Four Flounders

This year we signed up for a fresh fish CSA from Cape Ann Fresh Catch. For those of you not familiar with a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), they are a way for an producer of agricultural goods (think farms) to connect directly with their consumer by selling 'shares' of their products. So, we pay an annual fee and get a weekly distribution of food. We have a vegetable share, a meat share, a fish share and a wheat share.

In this case, we pay a group of fishermen to deliver a fresh catch of fish every week. Cape Ann Fresh offers a fillet or whole fish share. So, being the overly ambitious (or stupid) people we are, we, of course, must have the whole fish share. Because filleting your own fish is the hard core way to go, right? Plus, we get the bonus of carcass to make some delicious fish stock - nevermind we will have so much that we will need to bathe in it. We only started this last month, but so far we have had the pleasure of filleting a cod, scup, hake and this week, flounder.

And that's where we begin - four flounders, whole, with heads and guts. These pupies were swimming in the Atlantic this morning and they will be dinner tonight. That is fresh!

Thanks to this wonderful video by Chris Parsons the owner of a killer Winchester restaurant, Parson's Table (get there, you won't regret it and yes, the burger is so worth it.), I quickly became a flounder filleting machine!

That's right, four flounders produces sixteen beautiful fillets.

After a little thought, I decided to steam these over a little red sauce and pasta. All I did was reduce down a big can of diced tomatoes with a splash of balsamic, added a spoonful of basil pesto (from our reserves from lasts year's freezing) a couple of garlic cloves and some broccoli. After adding the cooked pasta, the fillets sat on top steaming for about 10 minutes.

The flounder was fresh, but it wasn't my favorite of the bunch. It didn't flake in nice chunks and the texture wasn't really firm. Good thing I have 12 more fillets to perfect my technique. The thing that always fixes up a fish is pan frying it in a lot of butter.

Out of the fish we tried so far, I think the hake tops my list, but the really, really fresh cod cannot be underestimated. I am definitely looking forward to summer.