While growing up at the big house in Bakersfield there were many seasonal food rituals: shelling the first peas and poaching them in milk and butter, picking wild apples and berries for jellies, gathering butternuts to dry on the porch. We were localvores before there was a word for it, backyard gardeners, and foragers as well.
In winter, there were smelt fresh from Lake Champlain. I'm still not sure how we came to be deep in fishes one day and eating canned Spam the next; I wasn't overly involved with either meal preparation or any outings on the ice. Mom would cook the smelt (and occasionally perch) cleaned, headless, and pan-fried. My recollection is that the kitchen hung heavy with the odor of re-used fryer oil and stinky fish. She always accompanied them with potatoes from the root cellar for the inevitable moment when someone started choking on the bones, the theory being that a large forkful of mash would force the obstruction further down.
Today at the supermarket, my husband Dan discovered that smelt was on offer at the ice counter. He also associates food with certain times of the year: maple dumplings and buckwheat pancakes at the first syrup, tortiere at Christmas, blood sausage – well, you don’t really want to know that story. He asked the counter gal if the fish were local. She answered that they were from Canada, wrinkled her nose, and said, "You really DON'T want fish from this lake!" Well, in point of fact that's exactly what he did want, but settled on purchasing 1/2 pound of headless, silver beauties.
(Canada is local because I can see it from my back porch, right?)
We were both excited about cooking them, as much as two forty-somethings can be about having secured a coveted seasonal food without having to incur the expense of dining out, or the trouble of catching it ourselves.
They were already cleaned (not perfectly, but I can handle removal of the odd internal bit) and still had the top and belly fins, which were easily removed with kitchen shears. I dusted them with a salt-free mix of rice flour and Penzy's brand Jamaican Jerk seasoning, nothing too overpowering. Very aromatic.
I have to mention that any fish served bone-in is not my first, second, or third choice for enjoyable dining (remember, the choking?) Though as a cook, I realize that everything on the bone tastes better and has less chance of becoming dry during the cooking process.
I pan-fried them in peanut oil in less than six minutes, just like Mom but minus the lingering smoke cloud, drained them on paper towels and served with purple jasmine rice and a mandatory-for-our-health vegetable. Dan and I ate the filets off the bones – they practically fell apart! He even ate one whole, bones and all, and decided it was not the best way to enjoy them. The flesh was delicate, moist, not at all fishy, and greatly enhanced by the addition of sea salt and lime. Not the fish I remember eating. There was no stabbing pain in the throat, no panicked grasp for water, and no leftovers.
