Hey, it’s your friendly neighborhood Prof here. Everyone basically has today off, and I’m taking this opportunity to enjoy a day off as well by doing a very loose and informal post today.
My roommate came back from a fishing trip and brought home about 20 pounds of mahi mahi. I know how to make fish tacos, and a nice baked fish, and that’s about it. We’re going to be eating fish for a hundred years. Leave your fish recipes down in the comments, please!
Today’s musical choices are… well, you’ll figure it out.
Braves 7, Red Sox 1 – The Braves get lit up by journeymen pitchers but take guys like Chris Sale to the flippin’ woodshed. Also, the Chosen One, RAJ, had a really, REALLY nasty injury. I’m not going to link it, you can find it on Deadspin or Reddit. But it’s pretty gross and your leg ain’t ‘sposed to do that. Prince of Pizza himself, Mike Foltynewicz, went seven innings and was working on a no-hitter there for a while. It’s all good, though – ATL is back in the NL East lead and are now the second NL team to reach 30 wins.
Astros 9, Spiders 10 F/14 – This one was fun to watch on twitter. I follow both teams’ accounts, and it was hilarious to watch how it went back and forth. This is the kind of game that make people fall in love with baseball, if we’re honest here. The kind of scrappy, “Oh yeah? Well, watch this” kind of baseball that makes people say, “HOLY CATS! DID YOU SEE THAT?” There were two HOLY CATS innings in this game – six runs for Houston in the eighth, and five runs in the ninth to tie it up for the Magical Land of Cleve. In the 13th inning, El Oso Blanco hit a dinger for Orbit’s boys and Yonder Alonso went yard for Cleveland. It was a walk off homer in the 14th that won it all for The Land.
Mets 7, Brewers 8 – [Flava Flav voice] Yeeeeeah Boyyyyyyyyyy! [/end voice] The Brewers hammered the Mets’ beleaguered bullpen, nickel and diming them for runs in the seventh inning.
Padres 1, Dodgers 6 – Los Angeles are digging out of a hole, easy to do when the Diamondbacks are out here doggin’ it. Anyway, the Dodgers got good news – Clayton Kershaw is eyeing a return a lot sooner than anyone thought he would, and he’s been working on his mechanics to be even better. Yo, who said perfection can’t be perfected? In this particular game, Walker Buehler is doing very well for a rookie, going seven strong innings and striking out eight, while allowing only one run. Max Muncy and Cody Bellinger both hit dingers, and the Dodgers won their eighth game in ten tries.
Diamondbacks 1, Athletics 2 – I’m mad at the Gritty Snakes because they are making me look like a derp, losing so many games and is now at .500 instead of being far and away the cream of the crop of the NL West. Zack Greinke gets the loss because of the tiebreak RBI hit by Matt Chapman. Come on, guys.
Giants 3, Cubs 8 – Tyler Chatwood is the placeholder for the Cubs’ rotation. He’s always pretty much easy to pencil in for a loss or at least a no-decision on his part. The bullpen usually has to dig out of a jam. Last night was no exception. Chatwood gave up three immediately, but thankfully Ty Blach was just as cruddy and gave up three in the first inning as well. The Giants’ bullpen was awful and coughed up five more runs for Chicago, including a 400 foot three run homer off the bat of Javy Baez.
Fan Interference 
Speak for yourself, Prof. I found the Hou-Cle game frustrating. But then again, I guess it was a chance to see how the Dodgers felt after game 5 of the World Series.
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You cry “It’s Monday” as if that were something to be pleased about, but the Monday cringe stays with me even deep into retirement. It’s neurologically ingrained. Blechhh.
But what of that. You asked for Feesh recipes. First a note about the Gnats boating the Rainbow Warriors three straight, leaving them mired even deeper in the NL East septic trap at 19-33, fourteen games beneath the strange attractor (anybody wanna buy a used one?) and their by now habitual 11.5 games out, also last in slugging and attendance in MLB and 26th in staph ERA. Unpretty, piscids, unpretty.
Assuming your feesh is good for nothing but eating, here’s a recipe you might be able to make if properly accoutered. I first sampled something like it at Jeanne d’Arc, a very fine little French restaurant in the catacombs of the Hotel de France in wunnerful San Francisco last week. I made a few notes on the inside cover of my travelling copy of MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf. After meditating on the recipe for several days I put my ideas to work this morning and here it is:
Old Gator’s Morel Musroom Sauce: first of all, you need morels. Not many, mind you – a small handful will do fine, diced well. You should also have a nice fat scallion, a medium clove of organic garlic, three tablespoons of vegetable stock, some cooking sherry and about a pint of goat’s milk, a stick of French or Italian butter, salt and pepper. Coda: since I don’t have a pig, I recently ordered two pounds of freshly picked morels from Northwest Wild Foods, who still have them available (https://nwwildfoods.com). After dividing up the little delicacies into a few gallon freezer bags and parting out a bunch for immediate consumption, there was a rubble of morel crumbs at the bottom of the shipping box, enough to fill two sandwich bags quite full. You can dice your whole morels quite fine for this sauce, of course, but I just emptied half a bag of the “crumbs” into my pan this time.
So: in a small nonstick (preferably ceramic lined) pan melt a tablespoon of butter in three tablespoons of vegetable broth or stock. Add the finely diced scallion, greens included, and the crushed, diced garlic. Cover and simmer over low heat for fifteen minutes or so, then add the diced morels. Simmer for another ten minutes, then add another tablespoon of butter, a quarter of a cup of goat’s milk and one or two teaspoons of sherry. Cover and simmer again until frothy. Uncover, season with salt and pepper, reduce heat to low and let thicken. Add a bit more goat’s milk from time to time and stir until a nice consistency is reached and the aroma has you reaching for your antipsychotics. Turn off heat, cover and let sit for a few minutes before serving over whatever fish you have poached, baked or broiled. Note: morel sauce goes wonderfully well with scrambled eggs too. In fact that’s what I made myself for my “welcome home” breakfast this morning.
Gator’s bagna cauda sauce: Another residual of my trip to the sunset side last week, although I have been making this stuff for myself for years, ever since discovering The Stinking Rose garlic restaurant on Columbus Avenue in North Beach (https://thestinkingrose.com/sf/index.html). There’s also one in Beverly Hills, which I find hilarious because I keep imagining all those LaLa Land yuppies emerging from dinner with their Binaca bottles dancing up and down above their upturned gullets. Be aware that this magical potion is usually used as a dipping medium for fettunta, or Italian garlic bread. However, it is infinitely more versatile than that. Read on.
So, redux: You need a load of garlic cloves (I almost added “to taste” until I realized that the point of bagna cauda is to stun the papillae insensate), a small tin of flat anchovies (preferably in olive oil), at least a tablespoon of lemon juice (feel free to add more; this stuff isn’t as easily destabilized as Hollandaise sauce), and good strong (“robust” is trending to describe this type) extra virgin olive oil. A bit of dried oregano is an option but not a necessity. Squash the cloves but don’t mince them. In a small saucepan steep them in a full cup of robust olive oil over low heat until the smell of garlic saturates your kitchen. Turn off the heat, unless you want the oil to explode leaving you indistinguishable from the Phantom of the Opera. When the mixture cools add the lemon juice and one or two anchovy fillets, finely chopped, along with their oil, add the oregano if you’re using it. Now bring the flame up to low and stir briskly but briefly and simmer, simmer, simmer for maybe 20 minutes. Spoon over your baked, broiled or poached feesh. For garlic lovers only,
Alternatives: the product of years of experimentation and shamanic transports: After the cauda is ready (“bagna cauda means “hot bath”), dump it into a blender and puree. You can serve it the same way. Some folks love the flavor but the uninitiated can be easily offput by the sight of crushed garlic cloves festooning their dinner, and pureeing solves the audiovisual issue.
Add crushed red pepper (to taste, nyuknyuknyuk) to the stuff during its final simmer or when pureeing in the blender.
Add a tablespoon finely chopped fresh Italian hot basil during the final simmer.
And, oh boy, spoon this stuff over your scrambled eggs and top with fresh grated Parmesan cheese orrrrrr mix a tablespoon of the stuff into your scrambled eggs, along with a few dashes of the aforesaid cheese, before you cook them.
It goes without saying that this is a wonderful dish for ladies and gentlemen on a losing streak. It can make a long season without rain seem positively fecund.
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Any amphibian recipes?
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I have a near amphibian recipe for coelocanth but it’s untested. Meanwhile, got a good one for frogs’ legs from a cook at the Miccosukee Indian reservation cafe. You innerested?
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Well, you’d have to expect that a gator would know how to do frog legs up right, but I’d have to be pretty drunk to try em, which I often am.
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Drench fresh frogs’ legs in coconut or almond flour, then dip in egg mixture beaten with salt, pepper, garlic powder and a dash of turmeric. Roll in sourdough breadcrumbs. Meanwhile heat French butter and a dash of sherry together in a frying pan and poach the frog’s legs until browned, turning frequently. Drain on paper towel and serve with a baked sweet potato slathered with French butter and the leftover sauce from the pan. Ooohhh lah lah.
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Princess day at the ballpark:
❤❤❤❤
I have a yummy fish soup recipe. I will pass it along when i get home. Did i mention how hot it is in the Frying Pan???
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PS i do want one of those tiaras.
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But you need to wear the eye black with it!
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Watched some of the Oakland game. Greinke was going a little OCD about the divot in front of the rubber that Montas was digging. Weird.
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That’s such a ZG move. He hyperfocuses on these type of things.
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