Happy New Year! This year promises to be full of adventure. We’ve made our resolutions and most have to do with thrill seeking and exploration.

It seems that overnight our little PlayGourmet has learned how to hike uphill and climb boulders taller than he is.

Even the dog is ready to push his boundaries, as long as he has the little boy by his side.

In keeping with this year’s theme of adventure, we found an interesting creature to cook at the market. A lionfish.

What you may or may not know about lionfish, is that they have very poisonous spines. I’ve heard the venom won’t kill you, but you’ll wish you were dead. When they stick you while they are alive, they’ll pump venom into you. Even dead though, they still have small amounts of venom in there spines that makes getting stuck still quite unpleasant.

Lionfish are not naturally found on our coasts, but because they have no natural predators here, they have been multiplying out of control. They are affecting our shrimp populations among other things, so hunting and killing these sea carnivores, is good for our ecosystem.

So not only are we being adventurous in eating this poisonous, exotic fish, but we are also helping the environment.

We decided to blacken the filets and put over a bed of linguine.

So we take the filets, rub a mixture of sugar, salt, paprika, cumin, cayenne, and whatever else sounded good, all over one side.

Place in some hot oil, and carefully apply the rub to the other side. After only a min or two, we flip.

Then with some fresh ingredients, we whip up a nice lively bed for the fish. I like to cook garlic,spinach, and tomatoes in a couple cap-fulls of white wine.

After mixing into the pasta, we place some on a plate, and put our fish over the top.

The fish was fantastic. It was very flakey and tender, almost like a grouper, but maybe even nicer and more flakey.

Happy 2017 from the Play Gourmets!