fish

I went to Dekalb Farmers Market Saturday--it says something about living in rural South Carolina that I happily drive two hours each way several times a year just to buy food. One of the things I usually buy there is fish, as Sams Club has good salmon but not much else is good here. The bluefish were too small and so I hesitated and then bought a 10 lb striped bass. I grew up eating striped bass from the Atlantic Ocean, but they have become a significant fish in southern freshwater lakes, and this was listed as a lake fish. The interesting thing about buying whole fish at Dekalb is they don't clean it until you buy it. The person cleaning my fish asked me if I wanted the head (my daughter vetoed that) and whether I wanted the roe. I was surprised but said yes, so I got a set of roe looking very much like shad roe. I cooked it like shad roe with butter, vermouth, lemon rind, and capers and it tasted similar but was considerably softer, almost creamy.

We ate the fish baked last night and tonight I will make chowder. I've always made a chowder with bacon, onions, potatoes, fish stock and cream. Since I don't use potatoes any more I decided to check recipes, and interestingly the fish chowder recipe Legal Seafoods has on their web site doesn't include potatoes. I will reduce the amount of fish stock and then I can certainly skip the flour. I'm torn whether I consider bacon is an essential ingredient or whether I want to try their recipe as written.

update: It was good, but I missed the bacon.