Shad Season
Shad season is here. I'm happy, because I like shad roe a lot. I'm also happy because something I wrote about it got published in The Christian Science Monitor(pen name Ren Bejtman). (Can I wear a funny author's hat now and smoke Sobranies?)
Here's my story . It had a recipe with it which was edited out, for Shad Stuffed with Sorrel Sauce.
I'd love to hear your shad story too - catching or cooking!
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
12 Comments:
Really great story Karen.
I've only tasted shad roe once. I don't know if actually tasted it. It was wrapped in thick applewood smoked bacon and fried. I couldn't taste the roe because the bacon was so overwhelming. The roe was overcooked and dry and crumbly and tasted of bacon. Basically I feel like I tasted a slightly fishy bacon that day.
Then someone who claimed to love shad roe, proceeded to cover the entire bacon-wrapped roe with ketchup before eating it.
wookie at 7:23PM on 05/13/08
Wow. I love ketchup but that's sort of repulsive, isn't it. :)
Yeah, bacon is used a lot with shad and shad roe. You should try the roe another time another way some day, wookie. (After all, it is related to caviar so what's not to like?)
I also have a spot in my heart for shad roe just because Nero Wolfe liked it.
Karen Resta at 8:01AM on 05/14/08
Let me just keep prattling on here . . . as a side note shad is under debate this year - the issues being push and pull between culture and politics or history and environment or . . . well, you get the picture. :)
Karen Resta at 8:03PM on 05/14/08
i read the shad festival will be serving farmed salmon instead of shad because of the shortage this year.
dmarina at 8:59PM on 05/14/08
Yes, as you noted dmarina - two of the festivals staged in NY are switching to salmon.
The NYT article also mentions that
The organizers of some other festivals have decided to serve shad this year. They argue that eating the fish and learning about traditional preparations can help people care about a fish whose more than 700 bones have made it a culinary punch line.
There are several shad festivals linked at the end of the NYT article (it mentions five festivals that will be serving shad) but there are so many more festivals held across the country (see google).
It would be interesting to know if the advice given by the conservation group in NY that is now being taken (by the action of serving farmed salmon at these two festivals) will spread to more shad festivals across the country.
I wonder how many kids in current times will have a chance to grab a fish with their hands from a stream as I did that day. Not many, I think. I think the shad were disappearing even then. And if they do happen across a full silver stream of moving fish, would they (could they?) jump in care-free with no qualms, no guilt, no worries - as we did then.
One the one hand, there really is grave cause for concern.
On the other hand, when I think of a shad festival, a traditional springtime shad festival, where farmed salmon would be served me rather than shad?
I think "BS". Mutton for lamb. :)
.........................................................
Shad is a fish that is native to the entire world - it's not only in the US. Another interesting thing to know would be whether the shad populations in other countries have been as depleted as ours.
God I hate to do research. Ha, ha, ha! So I continue to wonder about these things.
Karen Resta at 10:17PM on 05/14/08
Oh wow. I think that pen name is almost as good as the story. But the sorrel sauce is something I'd like to try on poultry, since I'm not much into shad.
butterface at 10:27PM on 05/14/08
Thanks, butterface. I think the pen name makes me sound like some sort of Icelandic Adventurer. :)
The sorrel sauce in the recipe was made from a reduction of the pan juices of the shad and roe baked together with shallots, butter, and white wine then blended with heavy cream.
Sorrel is so hard to find! It's a treat when you can find it though.
Maybe sorrel will be the new ramps in a few years? Heh heh.
I seem to remember a recipe for a Russian dish made with chicken and sorrel - the sauce (rather than being cream-based) was put together more in the Occidental way. Vinegar-based with the greens and walnuts. There's nothing online that I could find in this moment though so it may be in a book here somewhere.
Interesting side note - while I was just puttering around looking at shad recipes I came across the following two - what is fascinating to me is the incredible difference in terms of the style in which the recipe is written for the reader/cook.
A recipe from Amelia Simmons' American Cookery dated 1796
and
A recipe from Patrick O'Connell in Art Culinaire dated 2001.
Karen Resta at 8:42AM on 05/15/08
You should come to California or Oregon, where the two largest American shad runs in the world are. There are so many in the Sacramento you can keep 25 a day...
...and it should be said that while certain species of shad do occur worldwide, the American shad is only native to the East Coast from Florida to Labrador. It was planted in California in 1871 and spread to the West Coast after that.
Our season has just started now, and will run into July. I will be sharpening my knives to fillet the fish, which takes some doing. Once filleted, you can do all kinds of things with shad, which earns its Latin name sapidissima.
As for the roe, I flour it, cook it in bacon fat, and serve with chervil and a wedge of lemon.
HunterAnglerGardenerCook at 4:32PM on 05/15/08
Sounds like there is no shortage of shad there, HunterAnglerGardenerCook! Fantastic. What is the method used to fish them?
I can't imagine filleting shad. You have great patience. I haven't really enjoyed cleaning fish since the night in the Florida Keys when I caught an octopus which I was thrilled about till it kept slithering away and even when I cut off the tentacles they were walking around by themselves and then there was the skate the same night which was a PITA to clean (for a very small amount of meat) then topped off by the ugliest lizard-fish man or woman ever set eyes on. Somehow it all just got to be too much. :)
Karen Resta at 4:49PM on 05/15/08
I have been away so I missed this thread - but I just wanted to say how *much* I enjoyed your story. Something about smelling the river bed when you dug the fish out of the water took me back to the clay smell of the river of my youth. Wonderful. You are a Writer with a capital 'W', excepting your own spelling on http://fastfoodfeminist.blogspot.com/
Shad with sorrel sauce (alose à l'oseille) is a classic French way of serving shad. I've never cooked it, but I have grown sorrel in a window box. If you cut and come again, you can get sufficient for soups and sauces and has a great flavour.
Foodlexi at 3:26PM on 05/23/08
Oh great queen of the food blogs, it is I, carrottop again. Your article in the Christian Science Monitor is well written, articulate, and shows your keen abilities as a writer! I'm sure an intellectual Jewish poet would be very proud of you. Your poetry and writing is very much alike. The Jewish poet did not maintain the kosher dietary laws as he ate crabcakes often.
Your loyal subject,
Carrottop
carrottop at 4:01PM on 06/04/08
Yeah. He sat at the same table as me and ate crab I believe while I ate some disgusting Lobster Newburgh (my first at the age of fourteen) at Gage and Tollner on Fulton Street. Pre-Edna Lewis' reign there, bien sur.
But that has nothing to do with shad season. Do you have something to share about shad? That would be great!
Meanwhile if you want to talk about the other thing you can google me and find my blog. Maybe I'll post something about what you wish to talk about on it.
Karen Resta at 4:37PM on 06/04/08