loper

A friend of mine who studied Atlantic larval fish development has a monkfish larva on her shoulder - & it is pretty damn cool. I have a modern interpretation of a pacific NW salmon totem image on mine - a reminder of connections to many fish slain.

Salad of Mache & some other greens in a cranberry vinaigrette w/ rock shrimp and shaved parmesan: Lamb Shank braised in red wine & cranberry over black lentils w/ truffled potatoes, sauteed mushrooms & red wine/cranberry reduction: Before: After: Guess she liked it.

$4.99/pound at the new Whole Foods in Swampscott as well - marked as on sale from $5.99, shell on, heads off. I just tossed 'em in a bamboo steamer w/ a bunch of other stuff - really wonderful critters - and some of the few shrimp I'm comfortable eating these days.

Got a little silly tonight - seafood green curry insanity. Steamed Alaskan Halibut, Maine Shrimp & Littleneck Clams w/ yellow beets, chestnut cap mushrooms, beet greens & seasoned black & white rice; green curry w/ fresh basil, cilantro & mint, & a red pepper/shallot sambal-ish salsa stuff to boot. A bit crazy, but some of it worked & will be kept in mind for less insane dishes in the future.

Salad: Fennel, Blood Orange, Parm Reg, EVOO, Balsamic... Risotto w/ Rock Shrimp, Saffron & Spinach Anyone know about the environmental/fishery status of these rock shrimp? I'm curious to know how they are caught - all I can find are references to location, species, etc, and just one reference to dragging gear, which doesn't sound good, these being benthic critters and all. Any help appreciated...

Peanut Butter/Mayonaise/Banana Salad.

First contribution to the dinner/food porn thread... Valentines Day: 1. Rock Shrimp Ceviche w/ Avocado & Blood Orange, Oysters w/ Blood Orange Mingonette. 2. Copper River Coho Confit w/ a Black rice & Hijiki Crust, Truffled Potatoes & Greens. The salmon was done in Tetsuya's oil & herb marinade/low oven "confit" style, but then crusted and quickly seared - should have cut into it for the pic, the inside was a beautiful orange red and wonderfully tender. Candied Kumquats are a stand in for the home-cured salmon roe that I managed to leave at work. Potatoes were done sous vide w/ a little white truffle oil my mother brought back from Italy for me - first food-saver sous vide-ing for me, was good. 3. Coriander & Orange Peel Crusted rack of Lamb w/ Shiraz-glazed Apricots, lentils & Braised Cabbage, Cumin & Coriander spiced Blood Orange Cream. 4. Chocolate pot de creme. Mmmmm... chocolate.

Fun boston dish-surfing: BostonChefs.com

How about naming your restaurant after it?

I didn't have to work Christmas (other than the rib roast for the fam, that is), but got to wake up at 4:30 for a brunch shift the day after. Same deal NYD, 12 hours of brunch for the hungover masses, then home in time to see UM lose to the evil empire in the Rose Bowl on a last second field goal , followed by another brunch the next day. This was my first year w/ this schedule, and honestly, I didn't mind. There is something to be said for keeping your regular routine for the holidays, even if everyone else thinks you're nuts.

I've done very much the same - about half kosher salt, half brown sugar, with the addition of various spices as dictated by whim. We've usually let it brine over night before rinsing and drying. From what I remember, the more you rinse & dry, the less of a hard glaze you get on the fish after smoking, and the softer the texture of the final product. We've done some w/ a Caribbean-ish cure and left it on during smoking for something different. Here's some Coho, Sockeye, and Halibut ready to go... Oh... & Coho (Silvers) may not be Kings, but they aren't what I'd call small.

Someone made a banana-jalepeno sauce of some sort at work last week. As soon as I caught a whiff of the over-ripe bananas being tossed around in the robo coup next to me I was quickly compelled by my stomach to visit the toilet and relieve said organ of its contents.

The battered pickles are wonderful. as are deep fried nuggets of beer-battered macaroni and cheese. I've also had good luck with dropping in some blue cheese stuffed, nut crusted olives. my experience with deep fry parties always ends up with someone frying their shoes, which I can't say I recommend. (Fried shoe leather is not as appetizing as is widely believed).

New Haven - Apizza (whatever that is...) Halifax - Donair, Oatcakes Ann Arbor - Fragles (raisin bagel deep fried and coated in cinnamon & sugar) & all things Zingermans; recently, Halloumi showing up everywhere.

The appendix of John McPhee's "The Founding Fish" has some notes on cooking shad roe (a hybrid sautee/steaming on top of a bed of bacon), as well as milt and the rest of the fish in various forms. I've yet to read the book, but I have to say I like the appendix - "The bacon may be undercooked. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it is. I have no idea why. This is not a perfect world." And his suggestion to take a lemon and "render it hexapartite"...

I tried a whole fried clam once - wasn't so good. I recommend you get them out of their shells first.

I've always kept fresh herbs standing up in a glass with a little water in the fridge - sometimes with a loosely covering plastic bag over them. They are, after all, cut plants, right? I cut the stems first, as you would with flowers. Asparagus too...

I don't think a New England clam raker would know what the heck to do with an 8 pound geoduck. The more important question is: Why are the words "geoduck" and "quahog" pronounced entirely differently than their respective spellings would indicate? Coincidence? Or clam conspiracy?

New England (Well, we like to pretend they're only from New England) clam primer: Steamers, or soft shelled clams (the shell isn't actually soft, just thinner than a quahog), are Mya arenaria. they live in mudflats and sand/mud bottoms from the intertidal to the shallow subtidal. They range from the arctic to N. Carolina, and are the main target up in Ipswich (not as many quahogs up there). Quahogs are Mercenaria mercenaria Also known as hardshells, and graded by size: cherrystones, littlenecks, and hardshells or chowders and probably a couple names I'm missing. There is a southern quohog, M. campechienis, but I don't know much about it or if it is harvested. They range from the gulf of St. lawrence all the way to Florida, generally subtidal in mud and sand, and are farmed as well. The name mercenaria derives from the use of the purple edged shells as wampum by Native Americans. Black or "ocean" Quahogs or Mahogany or black clams are all Arctica islandica, and generally come from deeper water, especially as you get south in their range toward N. carolina. They have a mahogany or black color, are cheaper than quahogs, and the ones I tried weren't very good. Supermarket clams though - and a couple bad ones in the lot. Surf Clams, or Ocean Clams, are the large, heavy, triangular clams dredged up from the low tide line to about 100' deep. Spisula sodissima. They are used for commercial chowders and canned clams (and I guess fried as well), but around here are usually considered striper and cod bait. They tend to wash up after Nor'easters, and gulls like to pick them up and drop 'em on hard surfaces - or, as happened last week, my kitchen window. Yuck. The common razor clam is Ensis directus and found all down the east coast. They are supposed to be great raw. I've never had the pleasure. There you go, more useless information than one could want.

I was a vegetarian (enironmental/ecological reasons, not animal or human rights, thank you very much) for about 10 years. I did eat eggs, but I'm pro choice, so that's ok. I now eat quite a bit of seafood, which I love to catch/collect myself, so I can tell you: seafood does not grow on trees or sprout from the ground when the sun comes out. I am, therefore, not a vegetarian. Don't they use animal by-products in the manufacture of galvanized rubber? Next time you meet a vegan, ask if they ride on vegan tires.

Gotta love that my old home town Ann Arbor, with a population of barely over 100,000, gets on the list with Zingerman's. For those who can't make it to A squared: Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating

The kitchenaid model comes apart so you can pop the blender portion into the dishwasher - I'm sure other brands do as well - something to look for.

Thanks for the welcome. I'm actually from Boston - but have family in Anchorage and so get to "observe" the personal use dipnet fishery in Chitina. I've also been peripherally involved with an environmental seafood choice initiantive, and find the whole issue fascinating (and given the state of the North Atlantic, locally very relevant). Hatchery vs. "real" wild salmon and similar issues don't get much press out here, so other than some little behavioral science tidbits I don't know much about the consequences on that end of things. Last I heard on the recent PCB news was that it was a classic case of poor science reporting in the press, and much ado about very little - and that from someone on the conservation oriented side of things.

Farmed salmon is colored through the use of feed additives - astaxanthin and canthaxanthin. Wild salmon get most of their color from the naturally occuring astaxanthin in their diet, with sockeye being the most red of the species. The farmed "ruby trout" is similarly colored by diet. I think it is probably doubtful that there are many health consequences to the carotenoid additives, but there are enough other reasons to not buy atlantic salmon to keep me away. I have had the opportunity to catch my own sockeye (reds) and coho (silvers) from the copper river the past couple of years - it keeps fairly well vacuum sealed and frozen, and we smoked a bunch this year as well. The fresh sockeye is a sight to behold, and wonderful to eat. I also save and cure the roe, for which I am teased relentlessly (he brought a special cooler for the bait!). We catch these fish a good distance from the ocean, and the reds show no degradation at all, with only some of the coho showing the beginnings of their remarkable morphological changes as they get ready for spawning. Commercially caught fish come from beyond the river mouth, where they are still eating and show no signs of wasting whatsoever (so-called "sea bright" fish). In fact, Copper river salmon are so prized due to the higher fat content that comes as a result of the extreme length of the river selecting for fish with the greatest energy stores, so if that fat is your thing, that's the time to get 'em. Note for eaters of raw salmon: Almost all of the wild salmon I've cleaned had at least a few visible nematode (roundworm) parasites - that's why the japanese traditionally salt or smoke it, or at the very least freeze it before eating raw. I wolfed it down anyway as we were cleaning it and was fine, but I've heard stories...

Ripe bananas, no. green bananas, yes. I love dairy in general, but won't drink milk. I love those little sesame baby octopus (I belive they are actually just a smaller species, not "babies" per se, but either way). What I can't stand (be kind, I'm new) is melon of any sort. It has a background flavor of, well, pastel.