Ratamacue Stew

I have never blogged about my own cooking up to this point. Frankly due to the fact that I'm not that good a cook. Mind you, I know my way around the kitchen, can follow recipes reasonably well, and am getting pretty good with my smoker. However, I haven't developed an ability to pair flavors together yet to a point where I'd consider myself a good cook. My wife is a better cook than I am and although I don't admit it to her very often (she'll be chuckling the first time she reads this post), I do learn from her when she's cooking as we explore new foods and flavors (her making and me eating).

On our vacation this summer, my son, my father-in-law, and I took a guided fishing trip for half a day on Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park. We were fishing for lake trout. Lake Minnewanka is supposed to be one of the top 10 lake trout lakes in all of Canada. The record fish taken from this lake weighed in at a whopping 50 pounds!

We had a fun day on the water although the fishing was not as good as we'd hoped. However, I did catch two fish good enough to keep and they actually fed all seven of us for dinner. My son caught a small one that he threw back and unfortunately my father-in-law didn't get a bite at all.

The pictures below are the "before and after" showing the fish and then how I prepared them for dinner. The larger fish was about 4 lbs and the smaller in the 2 lb range.

To cook them, I simply grilled them on a gas grill on low heat for about 15 minutes. I made a tin foil baking pan and then squeezed lemon and lime juice on them, added a small amount of onion &garlic powder seasoning, cracked pepper, salt, and then topped them with slices of lemon and lime, a couple dollops of butter on each filet, and finished them off with fresh dill.

The fish were delicious. Light, flaky, and very tasty. Certainly an easy recipe I'll make again. We served the fish with garlic butter red skinned potatoes baked in the oven and paired the meal with a rose that balanced the citrus flavor in the fish nicely and the garlic in the potatoes as well.

Before

After