On The Plate is Hot Smoked Salmon

Text and recipe by Jennifer Matsu

Photos by Rob Schumske

I’m a native Houstonian, but I grew up fishing summers in the Okanagan and Quadra Island of British Columbia. I’d spend days in a jon boat on Okanagan Lake, targeting rainbow trout and landlocked kokanee salmon. I’d also fish for sockeye and chinook in the waters of Discovery Passage. I took a hiatus from fishing, but over the last couple of years I’ve found a passion in fly fishing. I’ve loved learning a new sport, challenging myself, and enjoying all the victories along the way.

I thought I was just discovering another way to catch fish and experience nature. Little did I know that I had made a life-altering choice. Fly fishing is the epitome of hope and presence, and it connects our community in a special way. I found myself celebrating the little things like a longer or more accurate cast and went on to celebrate the bigger accomplishments like my first redfish on fly and catching a permit on fly.

When I purchased my first saltwater fly rod, I went to Houston’s Restaurant (now known as Hillstone) to celebrate. I ordered the hot smoked salmon and a glass of Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc. It felt like the perfect celebratory meal. Salmon has been a staple in my food repertoire for as long as I can remember. I have fond memories of the freshest sockeye imaginable and fishing with my dad in B.C. We enjoyed salmon grilled, roasted, canned, tempura style–even raw in sushi. One of my absolute favorite preparations is hot smoked salmon. It’s elegant, simple and so satisfying—toasty ciabatta, a smear of aioli, and a slab of hot smoked salmon. Perfect when paired with a glass of bubbles or especially with a crisp Ranch Water–good silver tequila, sparkling water, and a squeeze of lime.

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The post Hot Smoked Salmon first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Hot Smoked Salmon appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Hot Toddy

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The Hot Toddy is a cocktail of mystery and intrigue.  It’s a classic drink, still a standard among warm cocktails, but what’s actually in it…? The basic recipe is pretty flexible, allowing for whatever brown spirit the bartender has on hand. Even though our editor-in-chief is a doctor, we can’t attest to, or deny, the possible medicinal benefits of honey and anise. Regardless, here’s a simple version for a wonderful winter warmer.

Ingredients

• 1½ ounces brown liquor such as brandy, whiskey, or rum
• 1 tablespoon honey
• ½ ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup hot water
• Lemon wedge, cinnamon stick, and star anise, for garnish

Directions

Combine the brown liquor of choice, honey, lemon juice, and water into a warmed mug. Garnish with the lemon, cinnamon stick, or star anise.

Bulletproof Hot Buttered Rum

The traditional Hot Buttered Rum is cocktail comfort food. Since our editor-in-chief is a doctor, his version is ostensibly healthier. He incorporates ghee, a clarified butter from grass-fed cows, and Brain Octane Oil (medium-chain triglycerides) from a company called Bulletproof.  This recipe takes advantage of the goodness of omega 3 fatty acids, making it paleo- and keto-friendly when made with straight spirits and a brown sugar alternative). You can also make it with your favorite cordial.

Ingredients

• 8 tbsp (4 oz) of Bulletproof Ghee
• 4 tbsp (2 oz) of Bulletproof Brain Octane Oil
• ½ cup light brown sugar (or sugar-free substitute such as Sukrin Gold)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• A dash of salt
• 3 oz dark or aged rum
• 6 oz hot water
• Cinnamon sticks, for garnish

Directions

In a mixing bowl, combine the ghee, Brain Octane Oil, vanilla extract, sugar (or substitute), spices, and salt. Beat until well-combined.  In a heatproof glass or mug, combine aged rum with 1 oz (2 tbsp) spiced butter mixture. Place remaining mixture in an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for future use.  Top the rum and butter with hot water and stir until the ingredients are well-mixed. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.

Mulled Wine

Mulled wine is a timeless concoction dating back to the second century BC in Rome. And it couldn’t be easier to make. Simply combine a bottle of red wine with the other ingredients and let it simmer for ten minutes. Nothing more to it.  Drier varietals like zinfendel, merlot, malbec, or cabrenet seem to work best, but any wine will work as the other ingredients tend to dominate. The brandy is optional, but if you choose one, go with a dark berry brandy or something that will blend with the other ingredients.

Ingredients

• 1 bottle red wine (750 mL)
• 1 large orange, sliced into wheels (save some for garnish)
• 6 cloves (whole)
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 3 star anise
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup brandy (optional)

Directions

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the ingredients. Bring it to a simmer but do not allow it to boil (if you do, you’ll burn off alcohol). Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Serve warm and garnish with citrus slices and/or cinnamon sticks.

Penicillin

It may not have the healing properties of the antibiotic it’s named for, but the Penicillin Cocktail is a sure cure for a chilly winter night. Created by New York bartender Sam Ross, the Penicillin Cocktail uses the soothing flavors of honey, lemon juice, and fresh ginger, and fortifies them with a healthy dose of blended scotch. It’s then topped off with a thin pour of single malt, which gives the drink a fragrance as alluring as any woodsmoke-laced winter breeze. Others have made it with tequila, gin, and rum, all with good results, but the Scotch-based version is the genuine article. If you don’t want to track down honey-ginger simple syrup for just a few drinks, you might be better served by muddling a few slices of fresh ginger in the drink.  The honey syrup is a 50/50 mixture of hot water and honey. Allow it to cool before using.

Ingredients

• 2 oz blended scotch

• ¾ oz fresh lemon juice

• 1 oz honey-ginger simple syrup

• ¼ oz single malt scotch

Directions

Shake the blended scotch, lemon juice, and syrups with ice and strain into a double old fashioned glass with a single large ice cube. Pour single malt over the back of a bar spoon so that it floats atop the drink and finish with a lemon wheel.

More Food & Drink from Tail Fly Fishing Magazine:

Eating the Lowcountry

The Leaky Palapa | Xcalak, Mexico | Trey Reid

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The post WINTER COCKTAILS first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post WINTER COCKTAILS appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Chef Marla Stiles and her wife Linda Loo have been feeding locals, expat Americans, and snowbirds at the southern end of the Mexican Yucatan since 2004. With fly fishers descending on Xcalak in growing numbers, the Leaky Palapa has gained a reputation among saltwater bug-flingers as a gastronomic attraction that’s as irresistible as the area’s bonefish and permit.

“I’ve lived and traveled all over the world and have eaten at some of the best restaurants in some of the foodiest cities, and the Leaky Palapa is in my global top ten,” says Rob Mukai, a Utah native who runs the Acocote Eco Inn a few miles north of town. “They would be competitive in Tokyo, London, New York, Sydney—you name it.”

Veteran restaurateurs from Canada, Stiles and Loo have crafted a menu that merges Mexican culinary traditions with French and Italian techniques, elevating customary Yucatecan ingredients and flavors from delicious to magnificent. The food remains familiar and approachable while simultaneously inspiring admiration and wonder. The portions are satisfying, the prices shockingly reasonable.

The Leaky Palapa balances refined fare with a casual atmosphere. Situated on the ground floor of its owners’ home, it radiates a warmth that isn’t merely the result of its tropical locale. Guests rarely enter without a cheerful greeting and a hug. The cozy dining room’s garnet-hued walls, dimly lit by small lights encased in gourd lampshades, create a mood that’s as inviting as the proprietors.

Loo runs the front of the house and tends the bar. Her signature cocktail is the chile-pineapple margarita, in which sweet, sour, and picante mingle in salt-rimmed glasses—but she’s just as deft at crafting classics like the old fashioned or recommending a bottle from the wine list.

The libations are useful lubricants to help with the diner’s difficulty of deciding what to order. From appetizer through dessert, everything on the menu is intriguing. Popular main dishes include pasilla chile-crusted pork tenderloin with a bourbon and ancho reduction; ravioli filled with huitlacoche, a mushroom-like corn fungus that’s sometimes called Mexican truffle; and the pork ossobuco, slow-roasted with a chipotle tomato broth until it peels off the bone.

Being about three or four long casts from the edge of the Caribbean Sea, the Leaky Palapa naturally excels with seafood. Besides the Campeche shrimp that’s dusted with dried chiles and served atop squid-ink pasta, the restaurant’s fish and lobster come from speargun-wielding Xcalak fishermen. Whether it’s the local spiny lobster tails (grilled on the barbecue or poached in coconut milk) or one of Stiles’ myriad fish presentations, there’s a good chance the food on your plate was still swimming earlier in the day.

(If there’s a can’t-miss appetizer on the menu, it’s the caramelized ginger-seared lobster bites. The lobster is divine by itself, but the sauce that pools around it has caused diners to forsake their manners. “Somebody told me I should serve a squeegee with this thing,” Loo says, “so you don’t leave anything on the plate.”)

It’s no wonder the Leaky Palapa is a favorite hangout of traveling fly anglers. From across the globe, they descend on Xcalak as a home base for guided and DIY trips to Chetumal Bay’s flats, the area’s intricate lagoon systems, and beachfront fishing inside the Mesoamerican Reef. Fly fishing travelers, Stiles says, account for about 40 percent of the Leaky Palapa’s business.

As far as it is from Cancun, Xcalak attracts a different kind of traveler than the all-inclusive resorts on the northern Yucatan beaches or the full-service fly fishing lodges around Ascension Bay to the north or Belize’s Ambergris Caye to the south. People visit Xcalak to get away from crowds. If they’re not in search of bonefish, permit, tarpon, and snook, they’re likely looking for solitude on the Costa Maya’s sparsely populated beaches, or seeking underwater adventure via snorkeling or scuba diving. That’s how Loo and Stiles stumbled onto Xcalak while escaping the Canadian winter in January of 2004.

“We were camped on the beach in a motorhome we picked up in Texas,” Stiles says. “We had been traveling through Mexico, camping on beaches and diving. We had all our equipment plus a compressor, as well as an inflatable diveyak. An American couple whose daughter owned a place in town came by our campsite to ask if we would be interested in renting the space and operating a restaurant.”

Stiles and Loo returned to the Great White North, sold their house and restaurant in London, Ontario, and went back to the tropics on a somewhat impulsive, unplanned adventure to open a restaurant in a tiny Mexican fishing village on the edge of the Caribbean. “Once we made the decision, it was easy,” Loo says.

Starting a new restaurant in remote Xcalak wasn’t as easy as the decision to do it. The restaurant’s first space consisted of a small building with a tiny apartment, a cramped kitchen, and a larger open area for the restaurant covered by a palapa, a classic Mexican shelter with a palm-leaf thatched roof.

“We had rented this building without looking at it very carefully,” Stiles says. “While sitting inside the palapa making our plans, we looked and realized we had a large problem: The palapa needed replacing, and we didn’t have the cash to do it. So we thought for a minute and we decided, no problem: We would buy a bunch of umbrellas and put them over each table and call it the Leaky Palapa.”

At the time, Xcalak’s electricity was supplied by a generator that ran for three or four hours a night and rarely at full power. Fate intervened in the form of CFE, Mexico’s state-owned electric utility, which installed transformers and put Xcalak on the electrical grid just as Stiles and Loo were set to open in October 2004.

There also were problems stocking the restaurant’s larder. Xcalak has no grocery stores, too small even for the type of central mercado that’s ubiquitous in many Mexican cities. Local fishermen kept the restaurant stocked with fish and lobster, but other ingredients were hard to get. Grocery trucks came in from bigger towns a couple times a week, but supplies were limited and their schedules unreliable. Stiles and Loo had to make weekly trips to Chetumal, a five-hour round trip drive—with no guarantee vendors would have needed ingredients.

“It was crazy some days,” Loo says. “We’d get to Chetumal, and there wouldn’t be any lettuce.”

The Leaky Palapa staggered forward nine years in its original space. Loo and Stiles found relief for their stress by kayaking back in the bay, fishing and camping and watching roseate spoonbills, crocodiles, and wood storks. Being accepted and welcomed by the local community, and seeing their customers’ reactions to their restaurant, made it worth the frequent hassles.

In 2013 they finished construction on a new home and restaurant, where they serve customers Thursday through Sunday between US Thanksgiving and late April. The restaurant closes during the low season while Loo and Stiles return to Canada.

They still face hardships operating a restaurant of the Leaky Palapa’s caliber in a remote corner of the Mexican Caribbean, but it’s easier than it used to be. They built the new digs with a dining room and kitchen closer to their specifications. They still make weekly five-hour round-trip drives to Chetumal for ingredients, but Quintana Roo’s capital city now has a Walmart, a Sam’s Club, and the large Mexican grocery chain Chedraui. Electricity is more reliable these days, although Stiles and Loo still turn to a backup generator at times. The salt and humidity are hell on kitchen equipment. But the force that propels the Leaky Palapa and its owners forward is the same thing that makes the restaurant so remarkable: It’s the challenge of creating something extraordinary where you least expect it. When people respond to that, it’s the stuff of dreams.

“The best thing about running a restaurant here is the people,” Stiles says. “Our customers come from all over the world. They have worked all year for their holiday, and now they are on it. They are in the best frame of mind, as they are here doing what they love and what gives them joy.”

For many Xcalak visitors, that includes dining at the Leaky Palapa.

Bio: Trey Reid has written for numerous newspapers, magazines, and websites, and is a former field reporter for ESPN. He works in public and media relations for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, producing and hosting the agency’s television show Arkansas Wildlife. He also hosts the outdoor radio show The Wild Side on 103.7 FM The Buzz in Little Rock, which can also be heard as a podcast.

Photos: Trey Reid, Michael DeJarnette, Bob Haines, Lee Reddmann, and Kaettie Wenger

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The post The Leaky Palapa | Xcalak, Mexico | Trey Reid first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post The Leaky Palapa | Xcalak, Mexico | Trey Reid appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

Today April 18^th, 2020, the Marco Beaches are closed. A few restaurants are serving to-go only and you can’t get to Ft Myers on Delta in the same day from here in Birmingham unless you drive to Atlanta. The return options are just as bad. So, let me tell you about Plan B. Start the day by checking your favorite Insta fishing posts. Most of those are posting reruns. Sort of like watching Gilligan’s Island. Watched a decent Costa Rica tarpon film this morning called, “The Jungle’s Edge”, posted by Venturing Angler. Thank you. This afternoon and after some honey-do’s I walked across the street to my fishing buddy mother’s house. She has an expansive front lawn. There I cast the 11 weight as if tarpon might slide down the cul-de-sac. Where’s the sun when need it. Stepped off 86’, my best. That’ll get you a whole lot nothing when the fish are really coming at you in a cross breeze and a bouncy chop. Not sure what the neighbors think.

Then I pulled out the Tail July/August issue out of the stack I maintain in my closet. I recalled a lobster tail recipe with fried plantain tostones that sounded yummy. Yep, that’s what it has come to. Cooking seafood recipes out of fishing magazines. My wife walks in from her own errands and curiously asks, “what’s this all about?” “It’s fishing week, baby” is all I can utter back.

She smiled as I scurried about in the kitchen about as well as if Andy Lee stepped down from the platform and handed me the push pole. We did manage to deliver a great meal, the two of us. Teamwork is always key when it is fishing week.

I am not sure tomorrow holds.

Leftovers, I guess.

S. Culp
Tail Subscriber

The post Plan B first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Plan B appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

What fish? you may ask—well, I’ll tell you. What say you to flounder the size of doormats? How about bright blue and copper tails of redfish, making the subtlest of disturbances in the flooded swaths of spartina grass? Perhaps one should mention the seatrout: silver, speckled, dog-toothed rockets absorbed with the single and singular task of murdering hapless marsh baitfish in the channels and open pools one happens upon paddling between the islands.

One is surrounded by life in the marshes of Lowcountry South Carolina—a million subtle but obvious lives and past lives. That’s what makes it so compelling. I’m never just fishing here; I’m immersed in the current of cultures going about their business. Perhaps it’s the feeling of enjoying something fully without really mattering to it. Perhaps it’s the indifference of Mother Nature that makes saltwater fishing so enjoyable. Big white cranes staking out their tidal rivulets for mullet, dolphins breaking the surface in the bays, fiddler crabs moving in and out of their burrows in the pluff mud—skating through in my kayak does little, if anything, to interrupt their daily machinations. Then there’s the acute spirit of all that’s come before—new oysters beginning life on the shells of the dead, listing pilings rotting away as the only remaining evidence of a home that couldn’t withstand the proximity to the impartial ocean, a barnacle-covered rope washed up on a bank that used to tether a forgotten crab trap, the nest of a fish hawk that may be revisited and rebuilt next year, or may be passed up in favor of a new tree with a better view of the food supply below.

Food of past and present is another inescapable flavor of the Lowcountry. Everywhere I turn, I’m reminded of food in one way or another—not least the complex food web I paddle into while fishing, forcibly pushing my way into the daily life of a redfish by replacing one of its mud-minnow meals with a mud-minnow imposter, like a bakery delivering a Styrofoam display birthday cake instead of the real deal. But marsh food chain aside, the omniscient industry and end-product of food culture can be viewed from water or land, canal or road, skiff or truck. Should I ever drive over the Intercoastal Waterway without seeing shrimp boats at rest below, waiting for the next early morning mission, it would be as if life had ceased in South Carolina. Without charter boats filled with tourists jigging for flounder—though not necessarily my idea of great sport—the tidal byways would seem empty, dead, wrong.

Past and present traditions of eating the region’s food are intertwined with the cultures, the heritage of the Lowcountry; perhaps none is as important as that of the Gullah. Communities of slaves brought to work the rice fields of the sea islands—isolated from much of the mainland, resilient in health and in spirit, and persevering in preserving a deep connection with their African heritage—they developed a unique culinary oeuvre rooted in creole elements, fresh and seasonal seafood, and rice. The proud heritage is preserved to this day; among other places, it’s on display in force at Gullah Grub, a standalone restaurant in an old two-story southern house on St. Helena Island near Beaufort, South Carolina. You don’t go to Gullah Grub for hip gastronomy, self-absorbed alternative takes on southern classics, or a cloth-napkin dining experience; you go to have seafood and barbeque done simply, perfectly, honestly, and traditionally. The barbeque is smoked with wood, the cornbread is baked fresh, and the rice is steamy and rich. The crab soup and gumbo ensure every single ingredient has a distinct voice while retaining the bold chorus of their combination. And, if you’re lucky, you may meet Bill Green, proprietor and chef and compulsively beaming icon of Gullah culinary spirit.

And that’s just one restaurant. Seafood joints line the shores here. That’s not unique to South Carolina, of course, but the seafood immersion here seems more complete than in other places. I can fish my way through the marsh to the open channel, paddle behind the shrimp boats, and pull up to a dockside crab shack. U-catch to wholesale to retail and back again, all in a single tide cycle–pretty darn good!

The specialties at seafood shacks or restaurants in the Lowcountry are numerous–as regional food goes, the Lowcountry isn’t a one-trick pony. The she-crab soup soothes with smoothness, richness, and sweetness; the hushpuppies are crisp on the outside, gooey on the inside, and heavy on the onion; and the Lowcountry boil–shrimp, potatoes, corn, and sausage steamed in Old Bay and dumped out on newspaper–must be eaten with one’s hands.  If the food coma doesn’t get you, you can fish around the tide cycle in the Lowcountry—never is there a dull moment in the marsh. Work flooding grass for feeding redfish winding their way onto the flats with the incoming tide; move to seatrout in flooded bays; swing creek outflows for flounder on the outgoing; or fish wide, expansive flats for laid-up schools at low tide. And that’s just the fishing; I’ve not even mentioned throwing crab traps, jigging for seabass, or collecting your own bucket of oysters.

And there are hazards, to be sure. Most are related to oyster shells or the thick, sucking mud–sometimes both. There was the time my most gung-ho of fishing companions, R., pitching soft plastics into a tidal creek, stepped in mud up to his knee, and after a protracted struggle to extricate himself, came up less one sandal. Between him and more solid land sat menacingly stood oyster bar, which he attacked with one shod foot only. Needless to say, he left blood tracks on the floor of the rental house that night. There was a lot of blood. (And the poor guy was already a tad low on blood as it was, having just gotten a large tattoo of a redfish tail on his chest a few hours earlier, which he commemorated by hooking and landing a 40-pound beast in a golf course pond.) On another occasion, I left my buddy C.—I’m beginning to think he actually seeks out fishing misery—for all of 15 minutes to return to find him poling his kayak through mud and oyster shells from which most of the water had already departed, taking on the consistency of rapidly congealing soup.

Tribulations and triumphs of a day spent in the Lowcountry marshes create an appetite that can only be satisfied by the food of the area. It’s that cycle of life that refreshes and delights. The rewards for a day of fishing are not only the sights and sounds of the marsh, but also the spirit of cultures that have come before and persevere still; it’s not simply the bent rods and the eagles nesting on little grassy islands, but also the oysters I’ve collected myself, grilled in the half shell with a bit of butter.

James P. Spica Jr. is a regular contributor to Tail Fly Fishing Magazine

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The post Eating the Lowcountry first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Eating the Lowcountry appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.