Recipe of the Month
by Duane Radford
Frontier Lodge Shore Lunch
Ingredients
● 2 lake trout fillets (halved/ quartered)
● 1 cup All-Purpose flour
● 1-pound Tenderflake lard
● large plastic bag
● seasoning salts, optional (e.g., salt and pepper, lemon pepper, Old Bay, Knorr Aromat All Purpose Savoury Seasoning, etc.)
● diced white Spanish onion
● 1 can baked pork & beans
● 1 can mushrooms (drained)
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a different spin on a shore lunch pops up! Such was the case at Frontier Lodge in the Northwest Territories where I enjoyed a new shore lunch last year—grilled lake trout fillets with Frank’s RedHot Sauce. If you check out the Frank’s RedHot Sauce website for recipes most of them feature burgers, chicken bites, chicken wings, hot dogs and shrimp but NOT fish.
Directions
1. Build a rock crib for a campfire and fill it with small twigs and branches before torching it to burn. Use a paper towel or accelerant as a fire starter. Place a grill over both sides of the rock crib that can hold two large skillets.
2. You’ll need a fresh caught lake trout in the 4 to 5+-pound range for this recipe. Fillet the lake trout and remove the Y-bones. Halve and then quarter the fillets. Put them in a plastic bag.
3. Grill the diced onion and the can of sliced mushrooms in a skillet with 1/4 of the block of lard. Sauté them for about 10 minutes. Flip the skillet so the ingredients cook evenly.
4. Set the grilled onion and mushrooms aside.
5. Open the lid (part way) on the canned pork and beans and heat the can on the side of the grill until it starts to bubble.
6. Add 1 cup All-Purpose flour to the plastic bag and toss the fillets until they’re evenly coated with the flour.
7. Add a bottle of Frank’s RedHot Sauce to the bag with the fillets and flour and continue tossing the fillets until the sauce is soaked up in the flour, coating them. Let the sauce seep into the coated lake trout fillets to flavour them.
8. Place 3/4 of the block of lard in a skillet on top of the campfire. (Lard is not unhealthy; don’t worry, you won’t get a heart attack.)
9. Once the lard has melted, remove the fillets from the plastic bag and place them in the skillet, one at a time, using tongs or by hand. Cook them for no longer than 10 minutes, turning them over as necessary. Once done, set them aside on a serving plate on top of a paper towel.
10. Season the fillets with a dash of your favourite spice mixture (optional).
11. Serve the fillets with the baked beans, canned mushrooms and onions with a beverage of your choice.
Leave it to clever fishing guides to invent a shore lunch recipe featuring a hot sauce, which really isn’t that hot by comparison with other recipes. Yes, the cayenne pepper in the hot sauce still has a bite, but it’s okay.
