Dining on an invasive species and other matters
Nobody asked me, but Nancy Longo, owner-chef of Pierpoint Restaurant in Fells Point, needs to add to her regular menu the dish she created the other night with blue catfish, the voracious invasive species that has bullied its way to infamy in the Chesapeake Bay.
Recall that 2024 is the Year of Eating Chesapeake Catfish, with emphasis on the hordes of blue catfish threatening to put the bay fishery out of balance. Longo says she has consumed or cooked 175 species of fish over the years, but never blue catfish. At a special dinner Thursday evening, she added it to her repertoire — a filet with chive beurre blanc sauce, served with potatoes au gratin and asparagus. It was superb.
“It was surprisingly tender,” Longo said of the catfish, “and flavorful.”
Get it on the menu, chef. One more thing: Joe Zimmermann, science writer with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, reports that blue catfish now account for an estimated 75% of the fish biomass in parts of the James and Rappahannock rivers of Virginia and might have reached the same level in parts of the Patuxent River in Maryland.
Nobody asked me, but if the Orioles were to spot leads to their opponents in every game this season, requiring the Birds to come from behind, most fans would be OK with it. I mean, bring it.
Recently acquired fact: The Redner’s supermarket on Eastern avenue in Dundalk sells more fried chicken — cooking, at times, more than 1,000 pieces per hour — than any of its 44 stores in Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
I want to thank Charles Redd, owner and mechanic at Redd’s Auto in Govans, for posting a clear list of hourly prices for his services: “$100 minimum, $150 if you watch, $175 if you help, $200 if you worked on it first.”
Nobody asked me, but it appears the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster has spawned in social media an incalculable number of experts in the piloting of ships, the design of bridges, the fabrication of steel and the logistics of cargo shipping. And all without the benefit of a formal education or experience. Who knew?
I want to thank Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor, for introducing me to a word I never heard that might be the precise term for what happened in the Patapsco River on March 26: Allision. The word does not appear in my hard-cover dictionaries. However, it shows up in maritime references, defined as “the running of one ship upon another ship that is stationary.” Though Merriam-Webster online lists “allision” as obsolete, its revived usage might reduce the frequent and erroneous use of “collision” to describe what caused the Key Bridge disaster. “Collision” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “the violent encounter of a moving object with another.” Given what happened — a moving container ship struck a stationary bridge — maybe “allision” should be pulled from obsolescence.
I want to thank Sun reader Jack Burkert of
Catonsville for the idea of renaming the Key Bridge for the workers of Baltimore. I could see a grand tribute, all the way back to the slaves, freed people and immigrants of the 18th and 19th centuries, the men and women who built the city, who built the railroads, who sweated in the mills and canneries, the 20th century workers who made steel, built ships, erected the bridge and those who died last month in its collapse. A workers bridge.
Attention must be paid: The Budapest Times reports that Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s lone Republican in Congress and a big fan of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, is slated to address an Orban lovefest again later this month. This bromance has been going on for years; my first mention of Harris’s affection for Orban was in this space in 2018, when the congressman complained that the U.S. was spending money to promote a free press in
Hungary. Under Orban, Hungary quashed press and academic freedoms while eliminating judicial independence and embracing nationalist, anti-immigrant policies. At one point, the parliament of the European Union declared Orban’s government a “systemic threat to the rule of law.” That didn’t
seem to bother Harris. He’s accepted a medal from Orban’s government and addressed right-wing conferences in Budapest. This year, promoters of the conference have billed Harris as an American “heavyweight” who has “spent 13 years battling in the ‘liberal jungle.’” Imagine calling Andy Harris a “heavyweight” and the very red 1st District a “liberal jungle.” The world is upside down.
Nobody asked me, but I suspect that the three-year reign of “Gender Queer” atop the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books has more to do with the title than the content. Those who want to eliminate books about gender identity from public libraries — for fear that their teenage children might be exposed to them, might even learn something from them — ought to savor the freedom we all have to not read something. Having the choice of what to read (or not) is a beautiful thing, even more important than what any individual chooses to read, and that liberty ought to be celebrated, not decried.
I’d like to thank Mark Hendricks, author of “The Central Appalachians: Mountains of the Chesapeake,” for introducing me to words I never heard: Extirpate, rocky talus, lek, Mafic fen and crepuscular. I looked them up and would love to provide the definitions, but, as you can see, I’ve run out of space.