Eat Like a Fish - Week 1

Aaaaannnnddd we're off....

This past week was the first week of 26 of "eating like a fish." For detailed information about the study I'm participating in and what's involved, make sure to stop over to my Eat Like a Fish page to read up about the protocol. This week's post will likely be longer than all the other 25 to come as I work out kinks, get over the novelty of participating (this may take a while though), and familiarize all my non-existent readers with the process.

On Monday May 8th I received my first email with a link to a Google Doc for the assignments for all 92 participants in the study. I've got to admit, I was pretty excited to get my homework and get started and see what everybody else was going to be looking for. My four assigned species for week 1 were:

• Quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria)
• Dab/American plaice (Hippoglossoides platessoides)
• Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix)
• Red Hake/Squirrel Hake/Mud Hake/Ling (Urophycis chuss)

Of the four species that I was assigned, I've only eaten the quahog and bluefish before, and only the bluefish have I processed and prepared on my own. I'm hoping to use this study as a means of trying new seafood, so I was happy to see some items on the list that were culinarily less than familiar to me. I'm also, however, trying to approach this as scientifically as possible and make sure that I don't get particularly hung up on finding one species of the four each each week, following protocol, and leaving myself open to finding anything. Twenty-six weeks is a long time, so if I end up eating something more common like flounder or lobster one week, I'll have plenty of time to seek out something less so, like razor clams, sea robin, or John Dory the next. Plus, with the goal of the study being ecosystem-market symmetry, just because something is a more common species doesn't make it any less local.

I had a pretty busy week lined up, and quickly saw my days starting to slip away. By Wednesday, people on the Eat Like a Fish Citizen Scientists Facebook group, that many of us participants are a part of, had already started posting tales of their successes and failures with their week's assignments. Stories of markets visited, fishmongers talked to, and delicious species grilled, baked, boiled, and otherwise enjoyed. I became simultaneously concerned about my upcoming availabilities to seek out and cook my species for the week and jealous of everyone's tales. I knew I had to make a point of stopping somewhere that day on my way between jobs.

(Flanders Fish Mark - East Lyme, CT)

So I stopped in at Flanders Fish Market in East Lyme, which will likely be a pretty common seafood retailer for me during the course of the study since it is close to home and has regularly proven itself to have a fresh and diverse choice of seafood in the past. When I walked in, I wanted to explain to the staff the basics of the study, so I made a point of waiting until I was the only one at the counter so that we could talk a bit without me holding things up. I just wanted to drive home with them the point that I am very interested in real facts about the seafood I'll be buying, so they don't need to "impress" me by saying things are fresh when they've been frozen, etc.

My littlenecks sitting pretty front row left

Of the four species that I was assigned, the only one that was present at Flanders was the quahog, in the form of littlenecks, (just small quahogs). As a marine scientist, I knew that littlenecks (along with cherrystones) were all the same species Mercenaria mercenaria, just with different culinary names. I got a little worried for other participants in the study that may not be as familiar with these species and know extra common names. The littlenecks were $0.69/littleneck or $7.99/dozen, I bought two dozen and was on my way.

I had no plans for how to prepare them, just knew I wouldn't have time until the weekend... This was my first mistake. I frequently will bring oysters back from my weekends spent at my house on the Cape, and have had success keeping them in my fridge for up to two weeks until I'm able to eat them. This is probably because the oysters that I'm used to working with are ones that I pick myself directly from Cape Cod Bay. Well I forgot that the clams I bought from the store have probably already been out of the water for at least a couple days during transport. But by the time I got to them on Sunday, there was four that had died and were open (don't worry I threw these out).

Now I consider myself a pretty adept oyster shucker with years of experience, but as it turns out, that skill doesn't necessarily translate across species. The clams were impossible to get into raw, so I put them on a baking sheet and slid them into the oven for a couple minutes until they opened on their own. After that it was easy to remove the body of the clam and all the liquid from the inside which I wanted for the sauce, before it dried up in the oven.

Clams pre- and post- sauna in the oven

Having grown up spending a lot of time on Cape Cod, and being familiar with a lot of seafood being prepared by the Portuguese fishing population, I knew that clams and Portuguese sausage (linguiça, chorizo, etc.) go together splendidly. I decided to sauté a sauce with my clams using shallots, white wine, garlic, olive oil & butter, linguiça (mild Portuguese sausage), and snap peas and dropped it all over kelp noodles. The kelp noodles are a new experience for me and are an entirely other tale, which I think I'll try and touch on in a separate blog post at another time.

Pan sauté action then a mix with the kelp noodles

Topped with parmesan and crushed red pepper flakes

I would have just gone for the chorizo, linguiça's spicier cousin, instead of linguiça and pepper flakes, but this meal was also a Mother's Day dinner, and Ma Dukes doesn't appreciate the spice, so I had to dial things up a bit to taste after plating. All of my cooking at home is done by eye and taste, so if I'm making anything up, I likely won't be able to provide a recipe. If I am stumped on how to prepare an assignment and have to Google a recipe, it will definitely be included in my posts down the line.

All said and done, I think Week 1 was a total (and delicious) success. I would highly recommend a dish like this or similar to anyone, the leftovers were even better the second day. If anybody wanted to try and duplicate but felt more comfortable with a recipe, I could walk through the steps and estimate amounts for you some time.

See you all next week!