Break week 2005 and someone says, “let’s take a boat across the Cook Inlet and go over by Mt. Redoubt”. What? An adventure? Count me in! I finished up the mornings chores and headed into the kitchen to make lunch for the four of us. Turkey wraps, chips, cookies and maybe a bottle or two of some frosty Alaskan Amber Ale. I was the Chef of a private fishing resort near Homer, Alaska.

As we unintentionally did the Running Man through the sand towards the boats, my vision was interrupted by Bald Eagles soaring around while some scavanged along the shoreline. Breathtaking, every time I see those magnificent birds. The ones at sea were engaged in a feeding frenzy along with a handful of seagulls. One seagull in particular, kept flying in front of this one eagle evey time it would go down for a fish, whereby making him come up short. This happened about three or four times and on the next round, as the eagle came down, the seagull became fatally predictable. Diving once again into the path of the eagle, the large bird, like an F-14 Tomcat, maneuvers behind and then on top of the seagull and with talons so sharp I think I seen them shine, grabbed the seagull and flew towards the shore and as Bruce Lee reincarnated, snapped the birds back and dropped it in the sea. Raw.

To reach the other side of the inlet was thirty miles, give or take. Shoving off I claim my spot at the right of the Captain, standing, salt water in my face. Life is good. After a half hour or so we stop to test the quality of the brews. This was a good crew. We had all worked together for the last five weeks, without a day off and we were enjoying this. Bobbing around in the ocean, good drink, maybe a smoke, a joke, some laughs and being dive bombed by Puffins. Okay, so there may have been someone in the group throwing Herring towards the sky, I can’t rememeber.

A bit of time passed and we ventured out again towards the volcano. Cool thing about Alaska is the amount of summer sun. I would sit on the porch, listening to the waves, reading and watching little puffs of smoke come out of the top of Mt. Redoubt at one in the morning. We started to see land and becoming excited to play out the day in the wilderness, when someone points to the East and says “look”. A black cloud hovering above the water surface and below the cloud line and the entire width of the inlet, was on its way towards us. By the time the majority had come up a plan, we had been encapsulated in the dense blackness.

Now one would think that being a fishing boat a compass or radio would be standard equiptment. Well, these were 23 ft, center console aluminum boats, nothing fancy and were client utilized, therefore they didn’t really see much bad weather and definitely were not taken out this far. So what do we do? Try to get to our destination? Try to get back to the lodge? What if the current takes us out into the Gulf of Alaska and the North Pacific? We decided to wait it out. The waters weren’t rough and it was dry.

Fish on! My pole bends almost to the surface of the water and simultaneously my grip tightens. Down it goes with the reel spinning so fast I was waiting for smoke to appear. The fight was in its genesis and I was going to win. While this thing is making a man out of me, the others pulled up smaller halibut, ling cod, rock fish and crab. Catching a crab while fishing for halibut is a fun thing. You don’t feel them on your line until they start to pick and pull at the bait, so slowly must you bring them up. And from a couple hundren feet down that gives you enough time to drink a beer!

By the time we had finished the wobbly pops and caught our limit, the black cloud of disgust was starting to dissapate. It was too late to continue and finish our original plan so we wrapped up fishin’ and headed ashore.

Drunk.

Nature tried to give us lemons that day and we turned them into a beurre blanc, drizzled it over a pate of spinach, shitaki mushrooms, garlic and shallots and laid it all atop fresh halibut filets.

4- 6oz Halibut Filets

4 Cups of Spinach (packed)

8 oz Any Mushroom

1- lb Unsalted Butter

1/4 Cup Fresh Garlic Minced

1/4 Cup Shallots Minced

1 oz Olive Oil

1 Cup White Wine

1 Lemon Cut In Half

Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper

Have your filets cold and half of the butter at room temp.

Cook down the spinach and the mushrooms, adding half the garlic, shallots and wine.

Once cooked down, strain as much liquid as you can and transfer to a food processor and pulse it until the ingredients are chopped fine but still have texture. (Not pulsed into a liquid) Set that aside to cool. It’s easiest to work with when its cold.

Now that you have your cold filets, cold spinich and mushroom mix and room temp butter we can start the fun.

First liberally salt and pepper each filet, then take 2oz of the room temp butter and spread it evenly onto the filets. 2oz of butter per filet.

Once that is done, divide the spinach mix into 4 and top each filet with one portion each. Making sure to cover the entire top of the filet.

Here’s the trick. If your filet is cold and your mix is cold they will adhere to the room temp butter and become much more user friendly than cold butter would.

Take a baking sheet and grease it. I like to use bacon grease but even a spray will work.

Lay the filets on the tray and pop in an oven preheated to 350 degrees and let it go for 20 minutes. Depending on the thickness of the filet it may be longer or shorter.

Have a sauce pan on the stove over low heat about 5 minutes before pulling the Halibut out. Upon removing the Halibut from the oven, adjust the sauce pan heat to medium and add the olive oil. Coat the pan with the oil and throw in your remaining garlic and shallots, stirring until they become translucent.

Now add the wine and reduce by half. Once reduced, take off heat, add the butter and continue to stir until it’s melted and has been encorporated.

The veggies are on top of the Halibut so all you need now is your favorite starch.

I recommend either a risotto or roasted red skin potatoes.