Roasted bass with basil pesto and garlic breadcrumbs
July 22, 2012
Bet found the recipe in Fine Cooking #66, August, 2004, p. 42. She substituted recently-caught frozen largemouth bass fillets for the recommended cod.
The result was a delight to the senses, though it didn’t take long to finish the entre.
In my opinion this is the best way to serve bass that I have found in fifty or more years of looking.
UPDATE, 4 AUGUST, 2012:
Andre Mallet brought us a box of cod fillets from Halifax, so Bet tried the basil recipe with the recommended species. The entre was good, but we both preferred the bass. Both bunches of fillets had been frozen, though the largemouths were thicker, juicier, and their taste came through more effectively than did the cod.
Maybe local bass aren’t so bad, after all.
The War of 1812-14 is much in the public mind this year. A unique addition to the canon is Consequences of the Battle at Sandy Creek. Neil Thomas tells the story of a young Lieutenant given a commission in the British army by a prominent Kingston merchant, sent on a spying mission by him, then captured and returned to Kingston in an American gun boat under a flag of truce, along with a packet of evidence for his court martial.
But the main narrative frame details the slow recovery of a Canadian journalist from the massacre of his interview subjects on a Peruvian farm at the hands of the guerrilla group Shining Path in 1989. Torn by survivor’s guilt and the shock of a savage beating at the hands of the killers, Alastair MacNeil returns to his grandmother’s home in Kingston, Ontario, where he comes upon a series of documents pertaining to the trial for treason of his ancestor, Lieutenant Cameron MacNeil.
The War of 1812 frame recounts the expedition of Cameron and his men to northern New York State at the request of Kingston merchant Richard Cartwright to collect commercial intelligence. Trade must go on regardless of the presence of armies and gunboats on Lake Ontario, and as Cartwright tells MacNeil, for a trader information is everything.
As Alastair makes his way through his great, great, great, great grandfather’s documents he discovers levels of deceit incomprehensible to his embattled ancestor who carried his belief in the King and Mr. Cartwright all of the way to the gallows.
Through flashbacks to his trauma in Peru, Alastair increasingly leads the reader to conclude that the forces arrayed against Cameron were not unlike those faced by the Peruvian peasants he had encountered: corrupt leaders and insurgents played their games, businessmen made their money, and peasants died grizzly deaths at the hands of the armed men of all three factions.
Author Neil Thomas obviously knows rural Peru. He offers a vivid account of a meal in a peasant’s stone dwelling, explaining how Peruvians freeze and dry potatoes for use as a staple food throughout the year. Another account of a half-day tilling a stony field with a hand tool carries the authority of a writer who has worked the land by hand on several continents. Thomas’s anger toward the Shining Path is evident as well in the dedication where he blames the terrorist group for the death of his environmental journalist friend Barbara d’Achille on May 31, 1989.
So what does the torment of Peruvian peasants in a nameless civil war in the 1980’s have to do with the War of 1812? Thomas infers that both wars were fought largely through the use of terror. It’s a historical fact that Fort Detroit fell to General Brock because its commander was terrified of Tecumseh’s warriors. Tecumseh sided with General Brock and the British because U.S. General Harrison massacred the residents of his home village while the great Indian leader was elsewhere with his men. Harrison later took this proclivity to genocide to Washington as the ninth U.S. President.
Thomas takes the terrors of war and intrigue to another level in the murders of Canadian and American farmers, killed and maimed by partisans in a manner to suggest Indian savagery.
But behind the intrigues and injustices of both story frames lay economic motives and a numbing lack of concern for the rural dwellers and aboriginals who worked, struggled, died, and were easily replaced by their political and economic leaders.
Thomas’s novel is more than a simple work of historical fiction. It is a durable, detailed, and at times comfortable construction, rather like a fine wing chair that invites to you to sit in it.
Available at Amazon.com Books, $14.95 ISBN 978-0-9865914-1-9
“Pink” Mulberry?
June 28, 2012
On the farm in Leeds County, Ontario we have a lot of red mulberry trees growing wild among the black walnuts. One large white mulberry grew below the house, but it was so large and intrusive that I cut the thing a couple of years ago and burned it for firewood. While I enjoy mulberries to eat off the tree, the whites were deceptive: I couldn’t tell from the colour if a berry was green, ripe, or rancid. So off with its head.
Today I came upon a mulberry growing at the side of the upper garden. After it survived a run-over by the lawn mower last year I decided to let it live and see. Its extremely sweet fruit doesn’t resemble either the red or the white mulberry, so I guess it must be a hybrid. My mother and I agree that the berries are superior to those of both parent species, so we’ll have to see how the small tree develops.
More critters and kooks on the Chaffey’s Locks Road
June 14, 2012
In an earlier post I mentioned an intrepid woodchuck who had built a den on the edge of the Chaffey’s Locks Road. No doubt the chuck thought it would be a good location, now that the speed limit on this stretch has been reduced to 60 km/hr. But the maintenance crew has trumped him with a few shovelfuls of asphalt. When I drove by today there was a neat, round hole there, filled to the brim with cold mix asphalt. Take that, you wascally woodchuck!
Every time I have driven on that road recently I have come upon cars stopped on the driving lane. Last trip it was a pair of cars loaded with birdwatchers who had abandoned their vehicles in haste. This time it was some chick in a VW who stopped immediately on a corner to answer a cell phone call. That cell phone law may end up killing somebody if people unfamiliar with roads without shoulders don’t learn to bend the rules and find a safe place before stopping.
On the Clear Lake Road I stopped (in the driving lane, but I put my flashers on) to watch a ruffed grouse which was standing in the middle of the pavement. I shut off to watch. She didn’t seem inclined to leave. Soon a chick burst out of the vegetation and raced across the road. Then another, and so on until five had made the frantic sprint. Then came a straggler who stopped to peck a bit of gravel on the narrow shoulder, then sauntered away from cover, only to panic and dash for safety on the other side. I waited in case there were others. At length a much larger chick emerged, about half grown, and dashed across to join the flock.
Could the older chick be from an earlier nesting of the mother? Do grouse adopt plus-sized orphans? It was definitely a ruffed grouse, though advanced enough in age to have a visible black comb.
Tool Shed
May 15, 2012
It used up almost all of the surplus siding from the garages.
I doubt if plans for shelves will come about before it fills up with shovels, rakes, and Grandma’s garbage pail.
A final word on cove siding
May 6, 2012
This afternoon Martin and I completed the cove siding project on Charlie’s garage while he replaced a muffler inside. Things were humming on a fine spring afternoon.
My 1200 bd ft. of pine ran out six feet short of the eaves on the final side of the 20X30 building. I was forced to make another batch of siding, pressing treasured 12″ pine boards into service, as well as some marginal stock, the best of which had planed 1/16″ thin for the first run of siding.
Of course there was a lot of waste while installing the first batch because I cut the boards to fit the strapping I had installed vertically.
Then out of laziness I began to nail butt blocks behind joints instead of forcing them to come together on the strapping nailed vertically to the walls for the purpose.
The scrap pile stopped its inexorable growth. Cut-offs ended up on the side of the garage as butt blocks. Without the loss of about a foot per board to fitting, the cove siding stock lasted longer, as well. Without the need for precise measurements, the installation proceeded at a good pace. On the second lot of siding I ended up with quite a surplus.
So my final word on the installation of cove siding: square the boards and nail them to butt blocks, rather than studs. It saves material and time.
the Walnut Diary 