Ice fishing

I finally figured out how to prepare perch in a way so I can actually choke it down. My husband enjoys ice fishing but only ever catches perch, TONS of them. I am not a huge fan of lake fish and perch are way to small, bony, and tasteless to ever be worth bothering with them in my opinion. My husband brings them home and patiently cleans then cooks them. He gets mad when I make gagging sounds at them and then I feel obligated to try to eat them to make it up to him. My husband prefers to cook them by dunking them in flour and then pan frying them in lukewarm oil for about ten seconds. He insists that you shouldn't overcook perch. I insist that his method of cooking them is only good for encasing the scrawny little suckers in wallpaper paste. Bleck!!! My husband then dumps cocktail sauce on them and chows down. With that much cocktail sauce he might as well just save the time cleaning the fish and pour it over toast. It would taste the same.

So tonight I came home determined to cook the remaining perch in a way that I can actually eat them. I did succeed. All I did was rub some fresh lemon juice and garlic on the fish, and then fry it until crispy in coconut oil. I then put them on a bed of capers with some Trader Joe's 21 Spice Salute blend. The perch tasted pretty good and even my four year old approved. Now gone are the days of paste and cocktail sauce. My only remaining wish would be that the days of my husband bringing home buckets of perch would go too.