Bluefish… “blecchkk”, “it’s too fishy”, It’s too strong”, “it’s oily”.

Ahhhm, no, no, no and no!

Bluefish in the hands of someone who knows how to cook it, is an amazing versatile fish. Canned tuna and smoked salmon are perennial favorites to most and are way fishier, stronger and oilier than bluefish. Treat her right and you will end up with some great results.

Enter our end of summer bluefish:

cobb smoked Bluefish Fillet with corn risotto, grilled zucchini, tomato-basil relish and spiced popcorn

This dish is a hyper-local ode to New England. The fish is from the Cape, The corn and basil are from Verrill Farm in Concord, the zucchini is from Wards Berry Farm in Sharon, the tomatoes are from Kimball Fruit Farm in Pepperrell and the popping corn is from Hurricane Flats, in S. Royalton, VT. You can’t get much more local than this. We have been making this dish for many years. Some years, unlike this one, local peaches are available and we substitute peaches for the tomatoes in the relish.

To prepare this dish, first we fillet, portion and then brine the fish in a salt, brown sugar, water solution in the refrigerator overnight. The next day we give it a quick hot-ish smoke, over corn cobbs, (that have been dehydrated and are left over from making the risotto), being careful to not cook the fish through. At this point we’re looking to just add some smoke flavor and not cook the fish. The cobb smoke really shines with bluefish, it’s offers a sweet and not too pungent smoke flavor.

When an order comes into the kitchen we take a portion, give it a healthy dusting of our not so secret spice mix and pop it in a pan with a mixture of white wine, garlic and vegetable stock and into a hot, 450 degree oven. Then we bake it until it’s just cooked through. This could be anywhere from 3 to 9 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillet. The best way to test the doneness of fish is with a cake tester, after a few minutes of cooking poke the thickest part of the fillet with the cake tester, if there is a change in resistance, it needs to cook longer, if it slides right through, it’s done.

I know this is a great dish, customers have been raving about it since it first hit our menu. However it was validated by the Great American Seafood Cook-off, an annual cooking contest held in New Orleans. In 2016 I was asked to represent Massachusetts. Of course, I was happy to do it; a weekend in The Big Easy, yes please. I went with Mark Dieffenbach, one of EVOO’s longtime sous chefs. I chose to cook this dish because, to me, it really does represent summer in Massachusetts and that was what I was asked to do. We had a blast, eating great food, a bit of drinking and I kind of remember some late night bowling with shots of whisky, and, oh yeah a cooking contest… We placed third, I wanted to win and if I said I was happy with third, I’d be lying.

Now let me digress, I have a family bluefish memory. It’s from when I was probably 8 or 10 years old. Some weekends my father would hook up with some of his buddies, head out on his boat in the Boston area or go to the cape on one of his friend’s boats to go fishing. Their goal was to to catch striped bass, but, inevitably the catch was bluefish, which my dad would bring home. My mom, a woman who’s lips, very rarely, if at all, allowed fish or any seafood what-so-ever to pass, would dutifully put the catch into the freezer and ultimately into the trash. However, one time, I’m thinking she wasn’t too happy with dad going fishing again, so she decided to cook it. She took the whole fish, guts, scales and all, covered it with mayonnaise, don’t ask me why, because I don’t know, and into the oven it went. About 2 hours later, which is at least an hour too long. Sunday dinner was served. The whole dried out stinking mess right in the middle of the dining room table. To my young eyes, it was scary. When mom served us fish, it was in the form of frozen fish sticks, never mind this big whole fish with sunken cooked out eyes and jutting teeth. I don’t think that anyone, including my father actually did anything more than poke at it. The stink of overcooked fish and guts remained for days. That was the only time that I can remember bluefish being cooked at home. On top of that my dad’s fishing trips with his buddy’s were scaled way back; I think he wanted Sunday dinner to remain as the usual- roasted meat and potatoes. This experience embedded lasting scars, it was a good 15 years until I tried bluefish again, not that I really tried it the first time. Which is another degression for a future blog post about fishing while sailing and cooking our catch.