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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The roe that may go to the tickling of a single palate for one meal would be capable of development into thousands of lusty fishes that, even without a miracle, might feed the multitude.--Dr. J. Ernest Scott, Bucks County Historical Society, 1908.
Has it ever occurred to you, sir, when you eat one of a pair of fried shad-roes for breakfast, how many shad you consume in embryo? If the roe is from a good-sized fish, certainly not less than twenty-five thousand. O thou piscivorous Leviathan! thou has devoured in germ, at a single meal, and merely as a relish to thy coffee, a hundred thousand pounds of fish.--Thaddeus Norris, known among anglers as Uncle Thad; Lippincott's Magazine, 1869.
Keeping a single female may mean reducing the spawn by a half-million eggs! Fried shad roe is delicious, but nothing tastes that good. --Robert Elman, Fly Fishing Quarterly, 1992.
I have a suggestion for Dr. Scott, Mr. Elman, and Uncle Thad. Don't fry it. If you like shad roe, it does help, yes, to have a cast-iron skillet with a tight-fitting glass lid, but don't exactly fry the roe. Before going further, I should declare that this account is not intended as a survey of shad cookery or an extensive collection of shad recipes. First, I want to describe how I cook shad roe, then milt, then fillets boned and unboned, then whole shad. I will put all the personal experience up front and then gradually work in some things that others do. My way of cooking roe I learned from another fisherman many years ago, and I promptly stopped sauteing it in the conventional manner.
SHAD ROE
Cover the bottom of the cast-iron skillet with bacon, thick-sliced if you want to go sooner. Snip the bacon to fit. One contiguous layer will do. There's no need to separate the sacs at this point; they look nice in their bilateral symmetry. Place them vein side up or vein side down--cosmetically and otherwise, it doesn't matter. You can cook two or more sets of roe sacs side by side if your skillet is large enough. The ones I use are nine inches across the top and seven inches across the base, with glass lids. Salt and pepper the roe sacs. Cover the pan. Put it on the burner at medium heat, and do not go away. Do not answer the telephone. Exile wives, children, and even grandchildren--out!--for a couple of minutes while you listen. After the bacon begins to sizzle, turn down the heat to the lowest level you are able to achieve without turning the burner off. Shad roe can explode if steam inside it builds up too rapidly. As a...
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