Jul 20 2008
Local Fish, Shoreline Seafood and the Westfield Annapolis Farmer’s Market
Wow, that’s a mouthful. I had planned to pick peaches and blackberries this weekend at Homestead Farms in Poolesville, MD but hadn’t figured on the heat, the humidity, the sun. As it was, I was up in that area on Saturday, so we visited the Lotte Plaza in Germantown instead. We did a very bad thing and spent the money on a Zojirushi water dispenser. Michael managed to convince me away from the bakery, but not before I spotted two birds fashioned out of castella with a white bean paste filling on the inside and features painted on them. I wanted them very much, mostly for the cute factor, but he pulled me away. I did get some more Kasugai ume ame (plum candy). Then we came home and got rip-roaringly drunk.
This morning we made coffee with a french press and water from our Zojirushi dispenser. Then we made plans to check out the Westfield Annapolis Farmer’s Market, after being excited by the prospect of fish and local chicken advertised.
The Westfield Annapolis Farmer’s Market is not the best Farmer’s Market for a few reasons. 1, there are only a few stalls. Riva Road Farmer’s Market has a lot more selection and a lot more produce. 2, While it is local produce, the Riva Road Farmer’s Market only has produce grown in county (or products made in county). 3, the only fish we saw today was wild-caught Alaskan salmon. While it was tasty and buying it would certainly encourage a small business, it is by no means local fish. It was also $20 a pound, which is a load of money.
We did visit the roaster for Cosmic Bean, who was friendly and knew his stuff. We’re just about out of coffee beans right now, so we picked up a pound of Ethiopian Harar (fair trade, organic, etc) roasted to full city. I can’t wait to try it. I may have to go early to the Riva Farmer’s Market and scope him out for sumatra. MMM, sumatra. He was out of the regular sumatra beans by the time we made it there today.
Then, with the premise of local fish for dinner as our guide, we headed to Shoreline Seafood in Gambrills, MD. Not only is the business super-local for us, but the shop is huge. They have a restaurant counter aspect to their business and they have a huge case of fish - including crabs and shellfish (tons of clams!). The prices seemed reasonable to me for fresh fish, and they clearly labeled their local fish. Today they had local white perch, redfish, rockfish (striped bass), and the flounder was thought to be local too. We picked up two rockfish fillets, a bit over a pound cost us about ten dollars.
Rockfish being Prepared
Michael baked the rockfish fillets in foil (after cutting them in half - four servings), dressing them with thinly sliced onion from our CSA, thinly sliced lemons, garlic, frozen bell pepper strips, salt, pepper, old bay, parsley and a few tiny pats of butter on top.
They cooked up very well and the flavor of the fish was great.
We certainly couldn’t eat Rockfish more than twice a week or so - the mercury content is less than albacore, but still pretty high. I vote for trying the white perch next time we go, if we can have them clean it and possibly fillet it. Michael and I have absolutely no knives worthy of cutting on delicate fish flesh. We may have to invest in one.
That was our boring weekend. I’ve been considering making up some local peach and berry preserves, but it feels like such a waste of good, local peaches to make them into preserves (and I can’t eat raw peaches because of my birch sensitivity). Still, maybe next week we’ll try to pick up a couple quarts of yellow peaches and some blueberries or blackberries and dream up some tasty preserves.
at the organic butcher we went to (all of the cow was local and most of the pig, they also labeled all of the seafood that was local), they had wild-caught alaskan salmon and it was ~$18/lb or so. Pretty common rate I think.
I like rockfish. I haven’t met a fish I don’t like to eat, though (except maybe Spanish Mackerel).