I’m glad it’s been moved to its own thread, but it’s still linked to Cape Ann Fresh Catch, which could lead some to think there is a connection.
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I don’t think there is anything I can do about that, the software tracks where it was moved from.
Ok, people, I confess: I’ve been eating CAFC fish and hiding it from you. Time to make amends:
- Filets: sole (twice); hake, haddock and king whiting. Cooked in various ways: tea-smoked the sole once on charcoal), then grilled it (in a fish basket, with a light smear of a mint-coriander-garlic-ginger paste) the second time. Pan fried the other filets, with various spices.
- Whole fish: This has to be about the best fishy deal around. For twenty three bucks you get around 5 lbs of fish. The hake came as two headless, gutless specimens which I oven roasted with olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper. The haddock were three wholish fish (heads on, guts off) that I stuffed with fennel fronds, lemon slices, purple scallions, sprinkled with a potent sea-salt and pepper mix from Curio, then grilled over wood. Sublime – even if I say so myself.
- Bay scallops (once) pan fried in ghee on the grill, and cooked lobster that I dropped into melted chive butter and served on buttered brioche. The scallops were lovely, but the lobster was a little firmer than I like.
- Goats cheese: an add-on from Dancing Goat. The Cape Ann website says “We are delivering each week a different goat cheese! Some with be soft some will be hard but I promise they will all be delicious.” What I’ve gotten twice is simply two packaged plastic tubs of goat cheese spreads: once with fig jam at the bottom, once with “everything bagel” seeds. Not quite the little rounds of cheese I was expecting.
Although I like this Cape Ann outfit, and want them to succeed, I have some concerns:
- I don’t think the fish is always quite as pristinely fresh as I’d like. Often it is (especially the whole fish), but the occasional filet package (last year, and this) has had a faintly fishy odor.
- I am not sure what to make of the emails one receives volunteering the name of the vessel on which the fish was caught. My whiting yesterday came off the Catherine F. The whiting at Harvard today came off the Captain Joe. Do they send out different boats to catch the same fish, but aimed at different delivery spots? A bit of a puzzle.
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Nice report and I am positively pea-green with envy over the whiting. I have only had it from CAFC and thought it was beyond fabulous. I have been in hiatus with them but it’s time to re-up.
Posting my first two fish meals made with catches from the current season.
Pollock topped with panko and Cajun spice, then oven roasted. I used jarred mayo as the base for remoulade sauce on the side. No, I wasn’t the person who plated the buttermilk mashed potatoes. 
Hake baked in Maya Kaimal’s Tikka Masala sauce. Unconventional but the sauciness worked well with hake, which dries out easily. I added the tiniest amount of Berbere spice to the fish to dial up the flavor.
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May I say, D-TT, that I respect you, read your every post, admire you, love you (chastely), … but now I hate you?
How can a guy like me compete with your pix? They’re great!
On the less pictorial side, I posted my Pollock here, and here’s my hake and haddock (beat you to the punch on the haddock):
- Hake: People at home were complaining that my food is too complex and too rich, so I dusted my hake with salt, white peer and a cornstarch and swiftly pan fried it. (Fuchsia Dunlop says pea starch is, like, the best, after which potato starch and after that corn.) That was the simplest I could do.
I rotate my regular “catch of the day” with scallops, salmon, and whole fish. This was salmon week and I roasted the salmon the next day.
- This week was the week of the Haddock. Three whole fish stared at me with six blank eyes. I mock-tandooried them in a very hot oven yesterday, made a spicy stock from their bones at night, and an Indian-inspired fish paella today from that stock and the leftover fish, and edamame instead of peas. Got some respectable socarrat from my cast iron pan.
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that all sounds delicious!!!
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Just to clarify, I do not dust my hake with my white peers, but with white pepper.
Along with the whole haddock, I got my normal filets (also haddock). I made fish “aur” chips with those, where “aur” is hindi for “and”. I use that lingo because the fish batter was made with chickpea flour (besan), cumin seeds, etc., and the chips were dusted with the sulfurous black salt that’s often used in chaat.
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Week 4: Hake again. The accompanying recipe that Cape Ann sent involved canned clam juice and parsley. I figured, what the hey, and went for canned coconut milk, and snips of basil, cilantro and chives.
But there were also my scallops (on my rotating schedule). I had some vadouvan on hand from Curio (a French curry powder loosely based on dried-in-the-sun balls of fried onions and spices called vadavam in Pondicheri – for a blink of an eye, a French colony), so I dusted the scallops in them, panfried them for 2 minutes a side in ghee, deglazed the pan with chopped onions – they give off liquid – garlic and ginger, added the coconut milk and two slit green chilies, slid in the hake showered in the snipped herbs, stirred and added back the scallops. A sort of multi-culti fisherperson’s stew.
Served with basmati rice and tomahawk broccoli.
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I really like the firmness of hake. I use it in a loose adaptation of the renowned Nobu Miso Cod recipe. For two servings:
1 tsp ginger juice
2 tbsp yellow miso
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp sugar
8-10 oz hake fillets
Marinate 8hrs - 2 days in the fridge (less than a day is fine). Scrape th solids off the fish before broiling on upper middle rack, using an oiled broiler pan, until flaky ad golden brown. I usually just bake it at 450F for 15 minutes, and when out of fresh ginger, use liquid from pickled ginger, reducing the sugar by half.
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The fish this week was “Dabs” (aka Plaice Flounder). I hadn’t had it before, so I was intrigued. The accompanying recipe suggested panfrying dusted in flour then serving with a lemon caper sauce. But, I had an Italianate theme from the night before to continue (large tray of chicken and eggplant parm, plus pasta that needed to be finished), so I dusted the dabs with parm (light touch) and breadcrumbs then pan fried in brown butter. The fish was firmer than I was expecting, a good thing when cooking because it meant flipping it was easy, but it yielded a final result less delicate than other white fish.
My second fish of the week was salmon which I cooked in a style that I loosely borrowed and simplified from F. Dunlop’s Food of Sichuan: Par-fried the filets after dusting them in cornstarch and white pepper then finished them in a sauce of fermented broad-bean paste, minced ginger, minced garlic, a little stock, then topped copiously with chopped scallions. Served with steamed rice (and, as a side, cold sesame noodles with slivered cucumbers).
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Both sound delicious! I absolutely loved dabs when I got them.
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How did you cook dabs, or how were they cooked for you when you had them?
Long time ago. I probably dusted them with cornstarch and sauteed in butter.
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Thanks.
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@fooddabbler you need to share your wisdom with the What’s For Dinner group. Your meals sound spectacular.
No pressure, of course! Just saying!
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Thanks @digga. As you’ll know, I’m weak and flattery will get you everywhere with me. Keep this up, and I’ll let you sit a safe social distance from uni watching him watch me eat.
I don’t post on the cooking boards much because I try to limit my posting time. Every minute spent posting is a minute lost to eating.
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Dabs didn’t come our way until Friday, which is our assigned pickup day. Here they are in mild harissa, with cilantro and chive blossoms scattered on top.
The effect was more summery and herby than I expected. A happy improvisation.
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Lovely!
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Both the fillets yesterday and the whole fish (on my 3-week rotation) were “red fish” a name that I believe is used for a few different fish species. The whole fish count as “small” which means they do not come gutted. I had forgotten that, and by the time I had finished cleaning all five of them I had to abandon my original plan of blackening them. Instead, I gave them a 20 minute bath in mirin, soy, rice-vinegar, slivered ginger and scallions, then roasted covered for 30 minutes at 400. Made stock as usual with the bones.
I’m freezing the fillets for later use – I miscalculated and began a fridge defrost of some ground wagyu that I need to use today.
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