Chippers and Blue!

A slightly higher brow approach to Wellfleet's bastard fish.

I can still remember getting pushed out of bed by my dad before the sun was even up. We would make it from Dennis to Wellfleet before the sun eventually pushed through on those grey Cape Cod mornings. My grandfather had an old center console boat at the town landing in Wellfleet. He fished for blues & stripers for a while.

me & a striper: circa 1990-something off Cape Cod

I was pretty young when they went out, but it still is of my best memories. I can remember leaving the harbor and trucking out to sea at full speed for what seemed like forever. Eventually there was no land in sight, the water was deep and choppy. This was the point of no return, it's time to show your sea legs or you'll be turning green and praying for shore. Luckily I stood strong, as I think most Adams' were born with sea legs.

The outboard finally slowed down. The fish finder, the active birds, "boiling water" and the strange faint smell of watermelon all pointed to a feeding frenzy. We dropped our lines and started reeling them in, they kept coming. We had all sorts of lines, rod and rigs out. I know we had some reels set up with lead line and jigs, you needed a glove to fish this one. I can't recall how many we caught on this particular trip but it seemed like a hell of a lot. Those bastard bluefish liked to fight too, they didn't come in easily. The blues weren't afraid to take one last look at you in the eye before trying to bite some of your flesh off while you're lazily removing a hook.

On the way back in to Wellfleet we went around the tip of Provincetown, I got to do some diving and swimming near some sand bars. Back to business at the pier as it was time to sell the days catch before stopping at the Beachcomber. They must have known a guy because I was way too young to be in there...Anyway I guess you can say I have a soft spot for the bastard so here it is.

Chippers and Blue: Old Blighty style fried bluefish, mixed rosemary oven chippers and a fresh corn & tomato salad.


Mixed rosemary oven chippers

• Sweet potatoes & baby new's tossed in olive oil, chopped fresh rosemary, sea salt and pepper roasted at 450 for a half hour. These are our new favorite chips or "chippers."

Fresh corn & tomato salad

• 3 ears of corn, kernals sliced.
  
• 3 roma tomatoes diced.
  
• Quarter of an onion diced
• Chopped basil
• Toss with sea salt, pepper and olive oil and bring up to heat on the stovetop. You don't really want to cook this, I just wanted it warm with a nice "raw" bite.

Old Blighty style fried bluefish

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup seltzer water (unshaken next time please...)
• 1 egg
• sea salt and pepper
• bluefish (or fish of choice)

Stir the batter up, get rid of those lumps. (It's probably not too late to turn this batter into pancakes.) The seltzer is suppose to give the crust a nice airy lift and a good bite which it did. Cut your FRESH bluefish into serving size pieces and dip into your batter before frying in medium high oil. The fish took around 8 minutes per side. When I'm frying battered fish I always cook by color. You're looking for a nice dark golden brown.

Plate & enjoy.

Have you seen the video yet?...

This is the first of hopefully many more video's to come for The Salted Cod. We're still working on a few things, but keep a look out for more.

You can also subscribe to our video feed on BLIP!

A big thanks to Oats for making our video dreams come true.

"Chippers and blue, chippers and blue!" God I couldn't stop saying that for a few days.

It's all about the sauce.

This sauce was born very quickly out of the desire to eat only what was on hand.


It turns out what was on hand was at least quality home grown ingredients. We had an abundance of tasty cherry tomatoes I used for this sauce in addition to field tomatoes and home grown oregano and basil.

Oven roasted pizzaiola sauce

2 large field tomatoes sliced
20 or more cherry tomatoes halved
half an onion sliced thin
3 garlic cloves crushed
1 small shallot diced
large handful of fresh oregano finely chopped
5 large basil leaves finely chopped
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. While the oven is heating lay out all of your tomatoes, onions & garlic on to a large baking sheet. Sprinkle your diced shallots and herbs on top of the tomatoes. Aggressively brush everything with plenty of olive oil. Season with sea salt & black pepper. Place the tray in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until everything is just starting to crisp up with a nice golden brown color. The kitchen should smell amazing at this point.


Transfer all of the roasted goodies into a food mill over a large bowl and grind away. Taste what you have, it's pretty good. Super fast sauce, tons of fresh flavor with oregano breaking through screaming at you for attention. This batch was just enough for 1 pound of pasta. We had a little oven roasted crispy kale as well with this.

So good.

(Stuffed) Zucchini Flowers

Fiori di Zucca


Sometimes it pays to be late. The vendors at the Union Square Greenmarket were packing up just as I arrived. I saw these zucchini flowers being tucked away and knew I had to act fast. I lucked out, the vendor gave me her 12 remaining flowers for $2.00 which is a great bargain. These lovely flowers are usually the highest price starters on most respectable menus.

I used The Fat Red Baron's (ahem, Batali) recipe for this. The Baron did suggest goat cheese ricotta which sounds delicious but, I opted for some fresh, local, farm house cow's milk ricotta instead.

12 zucchini flowers
1 cup ricotta
1 egg
2 scallions (thinly sliced)
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
sea salt & black pepper to taste

Mix thoroughly & get ready to stuff. Each flower took about 1 tablespoon of filling.


A second set of hands is suggested in stuffing these flowers. A pastry piping bag would have also done the trick. Be sure to inspect inside each flower for renegade insects that may be attracted to the sweet pollen.


These baby's were fried in OO on medium high heat and do need to be served immediately. A quick tomato salad was served along side, inspired by a dish had at Il Panino, created by the lovely & talented Marissa Iocco.

3 field tomatoes, rough dice
1 cucumber, half moons
1 tablespoon of capers
handful of fresh basil, cut chiffonade
juice of half a lemon
splash of unfiltered good GREEN olive oil
sea salt & black pepper to taste

Let the juices mingle at room temp in a nice bowl. After a few minutes you'll have some really intensely flavored red juice which I saved to drizzle over the hot zucchini flowers. I grilled the rosemary focaccia which was a most excellent choice to sop up the salad juice.

The stuffed zucchini flowers came out wonderfully. The flowers had nice caramelization with the cheese oozing out, making them really out of this world. We were popping these in our mouth like candy.

An excellent meal served on the balcony with some bubbly Chistalino, a Prosecco style rose wine.

Biker's Bounty

Over the Williamsburg bridge and through the woods...

I mean through the boroughs.

Just thought you might like to see the bounty. It's a nice 10 mile ride round trip by bike to the awesome Union Square Greenmarket. Unbeatable selection of freshness from upstate.

I had one casualty on the ride back, I lost one egg, which isn't bad considering I'm carrying a stuffed messenger bag bombing down the Williamsburg Bridge. Also picked up a bag full of delicate zucchini flowers, jersey field tomatoes, a bag of carrots, rosemary focaccia, and fresh ricotta.

Save gas, ride a bike.

Apple Celery Tomato Soup!

Hello there lovely, loyal TSC fanatics.

I am currently on tour right now, and I am writing the bulk of this blog from our van driving across Ohio.I made this soup before I left, and I really wish I hada bowl of it right now (but most of it is in my freezer waiting for me to get home).


This Apple Celery Tomato soup has a light, refreshing taste that makes it a killer side dish or first course. Its notsubstantial enough to satisfy on its own, if you're hungry like a Lumberjack. Like most of my soups, it's pureed which automatically makes it soup-erior.


Ingredients

4 Tbs butter

4 ribs chopped celery

2 chopped granny smith apples with skins

2 large plum tomatoes

1 medium white onion

4 c water

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 large piece of parchment paper, cut to fit just inside the pot

Heat butter over medium heat, and sweat out the onion. Then add chopped celery, apple and tomato and nutmeg. Allow these to cook for a few minutes and get a nice coat of butter. Add water, and turn heat down. Place parchment over simmering soup and leave on low heat for about an hour.

Blend soup in small batches. Now comes time to strain out all the bullshit: those celery stringsand apple seeds really can ruin your day.

Note: You want a sieve with the smallest holes imaginable, a regular wire sieve didn't do the trick for me on the first pass through. I used my yogurt strainer and it worked perfectly. I suppose lining your wire sieve with some cheese cloth or somethingwould be cool too.


I hope you enjoy this one, I love the light flavor, and I seemingly always have these three ingredients in my house...

-T, T.S.Q