During our recent fly-in fishing trip to northern Saskatchewan, fish was the main course - naturally - for several meals.
But only once did we fry fish in the manner of traditional Canadian shore lunches.
Fried fish is tasty, to be sure, but it’s not necessarily the healthiest way to prepare them.
One of the reasons we shied away from fried fish was because most of the time we were eating lake trout, an orange-fleshed species with oilier meat that’s perfect for preparing on the grill.
The grilled lake trout was a hit with everyone in camp - including one skeptic before the trip who doesn’t care for salmon - but the hands-on favorite meal was an improvised dish the designated camp cook prepared using linguine, dry pesto sauce mix and freeze-dried asparagus, topped off with lake trout that had been swimming just hours earlier.
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So good was this improvised concoction that we actually had it two nights of the trip.
One of the beauties of camp cooking is the opportunity it presents to experiment, so the camp cook didn’t follow a set recipe to prepare his lake trout linguine. This formula would be close, though, and any firm-fleshed fish such as northern pike or salmon would work in place of lake trout, which isn’t readily available in this part of the world.
Ingredients:
1 pound linguine
2 packets Knorr dried pesto sauce mix
2 tablespoons olive oil (we subbed canola oil)
1 cup freeze-dried asparagus (fresh would be even better)
4 lake trout fillets cut into chunks
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Smattering of garlic powder
4 tablespoons butter or margarine
Boil the linguine and prepare the pesto sauce as directed on the packet. Saute the lake trout fillets in the butter-garlic powder mixture. Combine the ingredients in a large bowl, stirring well. Enjoy.
Serves 4.
