New York Times: With a Bit of Love, the Blues are Just Fine. Discusses the fine art of handling and cooking bluefish, which are in abundance on the east coast in summer but which tend to, erm, get really stanky unless handled properly and cooked quickly.
Reading the level of precautions needed to get good bluefish (for instance, plunge fish into icy brine immediately upon capture), I start to wonder about other fish. For instance, when we were living in Cambridge I bought a bag of mussels at Whole Foods and cooked them in gueze (Belgian lambic, which doesn’t mean fruit flavored, just naturally fermented). Unlike the delicately-flavored wonders that I’ve had in so many restaurants, these were unpalatable. After three years I don’t remember the details, but it was definitely a taste problem, not a texture problem (which I would have written off as overcooking). It makes me wonder how one actually finds a good fish market other than by trial and error. Any Boston area readers have recommendations?
(Incidentally, this article showed up in my aggregator three days in a row. I’m grateful that the Dining and Wine RSS feed is back, but less happy if it keeps re-posting old content as new.)