Page 72 - Spring2009

Some of my skewers. It was cold and we were hungry and en- sea salt and fresh water: a fisherman’s breakfast
favorite ways joyed this fish, though we needed to pick out the with hot coffee and crispy baguette.
When people ask me how I prepare this
long thin bones. The flesh of the alewife, as with
to prepare most other herring species, is delicious. Benjamin bounty I always think of the scene in Forrest
the alewife Franklin and George Washington both enjoyed Gump when his shrimping partner describes all
are fry ‘em, feasting on the spring run of a larger herring, the the ways to cook and eat shrimp, ending with
“shrimp sandwich.” Some of my favorite ways to
American Shad.
bake ‘em, The alewife has to be cleaned carefully if the prepare the alewife are fry ‘em, bake ‘em, pickle
pickle ‘em, roe and milt are to stay intact. This is the work ‘em, chop ‘em, and even use some as bait. The
chop ‘em, the hunter-gatherer has to do to enjoy Nature’s roe and milt can be lightly fried or baked. Hard
food first hand. These generative organs are the frying, which blackens the outside of the filets,
and even use first target for the fish cleaner, and I keep a small makes the fine bones easy to eat, crunchy. With
some as bait. bowl for them. I slit the belly from the anal pore regular frying you have to be careful of bones
to the ribs and tease out the yellow row and white and not just wolf it down. Children should not
milt, rinsing them in cold spring water, and add- eat this fish without an adult to separate the bones
ing them to the bowl. Next, I easily scrape off the for them so that they can enjoy this treat.
iridescent scales and place them in another bowl, Pickling is an art, with the right balance of
which makes final clean-up easier. Then I filet the water, sea salt, spices, onions, garlic and vinegar.
fish with a sharp thin knife, flip to the other side I often don’t wait more than one hour before
for the other filet, then toss the skeleton with head sampling the thinner pieces, which get “cured”
attached into a bucket for eventual disposal. My quicker, but they’re great the next day and the day
best speed for this whole process is three minutes, after. They’re usually all consumed by friends
so if I have twenty fish I will be working rapidly and family within a couple of days. You can’t be
for one hour. Thirty fish equals one and one-half afraid to use the sea salt liberally since pickled
hours, and so on. foods are supposed to be salty to aid their pres-
But at the end of this work I will have a sig- ervation. Pickled alewife goes great with fresh
nificant amount of fish and fish organs, maybe bread, potatoes, rice or pasta. I like a cold dark
five or ten pounds total. And I get a reward too, as beer with them but others prefer wine.
I get to eat the roe and milt and scraps of filets that However you prepare them, consume the
I was simultaneously cooking in the oven with alewife with the knowledge that you are eating
a traditional and sacred food.

THE ALEWIFE

The alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) is a species of herring, a relative of the larger shad. They are anadromous fish, that
is, they move between fresh and salt water during their life cycle, but not to breed, like salmon. There are also landlocked
forms called sawbelly or mooneye. The front of the body is deep and larger than other fish found in the same waters, and
its common name is said to come from comparison with a corpulent female tavernkeeper (“ale-wife”). In Atlantic Canada
it is known as the gaspereau. In southwestern Nova Scotia, it is called a kiack (or kyack). In the Southeast U.S., when sold
and used as bait, the fish is often referred to as “LY”. This fish has, in the past, been used as a baitfish for the lobster fishing
industry. It is also used for human consumption, usually smoked. It is caught (during its migration up stream) using large
dip nets to scoop the fish out of shallow, constricted areas on its migratory streams and rivers.
In the North American Great Lakes alewives are perhaps best known for their invasion of the Great Lakes by using the
Welland Canal to bypass Niagara Falls. Alewives colonized the Great Lakes and became abundant mostly in lakes Huron
and Michigan. They reached their peak abundance by the 1950s and 1960s. Alewives grew in number unchecked because
of the lack of a top predator in the lakes (lake trout were essentially wiped out around the same time by overfishing and the
invasion of the Atlantic sea lamprey). For a time, alewives, which often exhibit seasonal die offs, washed up in windrows
on the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Their control was the impetus for the introduction of various Pacific salmon species
(first coho, and later the chinook salmon) to act as predators on them. This caused the development of a salmon/alewife
fish community, popular with many sport anglers. Alewives, however, have been implicated in the decline of many native
Great Lakes species through competition and predation. Source: Wikipedia

70 Wise Traditions SPRING 2009