johnnyd

Boy, I can relate to that. Over here in New England a storm can really ruin the party. So again, can a stretch of great weather, thus glutting the market (for select species). No boats go out until the inventory is down and prices rise... just in time for another northeaster. I've been using More Than Gourmet demi glace products for a couple years, but not the Lobster/Seafood version because I make my own. A 1.5 ounce puck (US$7.50) makes 32oz of stock. One pound makes 2 gallons. See here for Club Sauce order info and see here for NYT reviews.

Not helping the situation further, is this news... Organic Consumers.org - related article 5/21/07 usda.org - Proposed changes to Nat'l List of Approved Substances

Ola chef! Yes I lived in São Paulo, Santo Amaro. A long time ago when things were politically difficult (70s). My dad was in advertising. My mom was born in São Vicente. We had chances to explore the coast between Guaruja and Ilha Bela and Ubatuba. Back then you had to drive on the beach at low tide to get to little villages where they would set up big churrascarias serving tasty pork loin and beef of all kinds during the seemingly endless round of religious holidays. Any excuse for a party! There is much discussion on the US forum about brasilian churrascarias that have been set up nationwide. Some are working well and others not so well. I'll send links to those conversations when I find them. The challenge you face must be truly awesome. When you can, tell us more about your work at the restaurant. For example, if BlueFin is unavailable, how about YellowFin tuna? What other seafood products are offered on the menu? I remember huge langostine-type creatures and fish that are unheard of here in the Northern Hemisphere. Have you taken advantage of those? Glad you found us. Do you have a camera? You may post pictures here. I will gladly help you make that happen when you have the time. Abraços! edit to add: There are a lot of cachaça fans here too! Click here for a couple caipirinhas I made.

It's that time of year again! This year's Greek Festival runs from today, Jun 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 133 Pleasant St. Portland. 11:30am to 9:30pm Click here (or scroll up) to see pictures and commentary from my visit there last year. Yassou!

My Asian friends taught me to immediately empty out of bag and put into a bowl, cover with water and loosely cover in fridge. Change water every other day or so. They are always in my fridge and seem to last a good week if from a bag at the regular market, and longer if super fresh & crisp from a loose bin at an Asian market. ← Outstanding! Thank you heidih!

Bean Sprouts. I got on a spring roll kick recently and managed to roll up three or four little ones for lunch every other day. I mandolined a couple carrots for the week, bought cilantro and bean sprouts, threw a mint leaf in there, and voila: a mini salad in rice paper. Unfortunately I got too busy and/or bored with it but kept buying bean sprouts at $1.69 a bag in case the mood struck. I've thrown out four unopened bags of slimy goo in a row now.

Greetings Eduardo! Welcome to eGullet! That was very interesting news indeed. I myself lived in Brasil for a few years as a young man and remember the large Japanese concentration but saw little, if any, references to their food preferences. A japanese/brasilian classmate of mine ate rice and beans like the rest of us. I love your story about your new friends telling you you're making your sushi all wrong - one of those endearing things about folks in Brasil! I am surprised that you can't find bluefin tuna. Maybe it's so rare now that getting it there is not an option at any price? If there are some favorite places of yours that have websites, post them here when you get a chance. We are all curious!

Some years ago I visited a pal who lived on the shore somewhere on Chesapeake Bay. One afternoon we took off in his boat and tied up at a crab shack. The deck had dozens of picnic tables, affixed with rolls of absorbent brown paper that was pulled out for each new party. Our server dumped a big bucket of boiled, seasoned crabs onto the table and handed each a mallet. A bucket of beers in ice and we were set. I don't remember if they served much else - which is a factor in shaping my fantasy restaurant. There is a place at a marina here in Portland harbor that I worked BOH years ago that I always thought would make a perfect Lobster and steamer clam venue. Picnic tables, lots of drawn butter, good slaw, potato salad and a thumping reggae soundtrack. Maybe a seasonal fish of the day but nothing else. I know I'm missing non-seafood items and desserts, but hey, it's a fantasy, right? After I worked there, it changed hands a few times and after a renovation became this.

It's my pleasure, Susan. Feel free to ask if you have any other concerns - I will try to help where I can. If I think of anything else I'll post here. You can do this!

Susan, When I worked in Development at our local community radio station we put on an Annual Mardi Gras Cooking Competition (pics from 2006) involving about a dozen restaurants. I remember a few key things that might help you. - Use small (4oz?) soup containers, they have double walls and as mentioned, guard the heat (for example, see my pics). Probably won't need lids. - Use plastic spoons, the flat ice cream type won't hold the chili ingredients - Have plenty of garbage cans available and assign someone to keep an eye on them - they fill up fast. - I assume there is a beverage option. Have free water available. - Our ballot had five lines under a list of contestants and the competition logo. Participants listed their five faves in order of merit which equaled number of points to add to their tally. A couple boxes of tiny golf-scorecard pencils were around. People would check off or circle contestants visited until they were all done or too full to go on. Five points were awarded to each first-line, and so on. Have someone build a ballot in MS Word and print them at home on some cool paper. We fit two ballots on an 8,1/2x11 - Your promotional presence looks good. We contacted restaurants 6 weeks out with a deadline of two weeks before as a cut-off, but someone comes in late anyway - welcome them. Radio spots for a month and ads in all local rags for two weeks prior to day-of-show. See if you can trade the media-buys with an ad in the Museum brochure. You'll notice I got a local TV crew to cover the event - it's not hard: just ask! - Someone will bag out for some reason at gametime, guaranteed. Prepare for this inevitability and shrug it off, no hard feelings. Besides, they'll do doubletime next year. The pics above are from the 11th year. We started it as a Mardi Gras party for staff and of course somebody had to bring food! It's evolved quite a bit. We started getting technical and went for a Gumbo Category and a Jambalaya category but one year only two out of twelve rests went with the gumbo so we lumped it all together as "New Orleans Cuisine" - simpler that way. We also found if you develop multi-media accessories or decoration schemes in addition to the food, it becomes more memorable (maybe next year!) I admit I got too wrapped up in making sure everything went off well and everybody was happy, an impossible task. I realized this when the steamtables brought by the restaurants to keep food hot, short-circuited our half of the USM Student Center. Not once... not twice... yes, three times. The bottom line is that you - along with everyone else - are here to have fun and check out some kick-ass chili.

Now, that is a great commute!I was in Portland last year and I was very impressed at the quality of Northwestern-made beer and wine.

Well, that's a first for me. I confess I always thought huckleberries were the stuff of myth and legend - a local patois for something more common like mulberries or something Mark Twain made cocktails out of. David, this might be a stretch - and feel free to disregard if you want - but would you care to weigh in on airline food these days? If you are privy to those arrangements, what tack has your company decided on?

Word!

I'm definitely up for investigating this. Z, can you narrow down where on Brighton this could be? I've found no info on it so far.

Mussel Seeding - part 3 A convention of cormorants nearby tells us that there is a feeding frenzy going on somewhere in the water... ...so a break in seeding is in order to tie a mackerel jig on the line. The hopper now has larger mussels measuring a little over an inch. Thirty of the forty droppers were these larger ones. They will be ready to harvest in October. My job was to help de-clump and clean the seedings before they are wrapped around the dropper, then shovel them into the hopper. I'd estimate the total at over 4000 lbs. I am one sore dude right now... but I did manage to catch four mackerel.

Mussel Seeding - part 2 The seeding machine is a compressor operated device that feeds the grow-rope, or "dropper", into a stainless steel tube at one end, where it is then surrounded by tiny mussels and wrapped in bio-degradable netting. Here, the hopper holds micro-mussels measuring about a quarter inch. Matt makes sure everything comes out okay, then hops over to the appropriate beam to tie it off. Matt has been "musseling" for a while. He has the perfect combination of smarts, reliability and being an all-around nice guy that the working waterfront in Maine holds in very high regard. Usually, one of those three things is missing. Notice the spool of colored cotton netting by Bernie's leg. That races around a rubber track and "seals" the first net layer, within which resides the tiny mussels and the dropper. And into the water it goes...

Mussel Seeding For the past two days I have been back on the mussel raft helping "seed" the ropes upon which farmed mussels grow. We met around dawn at a local boat launch where a flatbed truck dropped mussels of various small sizes from five big insulated cubes. They came from AquaFarm's Blue Hill station where they are grown on smaller ropes from mussel spat. First, we took the boat out to the Bangs Island Raft to get about forty growing ropes, Matt and Bernie are used to maneuvering a-top the cross beams so falling in the cold (50F) seawater is just not an option. The mackerel are starting to chase baitfish into Casco Bay so when the water suddenly erupts in a million little splashes the guys drop everything and cast a line or three.

Here we go again! Man, you guys are lucky. Looking forward to another year of top-notch coverage. And thank you Johnder for the webcam link.

Spot on, Adam! Thanks. This post to be exact. I still marvel that they had dried cod from the Faroe Islands there.

Outstanding post, Duck Fat! I can't think of a better source to answer the salt cod prep question brought up in this thread. A million thanks and welcome to eGullet.org. What happens to the moisture that's drawn out of the fish in the kench boxes? Does it collect in the Schooner's bilge? Absorbed by the salt pack? Either way it must have been an unholy smell. There is a picture somewhere here, perhaps on a eG foodblog, of a european fish market that has shelves upon shelves of salt cod from all over the world. They are marked by their region of origin. If I find it I'll post a link here.

A quick google yields a simple, modern way to salt cod... ...but I expect fishermen long ago would layer cut cod in barrels of salt until them get back in port. Some bacalhau I've seen are stiff as boards so I always thought they were air-dried. Something to check further.I've also had miserable results when substituting fresh cod in recipes that call for bacalhau (dried, salted cod).

A nice poaching in court bouillon sounds like a more respectable way to treat good cod than the flavor-fest I put together - something to try next time this happens. Interesting about this load: the whole lot sat in seawater rinse run-off, on ice, overnight. Not much at all - maybe a cup - and not a brine. A stronger brine would firm it up better - but almost all of it was in good shape. Fishing charters fillet your catch on-deck on a good cutting board but the heavy sea make for a few ragged cuts.Peppercorns! I completely forgot to add either salt or pepper. The whole coriander I used is a trick I love doing because after cooking they explode in little bursts of flavor. I use it primarily in my Middle Eastern experiments - usually with lamb. I did forget to mention - this was served with good country bread and a white wine, a delicious meal.

The final recipe for johnnyd's Quick Mediterranean Cod Sauce: 1 large onion - chopped 1 poblano pepper - chopped 3 cloves garlic - chopped Oregano - liberal shakes Saffron - one healthy pinch 1 tsp whole coriander seed 1 tsp paprika 1 big bayleaf simmer above gently in rendered salt pork fat until soft and fragrant, then add 2 cans diced tomato w/ juice 1 cup chicken stock 1 cup white wine 1/2 lb sauteed chorizo slices simmer gently for fifteen minutes, then add 2 or 3 pounds of codfish cut in two-inch chunks salt pork cracklings I had a lot of flavor going on here. I could have done with less saffron (I always overdo it), but it had the robust fish-stew taste I remember from little restaurants in Spain and Portugal. Olive oil is probably better than salt pork and cubes of good iberian ham a welcome addition instead of cracklings. Additional types of seafood too. I froze 2 quarts after cooling, and one quart to have this week. I expect a different flavor profile a day later so I'm excited to try it for lunch today. In the end, perhaps what I've got here is a base to make some real Zarzuela after all!

The gift of cod - part II: de-bone and de-worm stage Why, that one's trying to get away! I couldn't cook all twenty pounds of fish that evening so I ended up with 5 freezer bags filled with either cod loins, cod tails or cod scraps,

Delicious. The sauce - with capers, cumin, oregano and paprika - looks really good.Unfortunately, we had a mess of fried haddock over the weekend so I will wait to try tacos later. So far, I've come up with (well, corrupted) a Zarzuela sauce recipe that includes: tomatoes - canned onion garlic - not too much oregano - fresh and dried saffron - I have a lot of Iranian on hand paprika bayleaf dried chilis I'll start it all in rendered saltpork and add some linguiça later - something about cod and pork products: harmony in a pot.