Scup

Not sure exactly where to post this, but it seemed to fit better here than anywhere else. I was coming home to Stonington with a friend from Pats Power Equipment shop in Charleston RI (chainsaw needed tweaking), when my friend stated he wanted to buy some fresh fish. In passing a Mom and Pop fish store called "SEAWELL SEA FOOD" located just pass the Pawcatuck underpass going west on route 1, we decided to stop. After purchasing the fish he wanted, my friend noticed a "Conch Salad" sign in the showcase. He was given a small sample to try. He immediately purchased it and I followed his example. For two days afterwards we have been calling each other up to talk about SEAWELL's conch salad. This has to be the best conch salad I have ever tasted, far surpassing what I had made in the past. The owner told us that her mother makes the salad. I guess this really is a Mom and Pop seafood store. I hate to recommend a specialty food since people's taste can vary all over the place. However, my friend was of French extraction, his wife was Italian, I am of Sicilian/Romanian blood, and my wife is of German ancestry. All thought this was the finest conch salad they ever tasted; apparently quality can sometimes pass all ethnic boundaries.

Bryan A.

Good to know. Was it like a seveche? (If that is how you spell it.)
Raw cooked in acidic foods.

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2003 Parker 2530 "El Mar".......click the pic
1973 Seacraft 20SF

Scup

Brian,

I do not know what was in it, or how it was prepared. When I had made it myself in the past, my conch (even though I steamed it in a pressure cooker) still had a rubbery texture. Seawell's was not rubbery at all, and its flavor was out of sight. The owner's mother must have really known what she was doing. I considered asking them for the recipe, but never did. When a professional develops a special dish, quite often they guard it with their life. For years now, I have been trying to get the clam chowder recipe from the monastery at Ender's Island without luck.

halfpoint69

When you use conch in a salad you NEVER steam or cook. You marinate in a lemon or vinegar mixture. As mentioned before sevece. If you are going to cook it then, here is the rule. 1 1/2 up to 2 minutes or 5 hours. 5 Hours in a red sauce. there is no in between. Its either or. Anything in between and you are eatin a rubber boot. If you describe the salad as to what type, i can help you with a recipe. Was it a cream sauce, a vingary, a clear, a white, a red. Get my drift? Describe the flavor as to what herbs were tasted etc.

Scup

Halfpoint,

I sort of knew that I was doing something wrong with my conch salad, but it was the best I could come up with. Actually, I did not know I doing anything wrong until I ate some of Seawell's conch salad. This is what my wife says is in the salad:

A trace of red pepper, garlic, olive oil, there is something that looks to be orange in color (very small amount, maybe chopped red pepper), celery, and it does not have a taste of vinegar, she thinks it has a faint taste of anise, there is a taste of seasoning but it is hard to pick out just what is in it, although we can see some black dots. It almost looks like a food processor was used to make it as things are chopped very fine, with the exception of the conch. I think I might have cleaned out their supply last time. I had my wife go back today for another two pounds. Same flavor, but the conch was just slightly tougher than the first batch. I think if I would let it sit for a day or so in the frig, it probably would marinate even more and approach the texture of the first batch. The trouble is, it is not going to last too long for us to find out, I am down to just a couple of ounces.

Bryan A.

Scup you sound like a crack addict!!!!
Do we need an NBS intervention.

I'm going to have to get some of this stuff, Psst, hey buddy, can you score me some good conch salad??

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2003 Parker 2530 "El Mar".......click the pic
1973 Seacraft 20SF

Scup

I am always trying to eat strange things that I catch, one of these days I will probably end up poisoning myself. Once I picked up pail of mud snails thinking they were periwinkles. Cooked them up and they tasted fine, but it was almost impossible to get them out of their shells even after cooking. Another time I came home with several dozen shrimp I had caught in a foot of water. Not sure just what variety they were (maybe Manta) but after trying them, they tasted like mud. Still, I do have some successes. After frying up a bunch of battered Spearing, they ended up looking like French fries with eyes. For a quick easy meal, they were great, eyes and all. Being a kid from Brooklyn, I could remember seeing Spearing in the showcase windows of fish stores, especially in the Italian neighborhoods. I knew they had to be edible, just had to figure out how to prepare them. Maybe Halfpoint will come up with a good recipe for conch. I always caught them in my pots but never knew how to prepared them to their full potential. The fish wholesalers tell me that the Canadians create a big market for conch; they love them too.

Bryan A.

Ted's bait in Old Saybrook moves alot of conch through his shop there. I'm not sure where he sells it or who it goes through but guys bring bags of it in.

In Wesbrook here you could probably get a few dozen walking around at low tide.

Would love a good receipe to try.

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2003 Parker 2530 "El Mar".......click the pic
1973 Seacraft 20SF

Andy

I did a search for conch salad recipes there are a ton of them this one sound like it might be good.


Conch is a giant sea snail whose knobbed, flaring, pink-white shell has been a symbol of the Bahamas for centuries. This salad features seviche, or conch that has been "cooked" by the acidity of citrus juices. If you live in a large city with a West Indian population, you may be able to find conch at your local fish market; however, cooked bay scallops make a great stand-in.
Ingredients

1 pound uncooked conch or bay scallops
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped tomato
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup fresh lime juice
1 1/2 teaspoons minced Scotch bonnet or habanero pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preparation

Place the conch between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap, and pound to a 1/2-inch thickness using a meat mallet or rolling pin. Cut conch into 1/4-inch-wide strips. (If using scallops, heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add scallops; cook 5 minutes, and drain.)Combine conch or scallops and the remaining ingredients in a large bowl; cover and chill for at least 1 hour.

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http://cthuntingnshooting.com/

tunaless

What a site! you find out there are others that have equal or worst mental issues. I went thru that "eat whatever you catch" phase(20 yrs ago). The process was fry it first (everything taste good friend), if it was good, then cook it in a spicy italien spaggetti sauce, if it was still good, then try it raw or slightly coked with butter and garlic. Mantis shrimp were a disappointment, but there were some success. Quarter decks were good, small skimmer clams fresh were great if you cut out the belly. Big spearing (we used to have a big spring run where they spawned in the newly growing eel grass and marsh grass) these suckers were the size of big smelt, so you could gut them to reduce the gross factor. Spider crab=failure, smooth dogfish, skate wings, sea robins =winner.

Now, onto my beloved winkles, aka whelk. I potted them for about 5 yrs, and with the exception of going to bed every night thinking I was going to wipe the horseshoe crab out of existence, I loved it because the catch rate was much better then in lobstering (sometimes you would get 25 per pot).
The good news is that they are curtailing the horseshoe crab take.

The important part.....eating them!

item 1: Eat the right whelk! there are 2 types, channel and horned whelk. Channel whelks taste better! Channel are the smooth ones that have like a burlap cover to the shell. horned whelk are like they are names, with knobs on the fattest part of shell.

item 2: fillet and slice thin. very tough to describe, but when you clean them, you want just the good meat. so clean the "guts" out, and if you boiled, taste the piece that has holds the "security door", as it is the toughest part.

item 3: on the thinness thing, we used a deli slicer. We would load it with 3-4 meats the, make them paper thin.


item 4: pre taste. 1 out 5 or so whelks taste like crap. Don;t ask me why, but for some reason, some of them just taste and smell like el crapo. try to get them out of the mix as fast as possible.


item 5. MArinate! we would make them in a conch salad and wait 24-36 hours before we would eat it.


I'm salivating as I type. each time I head to Montauk, I take the big pot and boil a dozen to bring back north. in the fall, I freeze up a bushel and they are killer with fra dialvla sauce.