Shad Roe

My mother used to serve shad roe every spring. I remember that it was weird but I liked it, especially when it was served with bacon. So when I visited Connolly's fish market recently and saw a beautiful pair of roe I snatched it up, even though my failures at cooking roe have outnumbered my successes. I don't usually eat bacon any more, and I didn't want to buy a whole pound just to use a strip or two, but I crossed my fingers and reached for James Beard.

"It seems to be a dish that has but two extremes -- wonderful and horrible." Just my memory. I read on. His favorite recipe, clearly, is "smothered shad roe", which involves an unconscionable amount of butter and some bacon. I read the recipe for broiled shad roe, which included the sentence: "Personally, I think that to parboil and then broil shad roe is to make it unfit for human consumption." Unfit it often is, and I remembered somehow having done that to it in years past.

I then reached for the tried and true Joy of Cooking. All the entries under shad roe called for canned roe, and all the recipes under roe (which was also shad roe) started with parboiling. Rombauer and Becker agree that overcooked shad is tasteless. I decided to go with Beard's approach, remembering that in Julie and Julia Rombauer is portrayed as not ever having considered testing the recipes in Joy. To ease the quantity of butter I used 1/2 butter and 1/2 canola oil.

James Beard's smothered shad roe: melt and warm 3 oz of butter (I used about 1 and 1/2 oz. with an equal amount of oil) per pair of roe. Dip the roe in the melted butter; then cover the pan and simmer over a low flame for about 12 to 15 minutes. turning once. I did this, and served it with boiled whole wheat pasta dressed with sun dried tomatoes and shitake mushrooms, and a Sarah salad (post coming shortly).

It was delicious!