Meet Ryan Pfeiffer, our new recipe blogger. Ryan specializes in finding wild game, fish and flora deep in the wilderness and making into elegant yet common sense, all-natural meals.
The overriding goal in his recipes is to maximize the relationship between the natural world and your kitchen. Sometimes Ryan’s kitchen consists of a cast iron cauldron slung from a tripod over a campfire; and other times it’s a gas range in the comfort of his home.
If you are a nature lover—whether an angler, woodsman or hunter— and you want to feel like your food is your own Ryan’s recipes are for you.
Now with out further ado here’s Ryan’s first blog post/recipe.
Incorporating apple cider, lemon, and rosemary, this fish stew is a festive, tangy centerpiece to a holiday or winter meal. I like to use firm-fleshed fish such as eelpout (a freshwater member of the cod family) or, from the ocean, marlin or black cod. Firm fish provides a good counterpoint against the crunchiness of the wild rice and the tanginess of the cider and lemon.
I devised this recipe after catching a 9-lb eelpout on Mille Lacs Lake, MN, last winter. As I was reminded on that trip, eelpout can put up a furious fight. This particular fish fought my 8-lb test line for ten minutes—but that was just the beginning. After I pulled it through the ice, it wrapped around my arm like a snake. (This behavior is not uncommon for an eelpout.) My friend helped me pry it off, at which point it fell to the ice and, slithering about my fish house, knocked over my heater, beer, and lunchbox. After several awkward moments of dancing about, I succeeded in kicking it out the door with my boot.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1.5 lbs firm fish (eelpout, marlin, or black cod), cubed in bite-sized pieces
1 Vidalia onion, finely chopped
1 small hot red pepper, seeded and diced
3.5 cups fish stock (or chicken stock)
1 cup water
1/2 cup uncooked wild rice, soaked 20 min in cold water and strained
1 large tomato, seeded and diced
1.5 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
2.5 cups apple cider
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice plus a few shavings of lemon zest
5 cloves of garlic, smashed
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions: In a thick-bottomed stock pot over medium heat, sauté small batches of the fish in 2 tablespoons olive oil until cooked all the way through. Remove from pot and set aside on a plate, uncovered. Add remaining oil to pan and sauté the onion and red pepper for several minutes, careful not to burn. Add the water and stock and increase heat until liquid simmers. Add the wild rice and reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the cider, lemon juice/zest, rosemary, tomato, and garlic. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add the fish. Stir, and let sit over low heat for five minutes. Add parsley, adjust seasoning, and serve.
Quantity: Serves 6.
For more recepies and storys from Ryan follow him on his Facebook page "From Earth and Lake to Plate".