pl
Donate
Browse by category
Recent Comments
- TTG on Senate’s MAHA caucus readies legislation as RFK Jr. is confirmed
- TTG on Senate’s MAHA caucus readies legislation as RFK Jr. is confirmed
- Mark Logan on Senate’s MAHA caucus readies legislation as RFK Jr. is confirmed
- Fred on Senate’s MAHA caucus readies legislation as RFK Jr. is confirmed
- Fred on Munich Security Conference in the shadow of Donald Trump
Browse archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
RSS
- Nope. There are no 150-year-olds on Social Security. It’s COBOL!
- Senate’s MAHA caucus readies legislation as RFK Jr. is confirmed
- Munich Security Conference in the shadow of Donald Trump
- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Renames Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg
- Worldwide count lets backyard birders ‘be part of a great big effort’
- Baltic grid divorce will further isolate Russian exclave in the EU
- Trump’s suggestion that US ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip is rejected by allies and adversaries alike
- “Trump says he will continue funding Ukraine’s war effort — but he wants something rare in return”
- In NASA asteroid samples, scientists discover key building blocks of life
- Thoughts on the Potomac Air Crash
Meta
The filets broke because of my clumsiness. You need two fish spatulas to handle these.
Nice looking fish. I’m doing the grilled chicken w/broccoli and white wine.
They look tasty, even if imperfect!
Rhondda
Very moist and flaky.
Looks good! Beats the hell out of the codfish cakes I grew up on. Grandma also used to serve her infamous creamed saltcod and once in awhile a codfish stew. My cousin told me that the creamed saltcod plus the daily tablespoon of cod liver oil was God’s vengeance on our ten year old souls for joking and fidgeting in church.
All
Called “morue” in French and “bacalao” in Spanish and Portuguese.
“Bacalhau”, gringo.
Requires cool judgement that, Colonel. Just the right amount of time to get it cooked without drying it out. Needs good quality to start with. I shan’t attempt to emulate it with the stuff that claims to be cod that we haul out of the freezer occasionally. But it jogged my memory.
It must be twenty years ago I was staying in an old fashioned country house with all as it was in the ’30s. And had the run of an old fashioned library as well.
One of the old books dealt with everything you could possibly want to know about cod. Before getting down to the heavy duty technical stuff the writer threw into the mix a theory that accounted for the fact that Canada and the United States are two different countries. Being interested in fish and nothing else this single minded historian ignored all other factors and ascribed that difference to one thing only. Cod.
His theory was that Newfoundland was so inhospitable that the fishermen there went home for the winter thus remaining based in Europe, mostly England. But further South down in Boston the fishermen could make it through the winter so stayed there all the year round. Hence, over time, and I think much to the regret of the author, becoming an obstreperous rabble of independence minded Americans rather than remaining dutiful subjects of the Crown.
Lovely theory. Perhaps better not to examine it too closely. Beats 1619 for a foundational myth anyway.
EO
I had it right yesterday until the end when I tried to pick the filets off the grill one handed and that caused a couple of them to break, marring the esthetics of my effort. You really need two fish flippers to do this right. But, the fish was lovely, moist, flaky and tasty as good cod always is. We have the fish delivered to our door under plague conditions. Never frozen. One of the benefits of 60 years of hard work is that I can afford that. Swordfish, halibut, yellow fin tuna, cod, love ’em all. I like to cook outdoors and can do so in this climate from April to November. I cooked this the way they cook Scrod (young cod) in Boston. There used to be some absolutely splendid seafood restaurants in Boston. Maybe there still are. Our favorite was Dini’s Seafood Grill on Tremont St across from the “Old Granary Burial Ground” where Sam Adams and a few of my forebears are in the ground. I am reminded that the Pilgrims at Plymouth were startled when a couple of Indians wandered into their camp speaking English. They had been employed by English cod fishermen who had drying “factories” up on the Maine coast where I lived while in high school. One of the Indians had traveled to England with the fishing fleet and had traveled around Europe, visiting Madris among other places.
Cod liver oil is now trending since now “vitamins” re touted as covid resistance boosters.
Just in time if the Norwegians stop selling their North Sea fossil fuels and get everyone to swill their cod fish by-products instead. No wonder Norway can afford “socialized medicine” – they subscribe to healthy daily habits.
BTW: anyone who has not yet read the book “Cod” is in for a treat; second only the other similar book “Salt” – supply and demand for common food stuffs that changed the world.
Cod is my favorite fish to fish and to eat. I have many fond memories of deep sea fishing off the coast of New Hampshire, the colder the better the fishing is.
Remember, when lobster is cheap, the cod stock is way down.
May I recommend a fish bbq basket:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=fish+bbq+basket&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
There’s several to choose from, makes life easy. Since moving to Florida about a decade ago, I’ve been mostly grilling whole fish like grouper, red snapper, and pompano, yum.
billwade
I like to close the lid and fish baskets don’t really work if you do. I will do better next time.
Here’s one that allows you to close the lid.
Had that same problem with cod, ling cod specifically. No structural integrity when cooked.
https://www.bbqguys.com/weber/6471-large-stainless-steel-grill-basket
MKL
Thanks
Colonel – I think it was following your earlier articles on barbecuing that the Outsider household made a kit. We took an oil drum, cut out and hinged a good third of it for a lid, perforated the bottom, and for the stand welded the whole to some thick steel rods we happened to have left over from previous work. The “we” was one of my sons. I’m no hand at welding such thin stuff as oil drums. Looks very pretty and has the supreme virtue of being portable. Leave it out in the rain and I reckon the thin steel would rust out in a month or two.
The kit came in very handy during “lockdown”. I was told by those who studied such matters that gathering outside satisfied “social distancing” rules so plenty of people could come over to eat. Later I found they hadn’t studied hard or accurately enough so we had probably committed a variety of criminal acts.
More worrying was that I found I could not reproduce the results illustrated in your articles. Perhaps a video showing the finer points of technique? But the results didn’t taste bad and we seemed to end up with satisfied guests.
Kipling wrote a children’s story about the cod fishing you refer to. Whether he’d actually been out with the fishing fleet I don’t know but he somehow soaked up the essentials and got them down on paper in his usual vivid way. Fog over the banks, Gaelic speakers among the fishermen (that might have been poetic licence since the Gaelic speakers were, I believe, more commonly found further north), the risk of the work, and then the memorial service in the Church to commemorate those who had lost their lives during the season. That would have been early twentieth century so I assume all that was gone by the time you went to school.
EO
“Captains Courageous?”
EO –
The fishing boats out of Portland Maine back in the late 1940s/early 1950s when I was a boy were still bringing back lots of cod and haddock. And there were Gaelic speakers on the crews and living in the local community, as well as Sicilians and some Portuguese families who emigrated from the Azores.
I think Kipling got his story from acquaintances in Gloucester Mass. But I would bet the demographics there were similar even at the turn of the century.
Yes, Colonel, but I should have checked details before I wrote in. They were in fact fishing on the Grand Banks, so there would still have been Irish speakers around –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_language_in_Newfoundland
Kipling did not in fact go out with the fleet but researched details thoroughly with a friend who had –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captains_Courageous
Kipling says “I wanted to see if I could catch and hold something of a rather beautiful localised American atmosphere that was already beginning to fade.”
It’s a while since I read it but I think he did.