When we grill out in the summer, we don’t like wasting the heat of the grill, so we always grill a little extra food while the grill is going.  One food in particular that we use this general rule for is fish.  Fish cooks best on a very hot grill, but it cooks for a short period of time.  So, by the time the grill heats up, you’ve used a lot of fuel or charcoal for a cooking process that only takes a few minutes.  Therefore, we always fill our grill to the max with fish.

Of course, this leaves us with leftover fish.  This is great because we love cold fish in green salads, as well as mixed up with a little mayonnaise and turned into a spread for sandwiches.  Using up our leftover fish has never been a real problem, but I sure would like a little variety!

Because seafood is plentiful where we live, I have developed one good bisque recipe that I’ve used over and over again.  I’ll share it here for you.  I apologize for the vague amounts, as I’ve never actually written this down.

Fish & Vegetable Bisque

• 1 or 2 slices bacon, diced up
• 1/2 a yellow onion, diced
• 1/2 a green pepper, diced
• 1/2 a sweet red pepper, diced
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 small clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup, more or less, of fish, shrimp, or vegetable stock
• 1 cup cooked fish, flaked up
• add salt and black pepper to taste
• sprinkle red pepper flakes

Saute the bacon and all the vegetables together in sauce pan until vegetables are just starting to get tender.  Pour in the stock, cover and simmer until the vegetables have cooked completely.  Then add fish, salt, black pepper, and if desired, sprinkle a little red pepper flakes in.  You can double or even triple this recipe, depending on how much fish you have to use up.

Does anyone have some suggestions as to what else we can make with our leftover fish?  Are there some really good layered salads or even casseroles that use cooked fish?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

Okay, this may seem a bit simple, but what I’m really trying to say is, how can I make fish that’s a bit different?  My family got a nice supply of freshly caught fish this weekend.  We froze quite a few fillets and now I’m just wondering how I’m going to fix it so it’s not all the same.

I do love pan fried fish now that I found the secret!  I’ll share it with you here.  The secret for keeping the coating on the fish as it fries, instead of having it all flake off in the fry pan is, you use the Dry-Wet-Dry method of coating the fish.  Start with dipping the fish in dry, whether you use flour with a bit of salt and pepper, or cornmeal… it doesn’t matter.  Next, dip in your wet mixture, usually a little egg and milk beaten together, then finally dip again in your dry mixture.

Then, here’s the real trick – lay out your fish on a rack, like a cookie cooling rack, on top of a cookie sheet and stick it in the refrigerator for at least an hour.  I don’t know if it’s the Dry-Wet-Dry coating or the refrigerator time, or maybe a combination of the two.  But, whatever it is, it works.  I can now pan fry fish fillets without losing any of the coating!

Does anyone else have some tried and true tricks or recipes for fresh fish?  I’d love to hear from you!

If you’ve got kids, you’ve got apple juice in the house.  Have you ever tried to use it in your cooking?  Because it’s so handy, I thought it would be a good “pantry” item to create dishes around.

I have seen quite a few recipes that use apple juice as a marinade for chicken and seafood, normally in Asian-inspired dishes.  Combining apple juice with ginger and soy is a pretty basic blend that packs quite a bit of flavor. 

How about using apple juice in stir fry dishes?  Again, with soy included, I would imagine that a stir fry would really benefit from the impact of apple juice; perhaps replacing all or some of the chicken broth when creating a cornstarch thickened sauce.

Apple juice could also be used as the sweet part of any sweet and sour dish.  Even Szechwan Beef or Chicken wouldn’t hide or minimize the distinctive flavor and sweetness of apple juice.

You see I’m a little stuck on the Asian inspired dishes that would benefit from a splash of apple juice.  Are there any other uses for apple juice?  How about baking?  Have you ever used apple juice to replace other liquids in bread or muffin recipes?  I’d love to hear from you!

Since today is Good Friday and I was raised catholic, I’m going to prepare some fish for dinner. Depending on the weather, I usually bake it or cook it on the grill. Since it’s supposed to be rainy today, we’re having some baked white fish fillets for dinner.

By far my favorite is to wrap a salmon fillet in some aluminum foil with some lemon and dill and then either bake it or cook it on the grill (in the foil) until it is done.

How about you? What’s your favorite fish fillet? Submit your recipe as a comment below.

We’ve been spending a lot of time at the beach lately and since this is Oyster season, we’ve splurged and got a whole bushel of local oysters. They are absolutely fabulous raw and steamed, but even so there’s only so often I can eat them and we have barely made a dent in this huge bag of oysters.

My favorite way to eat them is to just steam them, dip them in a little melted butter and eat them, but I’m sure there’s a lot more you can do with them. Do you have a good recipe for oyster stew? How do you fry them and what else do you make with fresh oysters? I’d love to hear your ideas and recipes, so please leave them as a comment below.

We like to make tuna salad sandwiches for lunch every once in a while. For the past few weeks we had been out of canned tuna, so I stocked up on the them and bought 10 cans. Then hubby came home from grocery shopping with quite a few more (he didn’t notice that I already bought some last week). So we now have a pantry full of canned tuna.

I usually drain the tuna well, mix it with a little mayo, a splash of pickle juice, some shopped pickles, salt and pepper. Then server it on bread or rolls.

What else can I make with canned tuna? I’d love to hear some of your favorite recipes.

ok. Bubba Gump time. What can you make with Shrimp?

Any tips for easy prep for those who don’t know what the heck to do with a shrimp?

Let’s have it.