I decided to pull out all the stops for our end of the trip brunch. As you may have noticed earlier, we had a scrumptious crab feast, with about 2 whole crabs left over. I painstakingly extracted all the nuggets of crab from the bodies and created The Crab Cake. To elevate it, I created Crab Cake Benedict. In the home kitchen, benedict in and of itself is a bit of work; hollandaise (from scratch-NEVER a mix!)), poaching eggs free-form, muffins and canadian bacon. So for this version, add sautéing the cakes, fresh bread toasted instead of the muffins, do it all on a 2-burner stove in a tiny galley and you’ve got an idea of the mountain in front of me. I pulled it off with the exception of the egg whites, which ran instead of clotting when added to the simmering water. My thinking is that the water was not hot enough, or I added too much vinegar. It was a HUGE amount of food, but gave us the base we needed for a long day of whale watching, halibut fishing and fog navigating.
About that halibut fishing. Yours truly landed one! Actually, we believe that I had TWO on the line at once. ‘How’ you say? Well, the halibut rig has a 6# lead ball on the end to get it down to the bottom as fast as possible. Halibut is a bottom feeder, and you need to get past all the other layers of species without your bait being thieved. Above the weight are two gigantic hooks onto which you skewer herring. Bounce the weight off the bottom until you get a bite, and believe me, you’ll know when you get a bite, then hold on! The landed halibut weighed only about 12 pounds, but based on the bend in my rod El Capitan theorizes that there must have been two fish and one shook loose.
Filleted weight was about nine pounds. I hope to catch more this week and bring home a 50# box, the Borough Boys and all my new friends in PA will finally taste real, fresh fish!
Dinner was my signature 'Three Saints Halibut' It was created on this boat during my first tour of duty six years ago. Seared halibut atop grilled asparagus and a roasted tomato and onion ragu. That is about as good as a food day gets!
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