The Generous Galley Eats

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BOY WONDER

Here is a nice, fat haddock. Hold the beggar by the tail and scrape forward, with the knifeblade at a right angle to the surface. The scales should come off easily.

Slit the belly from gills to vent with a shallow cut that will open the cavity but not cut the organs. The viscera should come out in a simple whole. Wash out the cavity with special attention around the backbone.

Cut off the head, just behind the fin. Cut off the tail. Cut away the fins and spines with a v-cut. For fish-cleaning, you'd better have a knife as sharp as a samurai's ceremonial sword.

Cut away the filets from the top by letting the knife rum down the backbone, lifting the filet away. Cut carefully around the spike and then along the ribs.

To skin, start at the tail, carefully separating about an inch of skin from flesh. Angle the blade slightly down, hold the skin (on underside), near the blade and use a sawing motion to run along the skin.

Quahog chowder is made very much like fish chowder: open A quart of quahogs and reserve the juices/ mince the clams fine/parboil lots of potatoes for 5 minutes/dice and try out a cube of salt pork / saute a couple of sliced onions in the fat/pour onions and fat in a stewpot and dump a layer of half the potatoes over all/sprinkle on the minced clams, salt, pepper and a a sifting of flour/toss the rest of the potatoes on top, and sprinkle salt, pepper, and flour again/add 2 1/2 cups of boiling water and cook 10 minutes/add a chunk of butter and four cups of scalded milk/ the last addition is the clam juice and a cup of water, which you've heated to boiling, strained, and thickened by the addtion of a tablespoon each of butter and flour heated together to make a paste called a roux.

Stuffed quahogs use up the bigger, tougher clams in a delicious way. Its a wing job, and your nose will tell you what to heave together and pack into the shells is with the clam meat you've run through the fine grinder: breading, of course, sauteed onion and celery, some corn meal or cracker crumbs, a breath of garlic, a drop or two of Tobasco, herb, spices, whatever volunteers. Make the stuffing moist, claw half-shells together two by two, bake for 20 minutes or thereabouts.