Miguelito declared May 19 as Minnesota Day. That's the day following his return from this year's fishing trip to the state with 10,000 lakes. I told him that if I'm going to be a fishing widow every May from now on, and if we're going to celebrate Minnesota Day on the nineteenth of the fifth month every year from now on, then he needs to bring home walleye every year from now on.
This year, he and a baker's dozen of fishermen caught their limit on Leech Lake: four fish, or 8 fillets, each. We saved four of the fillets for a future dinner with Miguelito's grandma. The remainder constituted my first walleye meal ever.
The secret ingredient for our fish fry was Ritz crackers.
Our ghetto-gourmet way of cooking entailed Miguelito pounding two mini packs of crackers in a Ziploc bag. For the first batch, we used plain crackers to coat the 4-inch fillets seasoned with sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, later dredged in an egg batter. For the subsequent batch, I spiked the cracker dust with some yellow curry powder to give the white fish a bit of kick. I suppose this culinary experimentation could represent a metaphor for the coupling of a Norwegian-Mexican Minnesotan and a Vietnamese-American who grew up in South Carolina and Virginia.
The second key ingredient was lots of butter. It would have been much healthier to cook the walleye in olive oil, or even to poach it. But the butter enhanced the comforting flavor of the Ritz cracker coating. I did add some olive oil to reduce the burn threshold of the butter.
The key was not to crowd the pan with the fish.
We fried the suckers up to a golden brown.
We served the fried walleye atop couscous mixed with currants and chili flakes, a spinach salad and roasted sweet peppers. After one bite of the light, flaky, sweet fish, I decided that I can deal with being a fishing widow. I mean, I could taste the cold lake's freshness on my tongue. It was that good. We could have amplified the homey vibe by playing some Captain & Tennille on vinyl. Instead, we watched Kobe Bryant have a temper tantrum in the L.A. Lakers' victory over the Denver Nuggets. What a diva! The pro baller's definitely not down-to-earth enough to be from Minnesota.
Miguelito threatened to quiz me on the names of Minnesota's sports teams. At least I already know what the state bird is. It isn't the loon, which he has in plushy and wooden forms. No, it's the mosquito.
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