Canned Fish

I think canned fish gets a bad rap. I guess all canned meat gets met with some trepidation but I’m pro canned meat. (except Vienna sausages…ew).

Canned chicken is good on the boat. It lasts forever and doesn’t need to be refrigerated, plus in a stir fry it’s ok. Canned corned beef hash is an excellent treat on a Saturday morning. And although canned tuna can be lame and is probably packed with dolphin meat, the other canned fishes are AWESOME. So here’s my review of the canned fish section at your local grocery store.

My canned fish interest started when I read “The Voyage of the Cormorant”. A guy sails solo down the Baja, surfing and eating canned sardines along the way. It is a great story and helped me process our failure last season. For our boat journey, it seemed fitting to always have a bunch of canned fish on board. During project days, we almost always hoover some saltines & sardines for lunch. On Fridays in Seattle, we did ‘Tinis&Dines’ (sardines & martinis).

We got a gift of some canned fish from our van life friends, Wayne & Katrina. They gave us a great variety of canned fishes that arent always available at our local Kroger. We tried a few that were not pictured above. But here’s what you need to know before your next canned fish purchase:

Tuna. Canned/bagged tuna all tastes the same. If you’re not gonna eat it mashed up with mayo, canned is better cause it retains some flakes, but the 79 cent cans on the bottom shelf aren’t great, spring for name brand.

In the bags, it’s all pretty lame. Some of the flavored ones are ok, but none are really that good. Costco sells a mercury-free yellowfin in a pouch. This was the best tuna option in my opinion.

Sardines. No need to splurge here. They’re pretty much all the same, but they’re all good. Cheaper brands usually have smaller fish. The ones packed in Mustard are gross. The hot sauce packed sardines are good, but packed in olive oil is best. Add your own hot sauce.

Mackerel: This is the best-canned fish. Slightly larger fish than the sardines, but way more flavor and structure. Every brand of Mackerel we tried was good. World Market has some colorful cans in bright paper wrapping that were the best. It is firm, oily, and is really tasty.

Anchovies: These aren’t really an ‘eat-for-lunch-on-a-cracker’ type fish. But everyone needs a few of these cans in their pantry. Next time you’re cooking something that needs a little extra depth, mush up a couple anchovies into it. They can add great salty umami to pasta sauces, lentil soups, or pizza (assuming you own a full-sized oven). I do most of the cooking in our family, but Taylor is forever the keeper of the secret family caesar dressing recipe, and it requires a few anchovies. It’s BOMB!

Salmon: Salmon shouldn’t be canned. It’s probably more sustainable than tuna, and I’m sure its price tag is justified some way, but canned salmon isn’t great. However, I fully intend to keep exploring canned salmon because I made salmon cakes last month that were heavenly, but the ingredients (With fresh salmon) are out of scooter’s price range.

Trout: Actually really good. Maybe because it was the only smoked fish we had, but it was excellent. You could proudly serve canned trout on a charcuterie board (although maybe mush it up with some cream cheese so it doesn’t look so weird).

In Summary:

The Good:

• Canned meats in general (with some key exceptions).
• Mackerel, king of the canned fish.
• Sardines, and Anchovies should be staples of the pantry, at sea, or on land.

The Bad:

• Canned salmon isn’t flavorful.
• Canned tiny shrimp are horrible and don’t belong on a $24 salad. (looking at you Tide’s Tavern in Gig Harbor)
• People who categorically dismiss canned fish have weak bloodlines and history will not be kind to you.

Editors note: SPAM (king of the canned meats) has been on the grocery list for some time. Once I convince Taylor of its redeeming qualities will make an appearance in Scooter’s Galley.

What to expect on a visit to Scooter.

Scooter has provided an awesome platform for friends and family to visit, and vacation safely. It’s also easier to convince people to visit a yacht in sunny California than an apartment in Cincinnati, so I’m happy.

With our visitors, we sometimes teeter on the edge of spending too much time eating and thinking about food (assuming that’s even possible). So here’s a weekend menu from a traditional visit.

Arrive Friday to a traditional sit-down dinner. An introduction to the boat, a cocktail to relieve travel stress, and something rich. Chicken picatta, pork tenderloin in a demi-glace, or maybe a steak dinner.

Saturday morning we generally have a classic breakfast; eggs, bacon, and home fried potatoes crisped in duck fat. We have yet to take pictures of that meal though, so our reader will have to use their imagination. It’s slow, and lets us wake up our guests with the smell of bacon.

Lunch Saturday is our only meal, on average, we eat out. In-n-out burger, or some authentic tacos from our favorite hole-in-the-wall. This works cause Saturday tends to be explore, hike, beach day, or something else out and about.

Saturday dinner often follows the dinghy ride, so we cook something that I can make on auto pilot. Dinghy rides are magical because they’re so fun, we accidentally usually drink too much and stay out on the water past a normal dinner time. So my auto-pilot meals are fish tacos or indian curry.

Sunday mornings we’ve made a habit of sailing. So I’m at the helm and Taylor takes on breakfast. She’s mastered the art of pancakes from scratch, which is extra impressive because most of the time we’re missing most of the ingredients. No milk is fixed by water and heavy cream, no eggs apparently can be replaced with oil but the fluff of the whites is recreated by baking soda and vinegar, but we never have white vinegar so instead apple cider vinegar has to work. Every time, no matter the substitutions, the pancakes turn out delicious. since we may have done Indian the night before, the first round of pancakes are always yellow, pulling a little turmeric out of the pan (yes, we wash our dishes).

They get rounder over time.

Sunday lunch is the classic Char-scooter-ie board. The piest-de-resistance of the visit, since we’re out on the water, sails up, Pirates of the Caribean music playing in the background.

Sunday night we make sushi! Sushi lets the visitor participate and it’s hard to screw up. We have our little collection of condiments and toppings, and have access to great fresh fish at the local fishmongers.

Then the guests leave and Tay and I go back to our weekday meals. Oatmeal, Canned fish, ramen, and lentils!

Ceviche!

One goal for myself on the boat was to become adept at cooking seafood. Prior to life on Scooter, I could make a mean tilapia fish taco, and I felt comfortable keeping shrimp from getting too rubbery but that was about the end of my seafood resume.

So far we’ve been able to catch/cook/eat: Rock crab, Dungeness crab, Oysters, Butter Clams, Manilla Clams, Geoducks, Mussels, Urchin, Spiny Lobster, Scallops, Tuna (not caught yet) – Salmon, Sheepshead, Mackerel, Jacksmelt, Bonito, and now Calico Bass.

One favorite mainstay dish has been ceviche. We almost always have tortilla chips and limes on board.

Albacore made a very flavorful ceviche. Raw albacore might be the best fish flavor. Bluefin has an amazing sushi texture, but in our ceviche never got much firmer. It seems better in sushi rolls, sashimi, or maybe a poke. But perhaps that’s cause it was a really high-quality fish and I felt bad cutting it into small enough chunks.

Bonito was similar to the Albacore. It turned out really nice, but we didn’t have excellent ingredients laying around. Hopefully next time it’ll be less like a plain bowl of limey fish.

But along came the calico bass. We were just waiting for our first white fish but didn’t know it. The opaque meat turned bright white and firmed up perfectly. Taylor gets credit for this round of ceviche turning out perfect. Although I think she learned to taste the Jalapeno before adding all of it to the dish. It was HOT. California Jalapenos seem to be more aggressive (and unpredictable).

The Channel Islands, Santa Cruz and Catalina

At Santa Cruz Island, south of Santa Barbara, we made our first failed attempt at catching Spiny Lobster. In the process, we met the Russians and got to try fresh Scallops, Sheepshead, and Sea Urchin. I also learned a lot about how to prep each of them.

We did however harvest about 3 pounds of fresh California mussels. We scrubbed and scrubbed and de-bearded, and scrubbed some more, and finally had a big bowl of shiny mussels. I opted for the classic white wine cream sauce with lemon zest, served over pasta. It was perfect! we also got to try a variety of sized mussels from finger sized to palm sized. The medium ones were best.

A few days later, rounding the southern tip of Catalina Island, with my best friend Troy, we were trolling with a spoon and caught something! We reeled in what looked like a tiny tuna. We made the bold decision to keep the fish, and try to figure out what it was. Unfortunately without service, that meant texting a description to our fish expert friends, via our satellite phone. Their response was a Spanish Mackerel. We caught two more and kept the larger of the 2. We satellite texted our chef friend and got some mackerel recipes. I served the fish with a mustard sauce and fondant style fingerling potatoes and roast broccoli.

Once back in cell coverage we learned they were a cousin of the mackerel, the Bonito!

The next day, we hauled in 2 more Bonito and had a delightful lunch of fish tacos. Turns out LA doesn’t have the best tacos…Scooter does.

That night in emerald bay, on the north side of Catalina, we had my favorite ‘fancy’ dinner on a scooter; Pork Tenderloin in a brown sauce, cajun mashed potatoes, and a cucumber salad.

We enjoyed a few bottles of wine in honor of the Catalina Wine Mixer, and I fashioned up the Bonito carcass into our crab trap as bait. Taylor confided in troy that this was a stupid idea, but since I was enthused, they’d let me.

The joke’s on them though. We finally hauled in a lobster.

This was a major highlight on Scooter. The water was 15 feet deep and crystal clear. After about 15 minutes we could shine the flashlight and see the trap with brown smudges all around it. I hauled it up and immediately the smudges darted away, except for 1 unlucky lobster that got caught in the net.

I opted to grill the lobster, with a simple lemon garlic pasta and my favorite roast broccoli. One thing I have to admit I am terrible at on Scooter is grilling with any fat source. Fat is flammable, and our grill is tiny. Basting lobster with butter, results in a fireball. Grilling chicken in an olive-oil based marinade results in a fireball, grilling bacon (nelson’s idea) results in a fireball that nearly sets the boat on fire 60 miles off the coast of Oregon. Advice welcome.

Summer 2019

I’m from Montana, and Taylor and Hannah are from Colorado. So it was Joe’s summer to show off the appeal of Washington. He was a fantastic tour guide.

The rockies don’t have simple provisions like the PNW. Fish are less about eating and more about the experience of catching. Clams & mussels are invasive and never spoken of positively. And with a majority of months considered winter, fruit is from stores.

Washington is covered with things to eat. Every yard has an apple tree and every weed lining roads and sidewalks are covered with blackberries.

We ate more blackberries this summer than ever before.

We also got to collect seafood. Not catch or work hard for, but just collect.