Connections: Chowder for 100
Quahog chowder for 100? That’s right. In years gone by, with the bay beach in front of our house, we did things in a big way. The chowder was a hit for a couple of summers and then — oh, dear — we made a bouillabaisse. The latter recipe is lost to history because we wanted to forget about it.
What happened was that we left the huge soup kettle, which wasn’t empty, on the beach overnight and the smell was so bad in the morning that we had to drag it across the dunes to bury what was left.
The recipe for quahog chowder for 100, however, was published in “The Potato Book” by Myrna Davis, and it just happens to be in the Habitat section of The Star today. It calls for a bushel of chowder clams and 15 pounds of striped bass, which gets me to what I have been thinking about all week.
Striped bass is a family favorite, and we have just celebrated a birthday with a huge one, poached, decorated with thin cucumber slices as scales, and served with dill sauce. Delicious.
I was surprised at how costly striped bass is. One reason is that only fish between 28 and 38 inches can be caught commercially and each fish has to be tagged. Tags cost either $32 or $195 (for 32 or 195 tags), and a state Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman told me that 450 fishermen bought shares this year. Striped bass caught on rod and reel have to be at least 28 inches as well, and only one fish is allowed per person per day.
When haul seining was permitted here, striped bass was the money fish. You’re not apt to see a crew hauling a seine full of bass onto the ocean beaches these days, or to have one tossed to you as a gift, although I understand that a few baymen still seine with gill nets.
I got talking to Charlotte Klein Sasso of Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett the other day, and she confirmed that the cost of striped bass was up there with the best-quality tuna, about $25 or $27 a pound. (I found out later that striped bass was $32.99 a pound at Citarella this week, and tuna was $29.99.)
Speaking about local fish, Charlotte said customers were beginning to realize that instead of dorade or branzino, which come from foreign waters, the waters around the South Fork are teeming with wonderful fish in season, like bluefish, porgies, and Spanish mackerel, and cost a lot less. At Citarella this week, for example, bluefish was $7.99 a pound, but it didn’t have any. I love them all, not only because they are good as well as inexpensive, but because they are caught locally, and fresher than fresh.
To tell the truth, the birthday boy, my husband, likes bluefish even more than striped bass, but I wanted the presentation at dinner to be impressive, like a salmon you might see at a wedding.
My own fondness for bluefish goes back a long time to the first I ever caught. I hooked the fish in the Three Mile Harbor channel as we were sailing in on our old catboat. Quick-thinking, the boat was brought about, and I overcame my excitement to bring the fish aboard. This memory is hard to forget.
As for quahog chowder, what could be more local than that? Although you might want to check out monkfish or weakfish or another local fish if you plan to buy 15 pounds.
Click for the recipe for quahog chowder for 100