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Planked Shad, Fee
Procure a very fresh three-and-a-half-pound shad, scale, wipe and split open through front without separating. Remove spinal bone, neatly pare all around and make a few light incisions on skin side. Mix in a bowl a light tablespoon butter, three saltspoons paprika, a half teaspoon curry powder, teaspoon anchovy paste, juice of half a sound lemon and half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley. With this preparation carefully rub fish both inside and out and let infuse for thirty minutes, frequently rubbing meanwhile. Oil surface of an oak planking-board and place shad on top, skin side down, spread all the butter over and set in oven for thirty-five minutes. Bring to oven door, sprinkle grated white part ("fibres") of a small fresh cocoanut over and reset in oven for ten minutes more. Remove, place board on dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A split shad, seasoned with a curry-and-anchovy butter and finished with fresh coconut, roasted on an oiled oak plank. Most of the work is in the boning and the sourcing; the cooking is quick and the original timing is the part to distrust.
- The timing is far too longForty-five minutes will dry a split 3.5 lb shad to cotton. A butterflied shad of that size is done in roughly 18-25 minutes in a hot oven, when the thickest flesh flakes and reads about 135-140F. Add the coconut for only the last 3-4 minutes so it toasts rather than scorches.
- No temperature is givenRead the instruction as a hot oven, 425-450F. Preheating the plank helps the skin side set on contact.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of paprika is about 3/4 teaspoon. A "light tablespoon" of butter means a scant one, not a heaped one.
- The plankUse untreated wood, oak or cedar, with no varnish, glue or kiln oils. Soak it, oil the surface, and heat it in the oven before the fish goes on. A plank used this way will char at the edges and stain permanently.
- Shad bonesRemoving the spinal bone leaves the notorious rows of floating intramuscular bones that make shad boning a specialist's job. Ask a fishmonger to bone it, or accept that diners will be picking. If shad is unavailable, a similarly oily split fish -- bluefish, mackerel, mullet -- takes the same treatment.
- Sourcing shadAmerican shad runs are much reduced and several Atlantic states restrict or prohibit the fishery, so availability is seasonal and regional, mostly in spring. Buy from a reputable supplier and confirm it is legally landed.
- Fresh coconut "fibres"This means the white meat of a fresh coconut, grated fine -- not sweetened flaked coconut, and not coconut flour. Dried unsweetened flakes are the nearest substitute; toast them briefly and add at the very end.
- Anchovy pasteAnchovy paste is salty. Taste the butter mixture before rubbing it in and hold back salt entirely; the anchovy and the fish supply it.
- Yield and serviceA 3.5 lb shad serves three to four. The board is meant to come to the table on a platter, the folded napkin absorbing oil and keeping the hot plank off the dish.
Shad, Alosa sapidissima, was the great spring fish of the American Atlantic rivers -- the Delaware, Hudson, Connecticut and Potomac -- and its arrival was a fixed point in the eastern cooking year, prized for the roe as much as the flesh. Cooking it split and pinned to a board before an open fire is generally traced to Native American practice along those same rivers, adopted by colonists and later carried indoors to the oven, where the plank survived mainly as a serving conceit and a way to keep an oily, fragile fish in one piece. The Virginia shad plankings, still held as political gatherings, preserve the outdoor version. What marks this particular version is everything rubbed onto the fish: paprika, curry powder, anchovy paste and grated fresh coconut, an unusually cosmopolitan set of flavours for an American shad dish.