July 2007



I ought to have become accustomed to this pattern by now, but the truth is that it still sort of surprises me — so many of the foods I crave seem to consistently start out at the opposite end of the preference spectrum from what most folks favor. When it comes to fish, I love, love, love the full-flavored ones. If I'm picking out what I'm going to cook at home, it's almost always going to be something like fresh bluefish, mackerel, sardines, or shad.

In whatever form you use it, bluefish is bold — it's not the sort of food that sits quietly in the background. In fact, it's sort of like the title of that old Who album — if any fish was going to be "Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy," bluefish would be it. Firm-fleshed, rich. If you don't believe me, take it from Cap'n Phil Schwind, author of "Clam Shack Cookery," who's been called, "the fisherman's fisherman, the cook's cook, Cape Cod's champion storyteller." He wrote, "... bluefish are the very finest kind of eating."

Anyways, bluefish is a BIG East Coast catch — they run from the Carolinas all the way up through New England. Monahan's in Kerrytown stocks it regularly in fresh form if you're cooking at home. And it appears on our fresh fish list at the Roadhouse. But my big bluefish focus of late though is on a really great smoked bluefish on hand at the Deli that I've been eating and enjoying enormously of late. I think that smoked fish is due for a big culinary comeback. Why? Well, it tastes really great, it's ready to eat and hence qualifies as good fast food. And on top of all that it's good for you cuz it's got all those omega threes and everything.

T. R. Durham makes the smoked blue especially for us at his little smokery just up the street in Kerrytown. I use it for most everything you can think of other than dessert. It's great broken into bits and tossed onto a salad. It's excellent on a toasted Bakehouse bagel with that old style cream cheese from the Creamery. You can use it for dinner too — just heat a whole filet of it, dress with a warm mustard vinaigrette and serve with a side of new potatoes and a green vegetable of your choosing. A little bit goes a long way on pasta too, both hot and in a salad.

We've been buying salmon from the folks at Stonington for many years now and it's a fish I can highly recommend from almost every angle.

Stonington Seafood is, not surprisingly, located in the town of the same name, about half way up the Maine coast, almost due south of Bangor. Like so many of our suppliers, they're very committed to their community and have done some great things for their town. The mission of the company and its vision are centered around creating good year round jobs with benefits and help revitalize the fish business in Stonington where the economy hasn't exactly been great the last few decades. Their generosity has been attested to by the steady flow of folks from Maine who pass through Ann Arbor.

Richard Penfold, the man who started the firm, loves his fish. Lynn Jebbia, who works for Stonington, said, "We call him a 'fish head'... he just gets so excited about fish." In terms of smoking, Richard, who is British by birth, learned from a lot of the old smoke masters in the Shetlands and really studied the traditional smoking techniques. Stonington is still very much small scale salmon smoking. While so many of the name brands in smoked fish have been bought out by big companies, Stonington is still really small.

No smoked fish is ever any better than the fresh fish from which it starts. The Stonington salmon are farmed in the Bay of Fundy off Grand Manan Island. Most farmed salmon comes from warmer waters further south which means that the fish aren't as hearty and don't have to swim as hard (generally meaning that the flavor isn't as big, and that the texture of the fish can be a bit mushier.) In terms of the cure and the smoke, the Stonington folks have agreed to make this particular recipe just for us — freshly filleted salmon sides are rubbed with sea salt and then a bunch of Demerarra sugar. Smoking — primarily over hickory but they also use a bit of cherry wood as well — goes for about 15 to 18 hours in a custom built (in Scotland) kiln.

If you don't want to just take my word for it, you should stop down at the Deli and take a taste. Very good with one of those really amazing bagels from the Bakehouse, cream cheese from the Creamery, or better yet on toasted Roadhouse bread.