Cooking With Dexter: Bait and Wish

[elleng]

Dexter has been trying to feed our family with something he pulled in with a rod and reel for two years now. His patience and determination are both epic and, so far, entirely in vain. It is no consolation to him at all that he has caught a fair number of fish that he had to throw back for being too small or the wrong species. The angling world is divided into environmentalists who practice catch-and-release and the more gung-ho crowd they refer to as “fish killers.” Dexter means to be a fish killer. For him, the whole point of dropping a line into the water is to turn some innocent sea creature into dinner. When he watches “Finding Nemo,” I am pretty sure he roots for the trawlers. . .

Now, in the absence of permits this may not have been, strictly speaking, completely legal. But I take the view that a 6-year-old clamming with his toes can’t do much harm to the shellfish beds. And with the half-dozen quahogs he dug, we could make good chowder, and my son could call himself a clam killer.

Recipe: Fish With Grilled Salsa Verde

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22food-t-000.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

[The empressof all]

1. This makes me recall my last very guilty part of a fish kill

My family and I spend time every year at Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula. They have a particular breed there that can best be described as a fresh water salmon. They are now illegal to keep at any size but the summer prior to the enactment of that law I participated in feasting on one of the last legal guy to come out of the water. He was about 16 pounds and extremely delicious.

Truth be told ....I wouldn't have caught him myself. The guys a few cabins down pulled him out of the water and cooked him. I couldn't have rescued him even if I wanted to. He was cooked when I met him. I do think about that meal every so often. I feel a bit guilty...but not enough to regret the experience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardslee_trout

[Warpy]

2. If she makes clam chowder out of quahogs

She'd better be prepared to send it down the disposal. A friend tried it years ago, it was just like chewing on old inner tubes.

The only way the quahog is palatable is ground and mixed with bread crumbs and seasonings and packed back into the shell and baked. It's served with lemon and tartar sauce and isn't bad.

The whole quahog is the original trash fish, fit only to be discarded back into the ocean if one doesn't have the means to grind it up.