magid

Yesterday I picked up the first fish share (CSF) from Cape Ann Fresh Catch at the Harvard farmers' market (The share is already featured in the Wall Street Journal! As the article points out, this share is currently about local, not necessarily about best fishing practices/sustainability. I'm hoping that will change in the next season or two.) . They had a truck with already-bagged full or half shares in bins (barrels? large containers of some sort) of ice. I got checked off their pages-long list of shareholders, handed a newsletter and two pamphlets about fish handling and preparation, then a double-bagged fish was put in my cooler (I now own a cooler!) with extra ice. The tail stuck out of the bag, and I asked what kind. I made happy sounds when the fish-handler said cod; apparently this is unusual :-). But cod is so lovely. I think of it as a much larger fish, though I'm glad it's not (or I wouldn't have had room to deal with it easily).

I stayed by the truck until the next demonstration of how to fillet a fish, which was rather like the YouTube video a couple of kind friends sent me. He made it look easy, doable by mere humans, which was nice.

Then it was home to attempt it myself. This is a before shot of the cod (plus a bunch of kitchen clutter; ah, well); I took no after shots. Given the species, I nicknamed him Rod the Cod.

Unsurprisingly, it was not as easy as it looked, and took significantly longer to get much less pretty pieces. However, I did manage something approximating a filleted fish... with a lot of little extra bits. Since the demo had included how to skin the fillets, I did that rather than try to descale the pieces, and amazingly, that went fairly well.

In the end, there were a few bits that went into the trash (fins, mostly; I probably should have put these in with some plant instead, with the other leftovers), a bunch of unpretty and somewhat irregular fillets, and the carcass with too much fish left on it compared to what it should be. I cooked the fillets simply, with some onions, and put the carcass into a soup pot to make fish stock. Well, sort of: I didn't have most of the suggested vegetables. And I couldn't find the cheesecloth to wrap it all in, so I'm going to have a fine time skimming and deboning it. Given the lack of other stuff in it, I suspect this will turn into fish chowder.
Note to self: invest in more cheesecloth, or make a muslin bag, or something.

And today was the second farm share pickup.