I wish my miscalculations involved wagyu.
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I froze this week’s red fish so that we could enjoy an add-on purchase of stuffed clams.
While these arrived frozen, they were only recently so, judging by the tenderness of the chopped clam and the agreeable texture of the stuffing (not gummy as prepared stuffed clams so often are). Expect much more carby stuffing than clam.
Now and then I’m a sucker for a baked stuffed seafood meal. This worked. Green salad made with the first lettuce from our CSA share counteracted the stuffing.
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A little off topic but if baked stuffed seafood is a favorite, there is now a lobster truck in
Middelton MA, right across from Richardson ice cream.
I think this is the 2nd week, and on the menu is a lobster stuff quahog. It was excellent.
Good stuffing and lots of lobster. $7.99 each
The butter poached lobster roll was also good.
Worth a stop, they have picnic tables and plenty of parking.
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Delightfully topic-adjacent is what I’d call this. Thanks for the tip!
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Great pix, as always, young berry of solanum lycopersicum (squared).
While you wuz freezin’, I wuz de-frostin’, and I panfried the redfish fillets Bombay style. This is such a simple, yet delicious way to do fish, ubiquitous in middle class families in Western India, that it astounds me that Indian restaurants in the U.S. don’t offer it. You dust the fillets in a mix of turmeric, cayenne, and salt, and let them sit for 15–20 minutes. Then heat a neutral oil till it shimmers and panfry for a few minutes on each side. The ideal cut for this is a steak, where the bone holds the whole thing together and keeps the center moist, but skin-on fillets work well too.
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Today it was the Another Day of the Pollock (previous 2020 Pollock here).
[What kind of movie would Pollack have made of that?]
With heightened tensions on the Indo-Chinese border I decided to make an Indo-Chinese meal. I made a paste of besan, turmeric, kashmiri chilli powder (Indian), plus potato starch and the absolutely fantastic mala spice mix from Fly by Jing, then coated the Pollock (cut into chunks) and thinly sliced potatoes in it. I eventually semi-deepfried these in a neutral oil, then dusted the product with more of the mala spice.
I made a bread to accompany, a cross between a laccha paratha and a scallion pancake. The basic technique is the same in both cases: roll out the dough very thin, spread with fat (chicken fat for scallion pancakes plus chopped sacllions, ghee for laccha), roll up the round into a thin, layered cylinder, coil the cylinder into a disk, flatten, then roll out again. I used left-over saag (from a Saturday chicken-saag dish) for the filling, and fresh pistachio oil from California for the fat. The end result was, if I may say so myself, not inedible.
A bit of a rich meal, so I cut it with finely chopped cucumber soaked a bit in rice wine vinegar and soy, then mixed with drained yogurt, coarsely ground black pepper, and a little black salt.
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@fooddabbler every morsel you describe sounds delicious. An inspired meal, making the most of the blank canvas you were presented!
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In all honesty, part of the blame goes to that mala spice mix.
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You totally win the Day of the Pollack, in perpetuity. Your preparation sounds incredible. The next time you see some odd character peering into your kitchen window, taking notes intently as you cook, that will be me. 
Do you have any of the other Fly by Jing spices or condiments, or just the mala spice? Call me intrigued.
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Dear Intrigued,
In principle I have everything they make (which is not very many things) in that I’ve paid for one or more of each item, but after Sam Sifton raved about them in the NYT they ran out of chili crisp and other items. I have the mala spice I mentioned, some dry red chillies (harvested in Chengdu in November 2019) and some excellent dumpling sauce with a hefty kick. I have three jars of chili crisp on back order, sichuan peppercorns, and 3-year aged doubanjiang. They say they should start shipping them in late June, or so.
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The Intrigued One thanks you. I may need to jump on that pre-order train too.
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IN SPAIN, as well as the Mediterranean countries, fish and shellfish have their specific seasons.
Many fish are veered towards colder waters, during the spring and summer months.
Clams, oysters, mussels, langoustines = Norway Bay Lobsters or in Spanish “cigalas” or Italian, “Scampi”.
These shellfish are netted off the long Brittany coastline …
Langostinos ( large prawns ) and calamar and squid (sepia / seppia in italian) are netted off the coasts of Portugal and Galicia and Mallorca.
SWORDFISH AND AMBERJACK (called RUBBER LIP GRUNT FISH = American name ) are caught off the coast of Sicilia and Mallorca.
So, a large variety of finned fish are not available until September in Spanish Waters due to heat factor.
We also have alot of “rock fish” which is netted WILD and amazing. The most famous, hails from ROTA, CADIZ, AND IS CALLED " URTA" and in English: RED BANDED SEA BREAM … This is baked with a bed of potatoes and strips of fresh red capscium bell pepper, White wine, a Little onion or leek and a Little garlic. RAY FISH is found in our Waters as well … NOT SKATE.
MONKFISH is also common during this season … called RAPÉ in Spanish.
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How great to learn about the seasonality of fish and shellfish in Spain and the Mediterranean waters!
Cape Ann Fresh Catch is operated by local fishing families so the catch is seasonal—that is, freshly caught— and local to our area of Massachusetts. What we get depends on the type of fish the boats catch that week.
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My Day of the Pollack from this past heatwave weekend was not nearly as elevated as @fooddabbler’s phenomenal preparation, so let’s get that out of the way first. I cooked my fish in a saffron pan sauce that involved little time at the stove. Plus the sauce made excellent use of garlic scape from the first of the season harvest. Mmmm, scapes.
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I would eat that any day.
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Yes, local fishermen, same on the Mediterranean Coast and Costa de Luz (Cádiz, Andalusia) and the islands (Balearic and Canaries).
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Last week my second choice was scallops and I managed to screw them up a bit. I sauteed them in butter with s&p, and I got that part right: nicely golden on the outside and not overcooked inside. Then, on a whim, I decided to make a slightly cheesy bechamel using the pan scrapings. I should have used a clean pan and added the scrapings later. As it was they browned a little too much while the flour toasted, and I used a bit too much flour. The sauce at the end was too thick, and too toasty. That’ll teach me to have whims.
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This discussion was brought to our discussion- Should we split the recent portion of this discussion into the cooking board instead since its more cooking focused rather than Cape Ann focused? Thanks.
Hmmm. We’ve been talking about our preparations of particular fish and seafood that we receive from Cape Ann Fresh Catch, so the discussion is probably most useful for folks who either get a fish CSA share here or are considering signing up? For example, the dabs and red fish aren’t common in our fish markets (never seen them for sale). Particular products such as stuffed clams are sourced via this CSA.
That said, I will defer to the wisdom of the crowd. And a big thank you for giving us a forum to share this stuff! 
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Yesterday I got Haddock. But I almost did not.
On Monday I started my regular 7-week summer gig(*). It requires me to be fully occupied between 3 and 6 on Tuesdays. I put out a cooler with ice packs for Cape Ann at 1:30, and left strict instructions with my family about waiting for the doorbell (after the first week, CA has been good about ringing it and leaving), bringing the cooler in, removing the fish from it, and putting it into the fridge. I then locked myself in my study – now repurposed as a zoom studio. One family member brought the cooler in too early, and another carefully placed the icepacks in the fridge. Later, when the doorbell rang frantically they were slow to go to the door, but CA – bless them – left the fish in their cooler at our door. Clearly I need to go beyond feeding my family a fish to teaching them how to recognize a fish.
Anyway, after I’d zoomed, I bathed the haddock in warm olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, red pepper flakes, lemon and parsley, and served it on rice sprinkled with very good sea salt.
(*) Nearly forget to add this: in the past the gig was physically in Harvard Square. On Mondays I’d eat my kebabs from the food truck, and later pick up CA fish from Harvest in Central.
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