Smoked fish

Summer just turned up! I have all the windows and doors open the sun is streaming in and the temp in the hallway thermometer says 20 degrees the smoker is going and I have a couple of big snapper in there. I can still feel the tingle of light sunburn after two days away in the boat. All is right in the world.

So tonight I will make fish pie as per son's request but what after that any suggestions there will be about 8Kg of smoked fish from those two fish. The way I do it those fish will last about 2 weeks in the fridge.

smoked fish cakes

500g smoked fish, 3 eggs,1 cup breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon hot english mustard, 3 tablespoons mayo, S & P, 2 tspoon garlic. Mix all together, and roll in more breadcrumbs

There is a delicious smoked fish and cauliflower gratin on the NZ low carb cooking site.

That looks pretty good David I will try that.

I tried the fish cakes and the Cauliflower gratin which was very nice. The fishcakes were good though came out a tad dry will try adding chopped onion and tomatoes next time otherwise excellent and my wife who is now a fish fanatic like me liked them which is good.

Yesterday we went out again it was calm as a millpond right across the hauraki gulf we went about 10miles past Tiri towards the tip of the Coromandels and caught snapper gurnard and on the way home trolling got 2 massive Kahawai which I will take to some friends this afternoon one fresh and one smoked. The Dolphins love my new boat which is big and slow we had 4 riding the bowwave much of the day and two right on the tramsom with thier faces in the prop wash amazing sight. Also saw a container ship going quite fast with dolphins surfing and jumping out of the bowwave. When we were fishing 2 whales cruised past which just blew us all away son has lots of stories when he starts back at school next week.

I'm cooking fresh Gurnard fillets for my wife when she gets home for lunch with a nice salad from the garden don't you just love spring.

Sorry about them being dried.
I quoted that recipe off the top of my head, could have got the quantities wrong

What a fabulous story beaker. I've had a few experiences like that with dophins and whales, and sharks (boy can I talk about sharks). I particularly remember coming back from little Barrier one day and we misjudged exactly how fast those huge container ships can go. We had to do some pretty quick manoeuvring to avoid being rundown.

I quite like my smoked fish with homemade mayonnaise - oil, lemon juice and egg yolk with fine herbs - dill and Italian parsley, but it is quite filling and rich.

Don't get me wrong they were great but my smoked fish does come out fairly dry anyway as it is a very long cool smoke. Will definately do it again but slightly modified to suit our tastes.

Speaking of sharks Buzzy my mate got a good sized Bronzie up to the boat yesterday which I carefully released by cutting the trace I'm not a fan of working at close quarters with an angry shark twice my size.

I give ships a fairly wide berth as our top speed is only about 8 knots.

At one stage we had Dolphins nudging each other out of the way to have a turn on the bowwave and also a mother bring in a baby to ride the wave standing off a few feet to keep an eye on it.

Must be the sound of the motor as they will stop what they are doing and make a beeline for us everytime we go out. Starting to really like my new boat :)

Yes, they especially like it when the water is flat. Those wonderful creatures just love to play. I have photos of then in our bow waves. Our boat produces about three decent bow waves, either side, at a time and each wave had three dolphins in it that was 18 dolphins all 'surfing' in our bow. I felt amazingly honoured to have the experience.

Must say it started thinking about how they run their pods and why it is that they chose '3' as the appropriate number for each wave and by what means did they communicate that to each other. And how did they chose who was going to get the best waves, and so on and so forth. I also noticed that their spacing was perfect between each animal. Maybe I just read too much into stuff.