10/14 Final Fish Fry

            Fisherman extraordinaire, Max Harvey joined us for our last fish day. He rolled in and starting pulling fish out of a cooler like it was a magic hat. I had no idea how many fish could be stuffed into one cooler. There were at least a dozen fish varieties of all different shapes and sizes arrayed on the table ready for us to get wet with. The day was full off chopping, cooking, moving and grooving.

           

In the demo Max reminded us how to cut up a variety of fish and a little about each type of fish. He made us an amazing fish chowder for lunch that had cod, haddock and pollock. He browned some salt pork in the pan and removed the brown bits. He added onion to sweat then added cubed potatoes to brown a little with the onions. When the potatoes were mostly cooked he added the fish stock to a boil and let the potatoes cook. He thickened the soup by whisking the broth to loosen the potatoes and added some thickener. He finished by adding whole filets of fish that broke down along their natural lines as they cooked.

Scallops

            We cooked and ate fish until we about popped. Among my favorite applications was the salt roast where you encase an entire whole fish in moisture of salt and egg white, which encases the fish to let it steam in its own juices. We also made scallop crudo with an oil that was infused with the scallop row and a gremalada.

Baked scup with ginger and lime 

Salt baked fish. Mix a bunch of salt and egg whites, encase and bake! 

Pumpkin tuna with a curry sauce. 

            We ended the day with the terrifying but delicious activity of killing and dry roasting a lobster. The act was a little brutal and I really have no intention of doing it again but it sure did make a delicious meal! First you twist the claws off then quickly chop off the head. Once there you spear the back seam of the lobster and cut it all the way down the middle. Did I mention its STILL MOVING at this point? No? Because it was. From there we added the meat to a hot pan, meat up, with a little oil, which got the shells to start turning bright red. We then flipped the crustacean and put it under the salamander. In a hot pan we mixed some lobster innerds with shallots until they were translucent. We deglazed with white wine and bourbon. We shook the pan to emulsify the butter into the acid and the fat then added the cream, herbs and seasoning. It made for one mean and slightly scary meal.

I was proud of the fish we made. We were given scump which is a local run of the mill fish we made delicious with a little thought and flavor combinations. We needed to slice the skin to crisp up the fish so we filled the slits with ginger and brushed it with olive oil and left over grenalada with more ginger and lime. It was delicious.

I need to work on getting over my fear of gross things. They are often not gross, I just need to accept that it is part of their life cycle to sustain me.