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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.

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. :)

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. :)
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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.

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.

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. :)

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