California (?) dreaming.. [includes a recipe]

Life's been quite slow these days.. I just finished my book, hooray!

You can read it here.

I've also been thinking of writing an EDM cookbook with recipes so I thought I'd start here. Dreaming of ice fishing the other night I decided that this DIY sardine (that's what it practically is, fish in a jar) would be a great appetizer.

But first, let me take you on an imaginary trip.

This is what ice fishing looks like 99% of the time. Basically what you do is you drill a hole in the ice using an auger and lower your lure/bait to the depths. Although I got fish almost every time it is time and energy consuming (the temperature can be as low as -25 celsius)

What's this got to do with a cookbook? Well, the most fresh fish are caught during the winter when the water is near zero degrees. In the summer the water temperature is around 20 degrees and they can taste like mud (at least where I angle them from)

Apparently to overcome this people started putting the fish in different sauces to soften the taste. Another reason for putting fish in a jar is to lengthen it's shelf life.

Here's my POV shot from the spring, you can still see snow on the ground.. the water wasn't warm enough and the fish hadn't migrated into the river so I had to measure temperatures and angle the empty river for 2 weeks (I've read somewhere that roach, the fish delicacy for canning breeds at around 8-10 degrees)

This is a quite usual catch for a few hours of angling.. to get the same results with ice fishing it could take 2 day trips to get a one days catch but there aren't many options if you want fresh fish (since every lake and most of the rivers are frozen)

Anyway, on to the recipe:

DIY WHITE FISH IN TOMATO SAUCE (for 2-4 persons)

500g of fish (preferably roach, Rutilus rutilus)

2-4dl of tomato sauce

1 onion

2 tsp of salt

1 tbsp of vinegar

pepper

garlic

small glass jars

optionally 2-4 jalapenos per jar

1. Remove the insides of the fish

2. Cut the onion into slices

3. Mix tomato sauce, onion, salt, vinegar, pepper and garlic

4. Cut the fish using scissors into small pieces into the jar so that it fills 1/3, then pour sauce on top of the fish; repeat so that the jar is about 3/4 full

5. Close the lid and clean away any excess sauce

6. Put in a 100-125 degrees celsius oven for 4 hours

7. Let cool overnight

That's pretty much it, hope you enjoy!

This is a draft post from a few months ago and I completely forgot it, anyway here's a link to my latest EP.

-ef