Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen
Seafood Stew and Bow Fishing for Tilapia
Season 2 Episode 12 | 24m 52sVideo has Closed Captions
Tim and Nicki are fishing in Florida catching some bluegill, catfish and tilapia!
Tim and Nicki are fishing in Florida catching some bluegill, catfish and tilapia! Take some local seafood to make a fish stew over the fire (with homemade fish stock), then bow fish for some tilapia to bring back to have some filets in a white wine butter sauce with a side of sauteed spinach.
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Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen is a local public television program presented by KET
Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen
Seafood Stew and Bow Fishing for Tilapia
Season 2 Episode 12 | 24m 52sVideo has Closed Captions
Tim and Nicki are fishing in Florida catching some bluegill, catfish and tilapia! Take some local seafood to make a fish stew over the fire (with homemade fish stock), then bow fish for some tilapia to bring back to have some filets in a white wine butter sauce with a side of sauteed spinach.
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In Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen.
[MUSIC] We gonna cook somethin good now.
Hello.
>> Welcome to the Farmer's Kitchen.
Nick's been working on her Spanish moss garden in the background here in Kentucky.
I have?
You did a good job.
Thank you so much.
It looks good huh?
I didn't think they could grow in Kentucky.
Actually, where are we, Nicki?
We are in Florida.
Yay!
We're in Florida.
We've been on a lake today, and my hope was to get enough critters to come back and make us some fisherman's stew.
What else is it called?
Bouillabaisse.
Now, this is not an exact dish.
We're not in the south of France.
We're not going to act like we're in Marseilles, but we're going to use pretty much the same ingredients.
Now, when Raoul, here's a picture of Raoul cooking for me, the French chef that I got to study with and watch.
One of the first things he did when I brought him a fish one time, I really didn't understand what I was doing.
He was taking all the parts and pieces that I was going to throw away, and he made a fish stock out of them.
Then I noticed he took tomatoes and white wine.
And looking back on that, I realized that he made a bouillabaisse.
Now, a lot of people might pronounce this differently, but usually in the French, if there's two S's, it's not the Z sound, it's the hard s sound.
So you might hear some people say, bou-ya-buzz or bouillabaisse or I think proper pronunciation is bouillabaisse.
We're sticking to that.
Got it.
You can't stop us.
We're out of control.
So we come back from fishing today.
We've caught bluegill, we've caught catfish, which we already ate, we had that for dinner.
Delicious.
And I'm walking out on the dock and our buddy Rabbit says there's there's going to be tilapia out here.
Guess who swam by?
You were happy.
I said get my bow!
Tilapia, big tilapia.
And on this lake, they're blue tilapia, and they can get up to, like, six, eight, nine pounds.
They're huge.
So I shot me >> a tilapia.
You.
I'm always amazed, even though I know you can do it when you shoot one shot.
Boom.
You got it.
>> Well, that's what you got to do.
So we got our tilapia, our friends got some crabs right off the dock, some local blue crabs.
We got some mussels, we got some clams, scallops, scallops, scallops and shrimp and shrimp.
Oh, we're going to make something great.
Nicki if you'll just cut me, that onion up.
For soups, I like, we call them fingernail size pieces.
Look at your little fingernail and that's about the size I like for soup.
We're going to saute our onions, celery.
We might even put a few carrots in there.
So in this recipe, we're going to put some fennel.
We got some fennel bulb right here.
And we're gonna let all that get nice and sauteed for about three or four minutes till they get nice and brown.
We're going to take at least four cloves of garlic.
We're going to >> cook some of the sugar out these onions and carrots, and we're not going to get them done, done.
But you start to see a little brown around the edges.
It's close enough to where we want to be.
After we get our vegetables sauteed, we're going to deglaze with at least a half a cup of white wine, and we're going to take some sort of anise flavored liqueur.
And there's a lot a lot of those on the market we're using apasti and we're going to take that and probably use at least two tablespoons of that.
Now we're going to let that reduce a little bit.
And in a minute when that sun pops behind the hill, we're going to change angles.
If you look behind us, there's a beautiful lake, beautiful, wonderful lake, and we're going to switch directions and shoot that way.
Because the sun will be down in a moment.
>> After we get all our vegetables sauteed, then wer'e going to come back with our tomatoes.
And we're going to take I don't know that's probably about 14 ounces like the size of a can.
Those are diced tomatoes.
We're going to add some bay leaves, some orange zest in there and we're taking a little saffron.
Now saffron are parts of a flower, doesn't it smell wonderful?
It's very expensive.
But you've got to have that taste.
Because I spilled a little and you picked it up.
You said don't spill it.
So that's a dollar's worth.
We're going to add some peppercorns.
We're going to come back and we're going to take our stock and we're going to strain that, strain all the solid parts out of that from the crab and the fish rib cage that we cut out of that tilapia.
That you shot, that we shot, perfect for fish stock.
Now, if you want to buy some clam juice, it's getting kind of expensive I've noticed here lately.
But if you want to buy some clam juice, you can find fish stock some places.
That'll work perfectly.
If you're going to boil it down like we did, you want to strain the top off, get kind of the, the not so attractive stuff off the top.
Yucky stuff.
Then you'll strain the solids out and that you're left with that nice stocky stuff.
If you want to put a little bouillon in there, you can.
If you want to put a little salt and pepper in there you can to get that going.
I'm going >> to take my strained fish stock and pour that in.
Now, I'm going to bring this to a boil and I'm gonna reduce that about half.
I'm gonna put a little salt in there.
And I'm going to take some fresh thyme.
I'm just going to pop it in there, a little tomato paste in there.
That's probably about a tablespoon.
I'm going to put the top on.
I'm gonna heat this up and reduce it to half.
All right.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] We've got a fish that I just shot.
Good job.
A while ago.
What a piece of fish.
Isn't that a nice piece.
It's really nice.
Let's take that and let's just cut some pieces off.
Now, I always, always, always cut out that big, in the south they call it the mud vein.
People call it the darker meat.
You always want to cut that out, cut around it because it's always strong.
Striper or anything else.
So we're going to take these pieces of meat.
We're going to take these.
We're going to cut into little cubes.
So we're going to put our fish and our scallops and our shrimp in first.
Now, I want to put the clams and the muscles in generally four to five minutes, you start to see them open up.
Yeah.
It's time to stop.
If they don't open up, toss them over your shoulder, don't eat them.
All right.
Let's start with the fish.
Drop it in.
Alright we're going to put our fish in first and our scallops and our shrimp.
Again, the clams and the mussels will go last.
I'm going to cook this for about oh, I don't know, 8 minutes or so.
Get that good and hot until your shrimp is nice and pink curling up on the end.
Now, I don't have any fresh parsley.
I'm just going to put in a little bit of dried.
Oh, it's going to be good.
Alright, we dropped our clams.
We dropped our mussels.
They're already starting to open.
Nicki, what do you think?
That looks amazing.
Now, what am I gonna do in the end?
I'm gonna finish with a little bit of butter.
Always.
Why are you doing that?
Because it's delicious.
Because that's the way a ha ha.
I like it.
Nobody can stop me.
That's right.
I'm out of control.
So we're going to cover that just for a few minutes.
You ready to see it Mrs. Farmer?
I am.
I'm excited.
Wow.
Yum.
Ok.
I'm gonna scoop you up.
A little bit of everything.
Little bit of everything.
I know you like scallops.
I do.
And I know you like mussels.
I do.
And I know you like clams.
Look at [MUSIC] [MUSIC] right here.
Oh, wow.
This is all my favorite stuff.
Oh, [MUSIC] wow.
Your sauce.
You did good.
Did you try the broth?
Mm.
It's very good.
Take another big scoop of the broth.
You know what?
I was talking to Rabbit over here.
He says I can't believe you took the 12 inch pan and just put charcoal on it and cooked a restaurant grade food on here.
Better than a restaurant he said.
He said better than restaurant.
The thing is, that's fire.
Mm hmm.
The heat on the top of the stove, may be gas, it may be an electric range.
But what it has is heat.
It doesn't matter what your heat source is.
If you've got the right heat, the right temperature, you can cook anything anywhere.
Look what we've got here.
I'm going to eat some more of these.
This was fun.
Bouillabaisse.
First time you've had it?
It is.
It's delicious.
How would you describe it?
It's kinda, it's not.
I don't know how to describe it.
It's like >> if you go to a restaurant and your favorite mussel dish that you get, usually they have some sort of garlic, they have butter, they have parsley, and they'll have a French liqueur with an anise.
That's the anise is what makes it so good.
That's what I taste.
That's what you're tasting in there.
I like that.
You love your muscle dishes.
Yes.
That's good.
Does that not taste exactly... you got your garlic.
And we topped it off with just a little bit of butter.
>> You kidding me?
That's delicious.
Oh, there's a shrimp.
I've got to get a shrimp.
And it makes all the seafood taste delicious in that >> juice.
You've got a tomato base with a white wine you can also put just a little bit of basil in there if you want to put some dried basil in there or fresh basil.
I like that.
>> That's good.
To me, it's got just that rich.
That's what I was going to say, it's got a rich flavor.
Seafood flavor with your tomato base, your white wine.
You taste, you taste your your liquor in there.
It's so good.
And the garlic and it's just beautiful.
The only way you can explain is just you got to try it.
Yeah.
That's delicious.
Absolutely delicious.
All right Mrs. Farmer.
You good?
You like it?
I'm enjoying this.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> As you can see, we're not in Kentucky today.
We're in Florida.
And I came down here to fish, but I also brought my bow.
My bow fishing rig.
Now, there's a reason for that.
I love to shoot bow and arrow at fish.
This bow has a reel on it.
It's got an arrow with a barb on it.
So when you shoot through the fish, you can pull it back in.
Now, there's several places in Florida where you can shoot at tilapia.
Tilapia is not a native species.
It's been introduced.
It's considered invasive species.
Kind of like the big head carp are back home, so you can shoot these.
The great thing about these fish is if you cut that red meat out, they are delicious.
You've had tilapia in the store Now, the thing I know about this lake, it's spring fed and cleaned, so these fish are going to taste beautiful.
Now they're tough to clean.
You have to go under and around the rib cage.
But the meat that you get, once you cut that red meat out is beautiful.
So we're out here today.
No competition except for the alligators.
Everywhere we look, we see alligators there's one.
There's one.
You see just their heads.
They're looking for tilapia under there, too.
We got a little competition, but let me tell you what when it comes to getting your own food, that's what we're doing today.
Some of these tilapia get up to six, seven, eight pounds.
And we are loading up our freezer.
Being that it's an invasive species, you can take as many as you want.
And that's what we want to do here.
So we're going to load the cooler up.
And when we get home, we're going to load you up on some new recipes.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] We made it back.
Yes, we did.
Driving through Atlanta was no fun.
No, it took 2 hours.
That was not fun.
You know, we used to drive through the night so we can bust through there.
Right.
We got there at 5:00.
It was beautiful.
But it was a stressful drive.
Yes, it was.
We did make it back.
It's about a 15, 16 hour haul.
Yeah.
But you know what, though?
When I look at this right here, it's worth it.
Oh, yeah.
Now, I shot fish and I shot fish and I shot.
You did.
And I shot fish because there's no limit.
They're an invasive species.
As we talked about earlier.
I went down there to bass fish and bluegill fish.
But when I saw these on the nest.
Look at this.
Is that not beautiful?
That's one of the smaller ones.
Now that I've cut these pieces off to make serving type pieces.
Now a bigger fillet will look something like this.
Now I can cut the red meat out that you've got to cut the red meat out.
Has a strong taste to it.
And any fish, whether it's a striper or hybrid, whatever, I cut that red meat out.
My mouth is watering because I'm thinking about what we're about to do.
We're going to make a recipe with these tilapia that's fairly simple to make.
But any time you have a good firm, white fleshed fish.
Oh my goodness, you're talking about something delicious here.
Yes.
Now, these aren't the farm-raised tilapia that everybody talks about that's not good for you.
This is wild tilapia.
I know they're invasive.
I don't care.
Now we are on the tail end of some of our sugar cured bacon.
Delicious.
We ate that today.
So good.
But we're going to cut this off, and we're going to make some bacon grease, out of that, and I guess we'll just have to eat the bacon Nicki.
Yes we will, I can do that.
Isn't that terrible?
So I'm going to turn this on a low heat, and we're just going to go on and let that fat just ooze on out.
Let that flavor ooze on out.
Now, this is from our pig that only made it >> to probably 190 pounds because she was bad.
She was a bad girl.
She bit Nicki on the hand, Nicki said, we're taking her for her makeover.
I still have a scar.
So there we go.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to get our olive oil simmering.
I'm excited.
Look at this beautiful piece of meat right here.
That is.
Beautiful piece of tilapia.
And again, this is the smaller, smaller guys.
I shot some huge ones.
I should have weighed them.
I saw a picture of the state record of the girl holding it up.
One of ours looked almost that big.
Who knows?
I think you're close to a state record.
I think I beat the state record.
I think you did.
And I've never seen anyone shoot so much, so many days.
I >> shot, of course I have to shoot with my teeth.
I lost the use of my right arm in a motorcycle accident.
And we have new viewers all the time.
When I was 20, Right, I was in the Marine Corps.
So I had to figure out ways to do almost everything.
So, again, here's me shooting a bow here in Florida for these tilapia.
I shot so much that my shoulder, my teeth are fine, but my shoulder's sore.
>> Well, we would you would go out for 8 hours a day and shoot and shoot and shoot.
I took a nap.
But look.
Yes, that's beautiful.
So I'll tell you what I'm going to do with this tilapia.
I'm going to take a little blackened seasoning.
Now, do you remember when we made our blackened seasoning?
I >> do.
One tablespoon, sweet paprika, two and a half tablespoons of salt, one teaspoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of garlic powder, one teaspoon of cayenne, three quarter teaspoon white pepper, three quarter teaspoon black pepper, one half teaspoon of dried thyme leaves and one half teaspoon of dried oregano >> leaves.
Got some salt and pepper in the flour.
I'm just going a [MUSIC] light.
Just a light coating on here.
Wild tilapia.
You know, we have quite a few friends wanting fish frys.
They saw all these fish you got.
I've got enough for a couple.
Now, you know who's been one fish fry?
Dad has been wanting a fis fry.
Yes he is.
And dad deserves one.
So very shortly we're going to be having dad, an all out southern fish fry.
A Kentucky fish fry.
We're going to be out of control.
That's right.
Is he getting tilapia or bluegill?
He gets whatever he wants.
All right.
I'm going to go ahead and cut some of these onions up in strips.
For a one armed guy, this is great.
And our bacon is almost done, which it is.
And we got enough grease there.
We're going to start our onions.
All right.
We're gonna leave this on low.
Go and pull that >> bacon if you will Nicki.
Oh, beautiful.
Kelli got me this handy fish spatula.
That is nice.
I like that.
That's perfect.
All right, >> I'm going to let that get just golden brown.
Now, I'll tell you what we're going to do Mrs. Farmer.
Now, there's a reason I left that on.
I'm gonna pop our onions in here.
Turn it back up just a little bit.
In our bacon grease.
So, everything's coming together >> nicely All right, now our fish is beautiful.
Oh that is.
Slightly brown.
Oops trying to break on me, you can't have that.
You know what?
Gotta use your special [MUSIC] >> one.
Yeah.
Now let's pop that in the oven, alrighty, on a low setting.
See where our onions are [MUSIC] at.
Our onions are looking good.
Oh, look at that.
Smells delicious.
So now we're going to turn these way down because those are almost where we want them.
Now, what do we do here, Mrs. Farmer?
What do we do?
We need garlic, and we're just going to brown this in that little bit of >> olive oil.
I don't mind a bit that we got a little bit of flour in there, because that'll be.
That'll make it thick.
Just when I see that my garlic is golden brown, not burnt, I'm going to deglaze with white wine.
I want to come in with a half a cup and we're almost there.
Let me get that for you.
Half a cup of white wine.
And, probably a little over a half a cup.
of chicken stock.
>> You smell that?
It smells really good.
There's something magic.
So let's bring the temperature up now.
We're going to reduce this.
Notice we're putting some lemon juice in here.
This is a beautiful, beautiful, wonderful thing to do with your fish.
If you have a good white, firm flesh.
Oh, fresh.
>> Yeah.
Firm fresh, say that again, firm, white.
Firm fleshed fish.
You said it good.
Say it three times faster.
I'm going to say I have trouble saying it once.
So we're getting close on the reduction.
So I'm going to go ahead and fire our burner back up with the onions.
Want me to man that for you.
Yeah.
And I what I'm going to do.
We can even put a pad of butter in there Mrs. Farmer.
All right.
I like butter.
A lot of people say, why do you call her Mrs. Farmer?
And why does she call me Mr. Farmer?
There's a reason, because our family, all our family.
Mom is Mrs. Farmer, dad is Mr. Farmer.
So when we are a group, we're all Mr. Farmer.
Mrs. Farmer.
Mr. Farmer.
Yeah.
Mrs. Farmer.
It was kind of fun.
So it's an old family tradition.
There's no there's no there's no other thought than that.
When I call Dad, he calls me Mr. Farmer I call him Mr. Farmer.
That's right.
It's fun.
Now to drop the spinach in.
And Mrs. Farmer I don't want to wilt this too much.
Okay, so just turn a little >> bit.
Just turn a little bit.
I'm gonna put a little salt.
All right.
We don't need too much salt because we've got bacon and a little bit of pepper.
All right.
I would say that's reduced by half.
It smells delicious.
Now one at a time.
I'm going to bring in a piece of butter here.
Maybe two at a time.
Maybe three at a >> time.
So we have our spinach, which is good for stress.
When you're driving through big cities, you should eat your spinach I'm need to eat a lot of spinach.
It's good for your eyes, really.
It's got vitamin C, vitamin K1, which is important, vitamin A.
And look where w'ere at right here Mrs. Farmer.
Oh, look, that looks thickening up.
There it is.
And then the very end we're going to put just a little bit of cream in there.
All right.
Now, what I need you to Mrs. Farmer if you will, is to grab that fish.
Oh, [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> my Mrs. Farmer.
I'm excited.
You go first.
I get to go first.
This is what you got for us.
You were so patient with me sitting out on that boat all day.
Oh, wow.
Mmm.
I'm going to get a little spinach with mine, some onions.
That's delicious.
White and flaky.
Oh, wow.
You outdid yourself.
I'm glad we got bags of this.
We got bag loads.
I'm so happy.
Oh Mrs. Farmer.
We should have shot some more.
I think you got enough.
You shot enough fish.
That has that has a wonderful fish taste.
Just enough.
It does.
And then in combination with the spinach and the onion and our sauce with our lemon, and white wine.
That's better than a fancy restaurant.
You did good.
You outdid yourself.
I'm glad we took all that time to shoot all the fish.
It was worth it..
It was worth the 29 hours.
Well, no, actually, 50000000 hours that we spent on the lake.
You want to go back?
Tomorrow?
I do, but let's take a break.
If it wasn't for that drive through Atlanta I'd do it.
Pickled beet.
Gotta have a beet.
Mmhmm.
Hmm.
Mm.
What a meal.
That's beautiful.
It's wonderful.
Delicious.
We used our own bacon.
We did.
We use fresh spinach, onions.
Everything here is fresh.
It's wonderful.
The way it should be.
No preservatives, no chemicals.
Yum Papa.
Yum Papa.
I agree.
As Sammy would say.
That's right.
You put, carrots in >> the sauce.
Yes.
That'll be yum.
That'll be >> yum.
In fact, there he was.
Amazingly enough, this is gonna blow you, mind, but half hour is up.
Wow.
But that being said, people are saying, where can I find this recipe?
I'll bet you can go to Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen dot com.
Look it up.
There's 14 gazillion recipes on here.
Yes, I like that fish.
I like too.
Mrs. Farmer, it's all about good times, good friends, and really good eats, as always.
See you next week on Tim Farmer's Country Kitchen.
Dig in Nicki.
Good job again.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Yum.
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