too quickly, which will result in greasy fried fish. Also, do not allow the oil to get too hot, as Panko breadcrumbs can burn quickly. Continually keep an eye on the oil temperature with a thermometer and adjust the heat as you cook. If you’re not used to working with Panko, it helps to have an extra set of hands in the kitchen.
5.  Serve fried fish with spicy mayo for dipping and lemon wedges on the side. For a light meal, serve the fish in butter lettuce cups with sliced cucumber, pickled carrot and a dollop of spicy mayo on top.

– Recipe and photo by Jenny Nguyen-Wheatley, NEBRASKAland Associate Editor

Cooking Fish and Game

Cooking your catch is ok as is catch and release. Nothing wrong with some catch and hot grease!

If you’re a fan of the Friday night fish fry, it’s very likely you’re familiar with yellow perch. This freshwater favorite might just be the ultimate fish for frying. That’s because its small fillets are tender and delicate, with a mild, sweet and delicious flavor profile.

For this installment of Cook Your Catch, Taylor Wright, of “The Canadian Tradition” television series, shows how to make yellow perch tacos. A dish that is at once simple and exquisite.

Ingredients:

• Two whole lake perch (or four prepared fillets)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons cream
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups vegetable oil
• 1 cup shredded lettuce

Preparing the Fillets:

For this recipe, you can either purchase fresh, pre-cut yellow perch fillets or you can head out on the water yourself and catch your dinner.

In the video below, Wright shows his process for filleting perch. You can also check out this Dockline blog on How to Fillet Fish with a Fixed-Blade Knife. The same steps work for yellow perch.

Once you have all your fillets, be sure to rinse them in cold water.

Next, combine the breadcrumbs with the panko in a bowl and set aside. Crack a fresh egg in a second bowl, add the cream and whisk together to combine. Then place the flour in a third bowl.

It’s now time to dress the fillets and get them ready to fry. Dip each fillet, one at a time, into the flour, covering both sides of the fish. Then, do the same with the egg wash, making sure to coat the fillet thoroughly. Finally, transfer the fillet into the bowl with the breadcrumbs and cover thoroughly. Do this for all your fish, and then set aside on a clean plate.

Before you make the simple sauce, pour two cups of vegetable oil into a pan on your stovetop, and set the burner to medium heat.

Making the Sauce:

In a small bowl, combine a cup of mayonnaise with some of your favorite hot sauce. Be mindful of the fact that not everyone has the same tolerance for heat. Extra hot sauce can be placed on the table for anyone wishing to dial up the spice level.

Frying the Fish and Serving Dinner:

With your sauce prepared, check to see if your oil is hot enough to fry your fish. The easiest way to do this is to use a kitchen thermometer. The ideal temperature for frying fish is between 350 and 365 degrees. If you don’t have a kitchen thermometer, place a wooden spoon into the oil. If you see bubbles forming around the spoon that float to the surface, then your oil has reached the appropriate temperature for frying.

Fry each of the fillets for a couple of minutes on each side. They should be golden brown in color. Carefully lay each of your perch fillets into the pan to prevent the hot oil from splashing. After you’ve cooked all the fillets thoroughly on both sides, lay them on some paper towels to remove any excess oil.

Then, place roughly one to one and a half fillets on top of the tortilla. You can use either corn or flour tortillas or a combination of both. Spoon some sauce on top of each tortilla and add a little chopped lettuce for color and crunch. Fold it up and dig in!  Just be careful – fish right out of the frying pan can be pretty darn hot.

And there you have it – yellow perch tacos. Simple. Easy. Delicious. Enjoy!

Video showing how to do it!

From Alabama Gulf Seafood from The Fishing Wire Note – i always keep my fish on ice overnight before fileting them! Ronnie Ask anyone about their top priority when it comes to seafood and you’re likely to get the same answer: Freshness matters most. But what about your own kitchen? When it comes to seafood caught or bought at markets and stored in your fridge or freezer, how can you make sure you’re cooking and eating it while it’s still fresh? These are important questions to ask. After all, the freshness of your seafood isn’t just a health and safety precaution—freshness affects the flavor of your product as well as the nutritional value you’ll get from it. Here are a few ways you can make sure you’re buying, storing, and cooking only fresh seafood in your own home. Use Your Senses When Buying Product It might be tough to eyeball a fish and know when it was caught if you didn’t land it yourself, but there are a number of ways you can check the available product at your local market to make sure it’s fresh. For whole fish, make sure the eyes are clear and bulging, and look for bright red gills and shiny flesh. Make sure individual filets aren’t dark or dry around the edges, and watch out for green or yellow discoloration. Make sure the product is not dry or mushy. Avoid any product that smells fishy and not mild. Check the packaging to make sure it’s not torn open or above the frost line. And for peak freshness, make sure the product is being kept on a thick bed of unmelted ice. As for blue crabs and oysters, make sure you’re buying this product live! Both of these species will spoil very quickly, so make sure the crabs are still moving and the oyster shells are still closed. Ask Your Seafood Dealer About the Product Many seafood dealers will identify their product by country, or state if it’s domestic. But if the product is unlabeled, you know what to do: Always ask, never settle. Some seafood markets even work with traceability programs that can pinpoint when and where the product was caught, but don’t get too hung up on those details. Location matters, of course, but how the fish was caught and handled has more of an effect on the freshness than how long it’s been out of the water. In fact, fresh-caught fish need 12-24 hours before they can be cooked and eaten because of stiff muscles due to rigor mortis. Additionally, some smaller fishing boats will be gone for a few days at a time, and they may flash-freeze their catches (which isn’t actually a bad thing in terms of freshness). Properly Refrigerate and Freeze Your Product Once you’ve determined that you’re buying fresh product at your local market, it’s up to you to properly store it at home until it’s time to cook and eat.If you’ve picked up Gulf fish and shrimp, you’ve got about a 48-hour window to keep them in your refrigerator before they start to lose freshness. At that point, you’ll need to store them properly and keep them in the freezer until you’re almost ready to cook. (For tips on storing and stocking Alabama Gulf Seafood, check out our six tips for freezing your product.) Remember, your filets and your shrimp will need time to dethaw before you can cook ‘em. Thaw your product overnight in the fridge, or if you’re short on time, run your product in cold water. (Don’t leave your product out to thaw at room temperature.) Properly Store Your Deep Sea Catches If you’re catching your own seafood to cook and eat, we salute you. We would also recommend properly storing those catches so you can keep them fresh. As soon as you reel in a species worth eating, make sure you immediately transfer it to a cooler packed with ice. And if you’re able to, store that cooler in the shade to keep the ice from melting, and drain the melted ice periodically so the texture of the fish isn’t affected. You’ll want to fillet and clean your catches sooner rather than later as well; in fact, if you’ve got a vacuum sealer, bring it with you and clean and pack them at the docks, then ice them down for the trip home. (For tips on proper maintenance, check out our tips for freezing your deep-sea catches.) And remember, if you catch a fish in the morning, make sure you give it at least 12 hours before you cook it so the muscles can relax. It’ll be just as fresh tomorrow if you store it properly!

Salmon/Steelhead/Trout Smoking Tips from Yakima Baits
By Yakima Baits Pro Buzz Ramsey
from The Fishing Wire

For over 20 years, I spent a month or more at a time chasing winter steelhead on the Oregon Coast, taking outdoor writers, fishing tackle buyers and industry VIP’s fishing. Since I worked for a fishing tackle company that made smokers designed for fish and game, I went out of my way to have fresh smoked fish available during our fishing adventures. The method that enabled me to fish friends and business associates each and every day and share fresh smoked fish too was the following:

I’d fillet my catch at the end of the day and place the best cuts for smoking (the bellies and collars) in my favorite liquid brine and refrigerate until the end of the next fishing day.

It’s then that I would remove the fillets from the brine, rinse well, let them air dry for an hour or two before sprinkling them with spices and placing in my smoker and letting the heating element burn two pans full of wood smoke during the evening hours (before bed).

Given that most of the smoking process, after the smoke from a couple pans of wood is applied, is just drying the fish to the right consistency, I’d just let the smoker run all night, while I slept, and unplug it shortly after the alarm rang the next early AM. It was then that I’d let the fillets cool before placing them in a paper bag with several layers of paper towels in the bottom.

Having fresh smoked fish in the drift boat while chasing fish each day was a big hit with everyone and especially those whose job it was to keep retail stores supplied with smokehouse products.

The home made brine that I mixed then and continue to use includes (remember to stir well):

1/4 cup non-iodized salt (iodized salt is bitter)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 cup apple juice
1 cup sugar (brown sugar works too)
1 to 1-1/2 quart water (depending on amount of fish)
Immerse fish fillets in the above solution, refrigerate overnight (longer is OK), rinse thoroughly in fresh water, pat dry with paper towels, place on smokehouse racks (skin side down helps prevents sticking), sprinkle with ground garlic, onion and black pepper (or other favorite spices), and add a final sprinkling of sugar and let air dry of an hour or more before placing in you smokehouse.

Smoke until done, depending on quantity and desired texture– 6 to 12 hours usually works depending on outside temperature and the heat generated by your smoker.

Our Coast’s Food: The Best Clam Chowder
While turkey is the undisputed table champion on Thanksgiving, most of us who have spent our time around the water would not mind starting off the big meal with a bowl of clam chowder–here’s a look at a few of the ways this great coastal dish can be prepared, from Coastal Review Online.

by Liz Biro, Coastal Review
from The Fishing Wire

Down East clam chowder is always made with mostly clams. Photo: Vanda Lewis/North Carolina Sea Grant, from “Mariner’s Menu”
Most Americans would say that the United States has two clam chowders, the creamy New England-style and the tomato-based Manhattan kind. They know this in a large part due to the Campbell’s Soup company bringing both chowders to the masses. Who didn’t grow up with Mom pouring a can of clam chowder into a pot?

I would argue there are three types of clam chowder in America, the third and best being North Carolina’s own. Some people call it “Hatteras clam chowder,” others call it “Down East clam chowder,” but most locals just call it “clam chowder” because no matter where you’re from on the N.C. coast, it’s always made with mostly clams.

Agreeing on a clam chowder recipe is no small deal. In New England, where those other two chowders are from, cooks constantly quarrel over which recipe is correct. Milk- or cream-based New England-style with potatoes and onions might be thick or thin. Manhattan-style seasoned with garlic and often soup vegetables such as carrots, onions and celery has many variations. Long Islanders add milk or cream. Floridians include hot chilies. In New Jersey, cooks stir in light cream, creamed asparagus and celery powder.

It was all too much for one Maine legislator to take. In the mid-1900s, New England clam chowder devotee Rep. Cleveland Sleeper was so offended by Manhattan-style chowder that he kept drafting bills to make putting tomatoes in clam chowder a crime. Offenders would have been forced to dig a barrel of clams at high tide.

The issue was supposedly finally put to rest in the so-called “Maine chowder war of 1939.” It was a chef-to-chef battle, New England vs Manhattan. New England won, and Sleeper gloated. “If a clam could vote,” he said, “I would be elected president.”

Debate, however, never ended.

Maine Rep. Cleveland Sleeper believed that the tomatoes in Manhattan-style clam chowder polluted the stew. Photo: Wikipedia
Sleeper thought, as other Manhattan chowder haters still do, that tomatoes polluted the stew. So does milk or cream, as far as native coastal North Carolinians are concerned. They put nothing but clams, potatoes, onions and water in their clam chowder because they like chowder that tastes like fresh clams. What’s more accurate than that?

Food historians think the word “chowder” derives from the French word “chaudière,” meaning “boiler,” or a large iron cooking pot. When early French settlers landed in what are now Canada’s Maritimes, they found the region’s native Micmac peoples cooking clams in hollowed out tree trunks, Alan Davidson writes in “The Oxford Companion to Food” (Oxford University Press, 1999). Water was poured into the tree trunks and fire-heated stones were dropped into the water. When the French introduced their chaudière, it seems chowder was invented.

The word chowder, showed up in North America in the 1730s. Today, it means seafood stew, but it may have originally referred to any soup or stew cooked in a large pot to feed a crowd. Back then, there was no such thing as an “authentic” chowder recipe.

The oldest chowder formulas were water-based fish soups containing root vegetables, potatoes among them, Food Timeline has found. Wine, cider and spices added flavor and hard bread or crackers bulk. Nary an ounce of milk went into a recipe billed New England Chowder in the 1847 cookbook titled “The Frugal Housekeeper’s Kitchen Companion or Guide to Economical Cookery.”

Mid-1800s recipes suggested flour to give the chowders body. Around the same time, Rhode Island cooks were adding tomatoes, thanks to Portuguese immigrants introducing the state to their country’s seafood stews.

New England-style clam chowder includes milk or cream. Photo: Wikipedia
By the end of the century, New Englanders were leaving out wine, cider and spices in favor of onions, potatoes, salt pork and milk from the dairy cows that took well to the Northeast’s cooler climate.

Meantime, tomato-based chowder became known as Manhattan-style for no exact reason. In “The Book of Chowder” (Harvard Common Press, 1978) author Richard J. Hooker tells of famed New York restaurant Delmonico’s 1894 recipe for Chowder de Lucines made with pork, parsley, thyme, onions, potatoes, clams and tomatoes.

None of the debate mattered to working families living frugally along the North Carolina and other state coasts. They made clam chowder with what was available. The humble version favored in North Carolina also took hold in Delaware, where cooks added butter. Salt pork went into some North Carolina pots for seasoning. Cornmeal dumplings floated on top added the extra bulk men and women needed for the hard work of fishing, farming and tending homesteads.

Coastal North Carolina families still love that basic chowder. Many tourists visiting the state’s beaches wouldn’t think of a fried seafood dinner at a restaurant without a first course of Hatteras clam chowder. It never goes out of style, and it never comes in a can.

Down East Clam Chowder

¼ pound salt pork, sliced
1 quart coarsely chopped large chowder clams
1 quart water
½ cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 cups diced white potatoes

In a large saucepan, fry pork over medium heat until crisp. Remove pork. Add clams, water, onion, salt, pepper and, if desired, chopped pork to the pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer slowly until clams are tender, about 1½ hours. Add potatoes and onions, and cook until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

Source: Adapted from “Mariner’s Menu: 30 Years of Fresh Seafood Ideas” (North Carolina Sea Grant, 2003)