Kitchen visit, trout, calamari and sauteed beets

In my last post I shared the wonderful Ice Cream Cake I make with my cousin Emily while I was on vacation. In this post I will share the rest of our meal. Just keep in mind that we shared cooking duties so I don't have as many pictures of the cooking process... actually I'm missing a lot of photos I would normally have, but I was on vacation so we're making due with what we have.

The second day of my mini vacation Emily and I decided to take it easy, lounging around the house watching movies and cooking. To some people I'm sure cooking on their vacation is out of the question. Your relaxing, why not order a pizza, right?

Emily and I both enjoy cooking, even more so when we are together, sharing recipes and new ingredients. As kids we were always hanging out in the kitchen during the holidays, not only to sneak into food, but it was our hangout spot. It's where the magic happened. The kitchen was always loud, most of it from laughter. Cooking is a comfort for us and not necessarily because we get to eat it afterwards.

A whole rainbow trout.

Emily loves fish but had never prepared one whole before, or grilled it on a BBQ, so I decided to show her my favorite way to make rainbow trout. We started out with the whole fish, like in the picture, I showed her how to trim the fins and made sure it was clean on the inside. I raided her cabinets for Italian spices and salt and mixed them together in a little bowl. It had basil, oregano, thyme, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and ground pepper in it. I got it as close to the Italian salt rub I had at home (which I got at whole foods last year and love, But I haven't been able to find it again), It smelled like the beginnings of a pizza. I sprinkled my herb mix inside the body cavity of the fish and then wrapped the whole thing in aluminum foil. It was put on the grill while we cooked the rest of our meal. Sadly this is the only picture of the trout. We got so hungry by the time everything was done that we forgot to take pictures. It was perfectly cooked and I showed Emily how to remove the bones while keeping  as much of the fish intact as possible.

Sense being diagnosed with Celiacs Emily hasn't had some of her favorite foods. Most are not pre-made gluten free or are very time consuming to make yourself. Emily had not had Calamari in over 4 years. I was going to change that.

The hardest thing about making Calamari? 

Finding the squid. Most local stores have certain seafood staples and squid isn't usually one of them. Thankfully Whole Foods  tends to carry it, both the whole head/body (for stuffing) and pre-sliced into rings, which is perfect for Calamari.

You make it just like you would breaded chicken, dip it in the egg mixture, then rice flour, then back in the egg, then to the bread crumbs. Make sure it gets a nice coating of each layer.

All breaded and waiting for the fry oil to be hot enough.

Golden, delicious, and cooked just long enough. If you cook then too long they get really chewy.

Now I can't have Calamari without tartar sauce,  it's just wouldn't seem right to me without it.

The problem? Emily doesn't use mayo, she doesn't like it. Thankfully she had a vegan-mayo substitute. Normally I don't touch stuff like that, I prefer having as minimal processed food as possible, the ingredients in this stuff is processed before it is even processed into a vegan-mayo.  Anyway, I stubbornly wanted my tartar sauce and used it. We had gotten young garlic at the store, the kind with the bulb and the green stalk. I had never eaten it before and wanted to try it, so I chopped some up and put it in the vegan-mayo, along with some dill and pickles. It was oh so yummy with the Calamari. 

With all the seafood, we needed our vegetables, so I chopped up some golden beets, more of the young garlic and added the leftover Italian spices from the trout and I sauteed it all. The picture above is from before it all was cooked, once this was done we became ravenous animals and no more pictures where taken.