Smells fishy to me

Good tartar sauce…

is hard to find, even at some of the finer restaurants I've been to. You get a plate of perfect fish and then you dip it into the side (I always ask for tartar sauce on the side - just in case) of tartar sauce and it ruins the taste of the fish rather than bringing out the flavor. Now, I'm a big fan of fish if you haven't noticed already. But then, it has to be good fish – and good fish deserves good tartar sauce. If you have good fish and lousy tartar sauce, then it would be like putting margarine on fresh Maine lobster… a desecration of sorts. I don't know why lousy tartar sauce exists. Probably for the same reason you can't find decent potato salad or cole slaw in any restaurant or deli in any store on the face of the planet – homemade is the only viable choice. So where do you get good tartar sauce? Well, there are several brands that are fine, but it's kind of a hit and miss situation - just like finding good tartar sauce in a restaurant. The better choice would be to make it yourself. My discovery was a result of running out of the stuff that I bought at the store (which was, incidentally Nalley's, I think). I had just pulled the fish from the deep fryer when I opened the refrigerator to find out that there was only a couple of teaspoonfuls of the stuff left in the jar. They say, "necessity is the mother of invention" so it was time for me to get creative. I have made several variations of tartar sauce and experimented with the ingredients (including actually using cream of tartar, which is not really an ingredient of tartar sauce – so don't ask me why they call it tartar sauce). I looked at the ingredients of the empty jar and saw that the main ingredients are mayonnaise and pickle relish. I tried that and it turned out ok, but it wasn't as good as the stuff in the jar. Alright, this could get into a lengthy dissertation, so I will cut to the quick and go ahead and give you the "secret" ingredients – let's just suffice it to say I tried a lot of stuff before I came up with what I did.

Simple Ingredients:

Mayonnaise – good quality, such as Best Foods or Hellmann's - (depending on which side of the Rocky Mountains you live, or Kraft… possibly Nalley's. Not Miracle whip or "salad dressing" stuff… and none of that low calorie low fat stuff – c'mon, we're puttin' it on deep fried fish, for cryin' out loud!).

Dill pickles – Yeah, dill pickles. Not relish, not sweet pickles nor bread & butter pickles or whatever they are called - just plain dill pickles.

Lemon juice – freshly squeezed is best, but if you don't have any then the stuff in the bottle will work.

That's it… nothing more, nothing less. No onions, no spices, no cream of tartar, no preservatives, no other condiments – just those three simple ingredients – period! (Now, if the restaurants and delis across the nation would just learn to keep things simple then they could make some decent tasting salads and condiments).

Now I don't have the exact measurements, because it's a matter of taste – I mean, it's all just a matter of how much you like pickles. So I will use an approximation and you can adjust to your taste.

Measure out 2 cups of mayonnaise and put it in a jar you can put back in the fridge.

Chop up a couple of dill pickles (I know, they come in different sizes – you have those huge kind you get at the convenience stores in the plastic sacks down to baby dills that are about the size of your thumb and every size in-between). Just get a couple average sized pickles and chop them up. You may use a grater, but you end up with long stringy pieces - not what you expect in tartar sauce. It's best to use one of those choppers that you pound on the top of about 600 times until the pickles are minced to about the consistency of relish - or until your spouse (and/or everyone else you live with) is totally annoyed with you and wants to throw you and your tartar sauce out the door.

Mix the two ingredients together and squeeze half a lemon into your concoction being careful not to let any seeds get into it. Stir the lemon juice in and then that's it. Taste it and adjust ingredients if necessary.

Now you have some great tartar sauce that you won't be afraid to smother your deep fried fish in.

3/28/06 Back at it

Now that I have your attention…

I must explain a few things from my email. I am not literally going to post all my stories on here. I am just going to post one every now and then. My ultimate goal is to consolidate all this stuff together and make some sense out of it so I can put it into a book that I can hopefully get published.

This site is certainly not the only way I can get my stuff out there and just as everything else goes on the Internet, it is here today and may be gone tomorrow. That’s just the way things go. I posted a bunch of my songs on mp3.com and then one day they got bought out and then everything was gone. I’ve had other sites that I trusted that dissolved overnight, so if this is another one of those sites, don’t expect it to last forever.

So, having said (or should I say typed) that, I just want to welcome you to my site and just have fun reading my posts and feel free to post your own feedback (absolutely no profanity please – I’d hate to delete a good post just because of a swear word).

Check back here often to find more stories and comments. I am rather inconsistent, so don’t expect some kind of schedule. Hey, give me a break – these are freebies! If you are on my e-mail list and want stories sent to you personally, make sure and e-mail me to tell me. Otherwise you will just have to come here.

One final thing. This isn’t some secret site. If you like this stuff, please send your friends to this site. If you want to use these stories, make sure to give proper credit to who wrote them (usually me). So bear in mind these are copyrighted. If you want to forward them to your friends, make sure you don’t get carried away. I wouldn’t want to have people mad at me for something you sent them.

-Dean