Fruits de Mer II: A bounder speaks of shad

Yes, indeed. Shad.

Out here in Bellingham, Washington shad is pretty much ignored except, perhaps, by a few very old people and some younger ones who've come across the word "shad" as an archaic epithet.

It is the largest herring species, a migratory fish that, like the salmon, swims upriver to spawning grounds each year. In the Connecticut River that "run" comes in late April and early May.

Shad is an bony fish with pale whitish-brown flesh and a broad dark stripe that runs from gills to tail along the spine. It is a bit oily when cooked with the skin, but delicious. The most famous part is the delicacy known as shad roe, so famous, indeed that it makes an appearance in Cole Porter's Let's Do It. The roe is the egg case of the female who is ready to spawn. Dredged in flour containing a little salt and pepper, sautéed in butter and served with a wedge or two of lemon, the reason for its fame becomes absolutely clear. But, to my mind, the real prize is the fish itself.

The the Algonquin story of how shad came to be is really delightful.

Once, a very long time ago, when the world was much, much younger than it is now there lived a porcupine. This porcupine wanted friends. He tried to make friends but as soon as he got near the other animals he'd poke them with his quills no matter how careful he tried to be. The badger, the squirrel, the mole indeed all the animals avoided him. They stayed away from the poor porcupine and left it very lonely.

The porcupine found his loneliness so intolerable that he prayed to the Great Spirit for help. He cursed the Great Spirit for making him so spiny and lonely. And alternately begging and cursing, he continued his prayers incessantly. Above all he prayed to be something, anything other than what he was. So long and so hard did the porcupine importune the Great Spirit that he finally grew weary and not a little short-tempered. In the end, the Great Spirit reached down, picked up the porcupine, reached into his mouth, turned the porcupine inside out and tossed him into the river. The porcupine, now become the first shad, swam away and soon had plenty of friends that schooled with him solving his problem, though not, I would think, exactly as he'd envisioned.

I have known shad as a rite of spring since I was not quite a year old. For me shad came from the Connecticut River and one got Connecticut River shad at Spenser's Haddam Shad Shack. Getting shad involved a picnic and a pilgrimage. We would pack up a picnic basket, climb into my Uncle George's 1949 Packard sedan (then new) and drive east through Meriden to Middletown. We would then pick up what is now Connecticut Route 154 but which then was Route 9. We would then head south along the Connecticut River through a string of riverside villages that are the visual essence of New England. There is a whitewashed, steepled church on the crest of each hill and a cluster of houses most of which date back to the early 19th Century or earlier.

The trip always happened in early May when the dogwood was in bloom, much of the forsythia was still yellow and spring flower abounded. The beauty through which we made the trip is incomparable. The landscape and the west bank river towns were serene and stable guardians on the hills above the river. The river itself was the broad, blue mirror to a quiet, changeless world. It was time travel of a sort, a journey over the rainbow. Our Oz was the string of river towns from Middletown south to Chester and Deep River presided over, on the east bank, by William Gillette's great fieldstone castle on its beetling bluff, a presence that only heightened the magical quality of the journey.

Spenser's was still there the last time I got a chance to look. It sits on Route 154, the Saybrook Road, just south of the centre of Haddam and backed up against a railroad embankment. It is a small, square shack though today it has been brought up to state and local standards.

Fifty years ago some fishermen brought in the shad to the Shad Shack. At a shelf than running under the windows around the front half of Spenser's sat a group of women wearing white aprons bespattered with shad blood and shad guts.They each had 3 buckets and a bowl. In one bucket were whole shad straight from the river. The second bucket was for the innards, heads and other leavings. The bowl was for any roe that they found. The third bucket was for fillets. These women - I remember at least 4 - also had a compliment of filleting knives. A woman, barely looking away from the shelf, would reach down and extract a whole shad from the first bucket. Then, magically to a young boy, the knives would flash, a roe might go into the bowl, 2 fillets would go in the third bucket and the mass of guts, bones and head would end up in the second bucket all in an instant before the next shad came to the filleting station. It was fascinating, horrifying work and equally amazing when one considers how fast they worked and how bony shad is. In all the fillets of their creation that I ate seldom did I find a bone.

To me, Spencer's is the one and only place to get proper Connecticut River shad.

We'd stop for lunch at Seven Falls State Park, usually after our visit to Spenser's with the shad and roe safely stowed in the ice chest we'd brought for the purpose. Once the sandwiches were eaten the juice drunk and the leftovers packed away we would head home. The unspoken contract required that we would eat shad that night.

My mother baked shad fillets. She made a bread stuffing with Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix heavily seasoned with Bell's Poultry Seasoning with which to stuff the fillets. Atop the central mound of stuffing she laid 3 or 4 short strips of bacon diagonally. Then in the oven it went. While waiting for the shad to cook, I was going to digress on Bell's Seasoning but it is so special in itself that I think I'll leave it for another entry. In about half an hour the shad would be done. We'd have the fish, probably creamy mashed potatoes and a spring vegetable. I would like to say that we had asparagus or fiddleheads with Hollandaise sauce but I introduced that pairing as an adult, baking shad from Spenser's in my own kitchen. It was a great meal, a great joy and the whole meaning of spring on a plate.

I understand that the Columbia River has a shad run. I must find out more about it because I miss that drive along the Connecticut River. The mnemonic shad will transport me there again, I know.