snapper
Growing up, a favorite supper was red snapper fresh from the Gulf. My mother might call me at the fish house and suggest we bring home a snapper. I'd ask my father's okay and then from the iced display case select a fish about five or six pounds, scale it, take out the gills, slice down the dorsal fin on both sides and with pliers pull that out (so as not to leave its tiny bones), and the ventral fin, score it on both sides so the skin shrinking didn't tear and buckle the meat during cooking, and we'd take it home whole.
Laying it flat on a greased sheet, cookie sheet I suppose, Mama poured canned tomatoes, and maybe onions I don't recall, and put it in the oven to bake. The result was scrumptious. And what was left, head and leftover meat, she made fish chowder, another favorite.
Friends used to tease me about, seeing we were in the seafood business, that we must have fish three times a day. Truth, we only had fish maybe once or twice a month, usually fried mullet, and mama peeled and sliced potatoes the long way and made french fries. Once in a while, fried snapper, or black grouper. If we had scamp, I'd skin and dress one and Pop would be invited because along with Spanish it was his favorite, more likely for dinner, which was at noon.
Spanish mackerel once or twice in season, also baked as I remember, like those we used to get at Laritz Cafeteria in Pensacola, later Morrison's Cafeteria. Speckled trout now and then, though it was no one's favorite.
In early days of the 1940s when we brought them up from South Florida lakes, a favorite was fresh water bream and perch; at some point each fish had its own State certification seal clamped on at the gill opening, but later as I recall, we stopped getting them and I didn't have fried bream again until forty years later when we lived in Apalachicola.
Favorites that we had for supper more often were fried oysters or fried shrimp. I liked the larger "select" oysters and still do, but mama preferred we bring the smaller "standards". Sometimes oyster stew. Sometimes baked oyster casserole, loaded with oysters layered with saltine crackers.
Why is all this in mind? Because on my way back to Breakfast Point from the dermatologist, I stopped at Gandy's and bought seafood for Monday supper of gumbo: shrimp, bay scallops, claw crabmeat, oysters. Roux with plenty of cut okra. And I bought a red snapper, which we baked Tuesday for dinner (mid-afternoon), and this morning my breakfast was a snapper sandwich with black coffee.
Growing up, our seafood gumbo always had oysters and shrimp. If my aunts EG and Ruth were cooking, it had fresh boiled crab, couple dozen large blue crabs we caught in the Bay with fish heads on a string and a crab net. You cracked the crab apart and got the meat out with your fingers and maybe a pecan pick, a messy meal at but always best, and the crab claws, everyone having a pair of nut crackers;
but in this marriage and family I was the only one to want oysters in my gumbo, so since mama died, my portion has always been finished separately. Served in a bowl, rice underneath, not cooked in because that turns rice to paste. And these days a dollop of sour cream (or plain yoghurt) on top. Even many decades later, life don't git no better'n 'nis.
EG used to recall that in the big house, the Old Place, when she was growing up, Mom always prepared oyster stew for supper on Christmas Eve, and that she always put lots of catsup in hers, making a red stew. My father did not remember that at all, but then EG was six or seven years older and grew up in a "different" family setting. Also, their older brother Alfred was drowned in the wreck of the Annie & Jennie in January 1918, a couple weeks after Christmas 1917, and the family never celebrated Christmas after that; so my father, who was six when Alfred died, grew up with different memories.
EG also remembered that when they had fried oysters for supper, "everybody got six." In my growing up years two and three decades later, when fried oysters for supper, on the table was a platter piled high with oysters, and you served yourself as the platter was passed around the table. Six??!!! Eighteen or two dozen fried oysters would have been my meal those nights, with grits or french fried potatoes; and maybe eat the last six or eight in the kitchen after supper as I helped mama with the dishes.
T
Laying it flat on a greased sheet, cookie sheet I suppose, Mama poured canned tomatoes, and maybe onions I don't recall, and put it in the oven to bake. The result was scrumptious. And what was left, head and leftover meat, she made fish chowder, another favorite.
Friends used to tease me about, seeing we were in the seafood business, that we must have fish three times a day. Truth, we only had fish maybe once or twice a month, usually fried mullet, and mama peeled and sliced potatoes the long way and made french fries. Once in a while, fried snapper, or black grouper. If we had scamp, I'd skin and dress one and Pop would be invited because along with Spanish it was his favorite, more likely for dinner, which was at noon.
Spanish mackerel once or twice in season, also baked as I remember, like those we used to get at Laritz Cafeteria in Pensacola, later Morrison's Cafeteria. Speckled trout now and then, though it was no one's favorite.
In early days of the 1940s when we brought them up from South Florida lakes, a favorite was fresh water bream and perch; at some point each fish had its own State certification seal clamped on at the gill opening, but later as I recall, we stopped getting them and I didn't have fried bream again until forty years later when we lived in Apalachicola.
Favorites that we had for supper more often were fried oysters or fried shrimp. I liked the larger "select" oysters and still do, but mama preferred we bring the smaller "standards". Sometimes oyster stew. Sometimes baked oyster casserole, loaded with oysters layered with saltine crackers.
Why is all this in mind? Because on my way back to Breakfast Point from the dermatologist, I stopped at Gandy's and bought seafood for Monday supper of gumbo: shrimp, bay scallops, claw crabmeat, oysters. Roux with plenty of cut okra. And I bought a red snapper, which we baked Tuesday for dinner (mid-afternoon), and this morning my breakfast was a snapper sandwich with black coffee.
Growing up, our seafood gumbo always had oysters and shrimp. If my aunts EG and Ruth were cooking, it had fresh boiled crab, couple dozen large blue crabs we caught in the Bay with fish heads on a string and a crab net. You cracked the crab apart and got the meat out with your fingers and maybe a pecan pick, a messy meal at but always best, and the crab claws, everyone having a pair of nut crackers;
EG used to recall that in the big house, the Old Place, when she was growing up, Mom always prepared oyster stew for supper on Christmas Eve, and that she always put lots of catsup in hers, making a red stew. My father did not remember that at all, but then EG was six or seven years older and grew up in a "different" family setting. Also, their older brother Alfred was drowned in the wreck of the Annie & Jennie in January 1918, a couple weeks after Christmas 1917, and the family never celebrated Christmas after that; so my father, who was six when Alfred died, grew up with different memories.
EG also remembered that when they had fried oysters for supper, "everybody got six." In my growing up years two and three decades later, when fried oysters for supper, on the table was a platter piled high with oysters, and you served yourself as the platter was passed around the table. Six??!!! Eighteen or two dozen fried oysters would have been my meal those nights, with grits or french fried potatoes; and maybe eat the last six or eight in the kitchen after supper as I helped mama with the dishes.
T