Need finishing sauce for Northern Pike

[samvt]

Greetings,
I've been trying to come up with a finishing sauce for a baked Northern Pike dish and keep failing.

If anyone can help me with a light dill and caper..cool! Any other help or suggestions/recipes would be greatly appreciated. Please...I've got 3 lbs. of fresh (fresh as in I caught and cleaned them) fillets. Please help me give this great fish the respect it deserves.
Thankyou,
Sam

[Mezzaluna]

Sam, as you've not gotten responses yet, let me jump in and say: keep it simple. Melted butter, some fresh lemon juice, minced dill and a few capers would be all you'd need- not a complicated sauce.

Of course in Wisconsin fishermen tend to pan fry or deep fry these fish and dunk them in mayonnaise-based tartar sauce. A few rolls and potato pancakes on the side and you've got a decent Wisconsin fish fry.

[KYHeirloomer]

As a general rule, Sam, any sauce that works with lobster goes well with Northern pike, musky, or pickeral. In fact, many traditional "poor man's lobster" recipes used Northern pike.

I used to make Pike Turbans when I lived in Northern country. It's as much an approach as a recipe, but here's the procedure:

Cut filets so they're no more than 1 1/4 inches wide. This means splitting them the long way, more often than not. Thin filets also work better than thick ones. Filets should be about 8" long, although you can build with shorter ones.

Make duxelles. Mince mushrooms very fine. Saute in very little butter until all liquid has evaporated. Let cool, put in a towel, and wring out as much moisture as possible. Return to skillet and continue cooking until dry. Set aside.

Make a bechamel sauce with the addition of some minced, sauteed onion and a little powdered mustard. Add the duxelles. Sauce should be very thick.

For each turban, butter a pudding cup or small ramiken. I like the round-bottomed pudding cups better, because the finished dish looks much better. Curl the filet in a spiril so it fills the bottom like a pinwheel. Fill the rest of the cup with the duxelle sauce.

Bake at 350 until fish is cooked through, about 20 minutes. Let rest a minute or so and carefully unmold onto a serving plate. Sprinkle with paprika.

[MuskyHopeful]

Please don't eat muskies. They're rare and hard enough to catch as it is.

Save the baking and fish fries for the pike. They taste much better, (the small ones anyway), reproduce much easier, and don't require the time and money to keep stocked.

Kevin

I like muskies. Practice C,P,&R. Catch, Photo, and Release.

[KYHeirloomer]

Originally Posted by MuskyHopeful

Please don't eat muskies. They're rare and hard enough to catch as it is.

[/IMG]

So all you musky chasers up north keep saying. And I really bought in to that "fish of a thousand casts" sort of thing. But on my first musky trip in WI we caught 17 in three days, most of them legal size.

Now I use flyfishing gear to make musky fishing challanging.

If you want to catch musky get off of them flowages and try some of the smaller waters. Or, better yet, come down here and fish Cave Run or Green River Lakes. I guarantee you'll catch a few every time.

[MuskyHopeful]

Originally Posted by KYHeirloomer

So all you musky chasers up north keep saying. And I really bought in to that "fish of a thousand casts" sort of thing. But on my first musky trip in WI we caught 17 in three days, most of them legal size.

Now I use flyfishing gear to make musky fishing challanging.

If you want to catch musky get off of them flowages and try some of the smaller waters. Or, better yet, come down here and fish Cave Run or Green River Lakes. I guarantee you'll catch a few every time.

What can I say? Sounds like you had a good couple days. I guess there's nothing to it. How many did you eat? I'll get down to Green River or The Cave at some point. I know for a fact it's not as simple as you say down there. So I should try the small lakes, huh? Who woulda thunk it?

Keep in mind, without the heavy promotion of C & R in the last 15 years, muskies might still be the fish of 10,000 casts.

Kevin

Practice C,P,&R

Sorry for the hijack.

[samvt]

Thankyou, Mezzaluna and KYHeirloomer. I need more pudding cups!!!
MuskyHopful,WT@#$! ?
Sam