Food Interlude

I mentioned in my last post that one reliable sign of spring is the appearance of shad roe at our local fish market.  What I didn't mention is that we are absolutely besotted with shad roe, and would eat it every single day as long as it's in season, but we're too embarrassed to display that level of obsession to the fish man.  


So we do try to restrain ourselves and succumb just once a week; twice at the most.  We have a standing order on Fridays for a single pair if they're large; two if they're small (and one if by land, two if by sea).  They've been running particularly large this year, and the first time we saw them we bought two pairs and even we two particularly piggy snarfers couldn't finish them.  


Now I realize that raw and wobbly sacs of fish eggs are not top of everyone's must-eat list.  But I'll also say that at least half of the people who hate them probably have never had them prepared well.  I grew up thinking they had to be poached til thoroughly gray, then wrapped in bacon and fried til crisp, at which point, their delicate taste was entirely masked by grease.  Then enlightenment struck, in the form of Ruth Reichl's simple recipe in her Gourmet cookbook.  It simply calls for dusting the roe in flour, then sauteeing in butter for about 8 minutes total, removing and making a lemon juice, butter and parsley sauce in the skillet to pour over the roe.  Simple, delicious, and at least at our house -- frequent!


So this weekend, when we went to our local locavore market, we were intrigued to see that the local fisherman who comes each Saturday, had something we had never seen before -- flounder roe!  It's true that all lady fish have roe, so I shouldn't have been so surprised, but I've never seen any available in the sac (as opposed to in my sushi) before.  It was about half the size of shad roe, a pale pink lobe, traced with very light red veins and truthfully, somewhat livery-looking.  But it had been swimming just the day before so who could resist?  Of course, we already had our weekend pair of roe in the fridge for dinner that night, but I had visions of "Two kinds of roe with parsley butter sauce" on the Hallberg nightly menu, figuring I could cook it exactly the same way.  

So that's what we had -- two kinds of roe, with kale risotto and shittakes in madeira.  It looked beautiful, and we sat down with great anticipation to take our first bites of flounder roe.


And it was like eating... sand.  Not even fancy pink sand from some exotic beach.  Just. Sand.  And it wasn't because I overcooked it, either.  The shad roe was perfect -- moist, delicate, and slightly crisp on the outside.  The flounder roe was tasteless and grainy.  Forgive me for being graphic, but the individual eggs in the Flounder roe sac were so tiny that they clearly couldn't stand up to any heat without losing all moisture, the very first bite disintegrating into a mouthful of tasteless itty bitty beads.   Flounder roe -- yech.  I've had better sand when I've eaten the blowback from a screwed up bunker shot.    


The rest of the meal was delicious, as was the lovely wine that Mr. Mulch had selected.  And we learned our lesson: there's a reason the only roe that's sold in early spring is Shad Roe.  


Anything else belongs in a sand trap.