Charity Robey

Giving thanks like it's 1621

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Thanksgiving Shelter Island style: scallops and Brussels sprouts.

If pilgrims and Native Americans actually had a feast of Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621, they probably ate bay scallops, and probably did not eat turkey. Certainly, the Butterball had not yet been invented. 

I was well into my 20s before I tasted my first Peconic Bay scallop, and I still remember wondering, why have I never tasted a scallop before that was even remotely this good?

Prior to my revelation, I’d been trying to eat bay scallops that filled my sauté pan with milky liquid, refused to brown, and sometimes had a strange chemical taste from a preservative used to make them hold up longer. These were not fresh local scallops from the waters around Shelter Island.

In my opinion, the crowning glory of a well roasted Thanksgiving turkey is the bronzed skin, and the same rule holds when I’m lucky enough to have bay scallops on my holiday table.

Browned food not only looks great, it tastes great, because getting that brown crust develops umami flavors. Browning requires high heat (it only happens at temperatures over 285F) and food that is not wet — a challenge with scallops, since they readily soak up liquid. 

This dish marries local Brussels sprouts with local scallops, and can be a side dish, or a main dish, especially if you’ve got one of those pesky guests who like to pardon turkeys. 

Bay scallops sautéed with shredded Brussels sprouts

Four servings

1 lb. bay scallops, not previously frozen, soaked or washed

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

2 ounces speck, coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon caraway seeds 

1 pound of Brussels sprouts, ends trimmed, coarsely chopped to make about 3 cups of shredded sprouts.

Salt and ground pepper

1. Place the scallops in a strainer, remove any bits of shell that remain, and let any liquid drain off, but do not soak or wash them. 

2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a cast iron skillet, and test to make sure it’s hot by putting one scallop in the pan. When you hear sizzling, add about half the scallops to the pan. Space them out and let them cook undisturbed until they are brown on one side only, and not cooked all the way through. Remove the scallops one by one to a platter and cook the other half in the same way. Cover the scallops with foil, and set aside while you sauté the sprouts.

3. Add another tablespoon of oil to the skillet, and then the speck and caraway seeds. Sauté the speck over medium heat for two minutes.

4. Turn the heat up a bit and add the shredded Brussels sprouts, stir to coat them with olive oil, and then let them cook undisturbed until the bottom layer starts to brown, and sprouts are bright green. Stir the sprouts to give a new bottom layer a chance to brown, only 5-10 minutes total cooking time.

5. Add the scallops to the sprout mixture, toss well, and let them cook another minute or two while you add ground pepper and salt to taste. Serve immediately.

North Fork History Project: The scallop industry has a rich history

One offshoot of running a company that’s been in the shellfish business for 90 years is aquatic and historical clutter. Ken Homan’s office at Braun Seafood in Cutchogue is an archive of shellfishing ephemera and Native American history, a collection that feels like a room at the American Museum of Natural History. 

Ken’s father, 90-year-old Jim Homan, who headed the company for over 50 years, is a firsthand witness to the 20th-century history of scalloping on the East End. Mr. Homan took over an oyster shack started in 1928 by George Braun and turned it into one of the largest seafood distributors on the East End. Peconic bay scallops had a lot to do with that 

“The oyster business was going to hell,” said Jim Homan. “I wouldn’t say we ‘got into’ scallops. You only get into scallops when the scallops are here to get into. There were a few in the late ’50s, and they really hit ’em in the ’60s and the ’70s,” he said. “We used to fly them out — a fleet of planes going up to New England, with 13 five-gallon cans on a single engine and 26 cans on double-engine plane.” 

Foraged food as economic engine

Bay scallops have been an important food on eastern Long Island as long as there have been creatures to gather and eat them. The archaeological evidence that Late Woodland period Native Americans ate scallops is extensive. Large numbers of scallop shells have been discovered in middens on Robins Island, Shelter Island, Orient and other sites.

The first evidence of commercial scalloping on the North Fork comes from newspaper accounts of local people in 1857 observing a boat from Connecticut harvesting scallops just northeast of Robins Island. By December 1873, commercial scalloping was local and a Southold newspaper reported that scallops from New Suffolk were taken to Port Jefferson by wagon and sold for 3 cents per quart. In the 1880s, a U.S. Fish Commission Report described scallop shacks in New Suffolk. “Piles to the height of 8 or 10 feet and covering a quarter of an acre were alongside the opening houses,” the report reads.

On Dec. 2, 1884, Charles Congdon of Shelter Island sold several gallons of scallops to John Elsey, a New York seafood distributor. The sale took place just after the railroad linked New York City and Greenport in July 1844, establishing a vital link in the supply chain. Now there was same-day delivery of bay scallops to the enormous New York market.

For the next 100 years, scalloping was an important factor in the East End economy. A newspaper account in the archives of Oysterponds Historical Society describes a bed of scallops found off Bayview in 1899, from which baymen took anywhere from 30 to 60 bushels a day. In February 1900, thousands of bushels of scallops washed up on the south shore of Peconic Bay. “The baymen shoveled them like pebbles and carried them off in double arm loads,” reads a handwritten account in the society’s CA Wood Collection.

Jim Homan remembers selling bay scallops to many New York restaurants during the 1960s, including Sardi’s, the 21 Club and Luchow’s. They were often fried, sometimes “half and half” — a mixed fry of oysters and scallops — or served broiled with bacon. On a Tuesday in February 1965, Luchow’s offered “Bay Scallops à la Poulette en Casserole with Long Grain Rice Pilaff” for $2.65, according to a menu in the collection of the New York Public Library.

Scallopers on Peconic Bay in the late 1970s or early 1980s. (NYSDEC photo)

How to get ‘a mess of scallops’

Gathering scallops decades ago involved a bayman pulling a dredge — an iron frame with a bag attached — along the bottom of the bay from a sailboat, at least until outboard motors became common in the late 1950s. 

Some baymen working today still use dredges handmade by Paul “the Blacksmith” Nossolik, who worked for 60 years near the waterfront in Greenport. Keith Clark of Shelter Island remembers visiting Mr. Nossolik in his shop. “His fingers were black and there was soft coal all around the shop up to your knees,” he said. “You came out of there smelling like a smoked eel.” 

Hoot Sherman, Shelter Island supervisor in the early ’80s, said the opening of scallop season completely dominated the life of the town in the days when the harvests were huge. “Every year for the first weeks after opening day, I couldn’t find anybody to work the ferry,” he said. “They were all out scalloping.” Children missed school to go scalloping and everyone who could hold a scallop knife spent afternoons opening at one of the many scallop shacks on the island.

Bay scallops have to be opened the day they are taken because, unlike oysters, their shells don’t close and they spoil quickly. “If we had scallops like in the ’60s, we wouldn’t have enough baymen to catch them,” Jim Homan said. “And there wouldn’t be any way to open them. Then, everyone had an opening shop.” 

A 1949 photo of Alfred Tuthill in a catboat, the scallopers’ vessel of choice at the time, on Peconic Bay. (Shelter Island Historical Society photo)

A brush with extinction

In 1985, a devastating die-off caused by harmful algae blooms signaled the beginning of a death spiral that brought the Peconic Bay scallop close to extinction. Since baymen take adult scallops at the end of their life cycle, overfishing has never been a significant factor in the decline of the bay scallop population. The problem was fueled by water pollution, an increase in predators and environmental changes that affected the scallop’s habitat. In 1996, the entire annual scallop harvest for New York State was nine bushels.

Scallop season, which had opened in September for as long as anyone could remember, was pushed back to the first Monday in October and then, in 2005, to the first Monday in November to allow the few remaining scallops more time to spawn. In 2006, a reseeding program headed by Stephen Tettelbach at Long Island University began to support wild bay scallop populations by planting millions of larval scallops in the Peconic estuary.

Jim Homan has a sure-fire method to assess the health of the bay scallop populations, based on the fact that the sweet morsels are as tempting to seagulls as they are to chefs. 

“When you go past the floating docks and you see them all full of scallop shells, you know there are scallops in the creek,” he said.

While not back to the bountiful harvests of the ’70s and early ’80s, scallop numbers have increased over the last decade, and bay scallops are still an important part of many a North Fork holiday table. Ken Homan, who has a keen interest in Native American history, said he likes to make a stuffing with bay scallops, a Thanksgiving tradition that’s probably a lot closer to what Native Americans and colonists were actually eating than roasted turkey.

Top photo caption: Ken Homan (left) and his father, Jim, at Braun Seafood in Cutchogue. (Charity Robey photo)

Theinert family remembers vets and lends a hand.

COURTESY PHOTO U.S. Army First Lt. Joseph Theinert

In March 2010, Army First Lt. Joseph Theinert, 24, went to Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division, serving his country, which was his life’s goal. He died June 4 of that year disabling the second of two IEDs that threatened his unit. Just before the explosion that killed him, he ordered the 20 men under his command out of the area to safety.

On the eve of the ninth Veterans Day since Joe Theinert’s death, his mother Chrystyna Kestler and brothers William (Billy) and James (Jimbo) Theinert spoke about some of the veterans whose example inspired Joe, and how the family has worked to honor his memory in a way that recognizes his respect for the veterans he knew, and his care for the men who served with him.

Billy, Joe and Jimbo grew up in a family with military service in its DNA, with multiple World War II vets, a grandmother who was in the WAVES and Army service going back generations.

 

When the boys were young, the family lived with their mother’s father, a Pearl Harbor survivor. Billy, the oldest, remembers his grandfather spoke mainly about how nice it was in Hawaii and not much about December 7. Jimbo, the youngest, remembers the Purple Heart license plate on their grandfather’s car, but not much about how it got there.

Another role model was Mike Skovira, Chrystyna’s uncle, who served in World War II in the Battle of the Bulge, and told Joe about his experiences. Chrystyna said, “Joe sat at Uncle Mike’s knee and he couldn’t get enough of him, he so looked up to him.”

Jimbo said his brother’s desire to hear the war stories of veterans reflected his sincere interest in understanding what it was to be in battle. “He wanted to hear and learn from their experience,” he remembered.

Uncle Mike, who is now 93, was bereft at his nephew’s funeral, telling Chrystyna he feared he had influenced Joe to undertake the mission that ultimately cost him his life.

“I told him that he just added to an already-committed young man,” Chrystyna said. “Joey loved Uncle Mike’s mission — the protector.”

At the Shelter Island School, all three Theinert boys came to know and respect Bob Morgan, a legendary 4th grade teacher and veteran of Vietnam. “He was a commanding presence, a disciplinarian and he cared,” Jimbo said. “Morgan was the guy who always made sure he had a Kleenex or a handkerchief on moving-up day. He was a big softie.”

The boys’ father, James, celebrated each son’s 10th birthday with a “guy’s bonding trip” to a place of the boy’s choosing. Billy opted for camping in Maine, but when Joe turned 10 he asked to visit the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg. “I thought it was like going on a school field trip,” Jimbo said. “I wanted to go to a Celtics game in Boston.”

Joe wanted to enlist right out of high school, “but my parents were not supportive of that,” Jimbo said. Instead, he went to Valley Forge, a military school, finished his BA in History at SUNY Albany, joined the New York Army National Guard and volunteered for active duty.

“Joe wanted to protect his guys, to care for them,” said Billy. A year after Joe’s death, his family invited the 30 soldiers of his unit to Shelter Island, shortly after they redeployed home. “It’s not a normal thing, to connect with a Gold Star family,” Jimbo said. “It was difficult for them to do but Shelter Island is a special place.”

Camp Quinipet hosted the retreat and the American Legion stayed open 24 hours a day during the visit, so every soldier had somewhere to go. “It was personally helpful for me and for the entire family,” Jimbo said, adding that it showed them a way to honor Joe’s memory by hosting retreats to help veterans address mental health issues, suicides, PTSD, and to navigate the available resources for dealing with those issues.

On property in New Mexico owned by the family, they created Strongpoint Theinert Ranch, and have hosted close to 50 veterans over six retreats.

This Veterans Day weekend, Strongpoint Theinert and The Nature Conservancy are partnering to hold a veterans’ retreat on Shelter Island at the Manor House that will include the same elements of a ranch retreat. Vets will participate in a service project to benefit the preserve; there will be sessions on wellness, self-care and V.A. resources; and the participation of a mental health professional.

“We always have one really [tough] hike,” said Jimbo. “‘Embrace the suck,’ — it’s a big military phrase. Exertion, but also a good opportunity for discussing things.”

According to Jimbo, there have been more casualties in Joey’s unit stateside due to suicide, drug overdose and drunk driving than died during the deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“And the [unit] is not alone” he said. “That’s why we feel so strongly about the work we are trying to do.”

They're back: Peconic bay scallop season under way

BEVERLEA WALZ PHOTO
Forever young. Skip Tuttle, 79, heading out yesterday morning for the opening day of scallop season

For East End families who fish, the first Monday in November — opening day for bay scallops in New York State waters — is a ritual not to be missed.

This year Shelter Island resident John Tehan was joined by his son Michael, who lives in Cutchogue. They left Congdons Creek on the east side of Shelter Island around 7:30 a.m. facing stiff winds and rain most of the day and fetched up on the other side of the Island nine hours later, wet and tired, but still speaking to each other.

They unloaded bushel bags of scallops in a parking lot on Bridge Street several miles away from their truck.

Shelter Island bayman John Kotula and his daughter Jillian left Congdons Creek before dawn on Nancy’s Devotion, which is usually one of the first boats to return on the morning of opening day. But this year, father and daughter didn’t pull up to unload until after 1:30 p.m.

As they lifted damp burlap sacks full of enormous scallops, Jillian helpfully pointed out that if her father had taken her suggestion to go to Noyack in the first place, they wouldn’t have wasted time in the northwest, and the low tide that was causing them to hoist the bags four feet from the deck of the boat to the back of the pickup would have been on their side.

The captain did not argue the point.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Jillian and John Kotula unloading scallops Monday at the Congdons Creek dock.

The Kotulas headed home, where they would be joined by the rest of the family, armed with scallop knives, ready to shuck for as long as it took.

Bay scallop harvests have always been cyclical, but were once worth over a $1 million to East End commercial fishermen, even in down years. Environmental factors, such as runoff from fertilizers and antiquated septic systems have hurt the fishery during some recent years. But with improvements in water quality and a successful and ongoing reseeding program, the scallop population has gradually rebounded. Last year accounted for $1.57 million of revenue, the highest value harvest in New York since the 1994 harvest of $1.76 million.

Discussing the lessons of the day in the late afternoon at the Congdons Creek town dock, the general consensus of the scallopers, including those who had ventured out as well as those who were gathering intel for later, was that Noyack had scallops.

Opening scallops, which must be done as soon as possible after they are caught, can be more work than catching them. Bayman Sawyer Clark, 20, who had his 10 bushels limit by 10:30 a.m., was grateful for an assist with opening from his grandmother Ann, who was pretty sure Sawyer knew how to open scallops before he got his license to fish as a preschooler.

“Just catching them is easy,” he said. “It’s standing there for 10 hours opening that’s hard.”

Charlie Manwaring would have liked to buy even more Peconic Bay scallops from baymen for Southold Fish Market on Monday, “The size of the shells, the meats, are beautiful,” he said.

He brightened when asked about his ace crew of scallop openers. “I actually got my old crew back from last year,” he said. “That’s the hardest part. It takes a lot of time to open them.”

Mr. Manwaring said it’s too soon to draw conclusions about the season based on a very windy first day. “It’s not a good account of what is to come,” he said. “A lot of guys didn’t go today.”

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
A blue-eyed scallop from John and Michael Tehan’s hard-earned bushels.

Since the number of scallops that made it into his store on opening day was down from last year, Mr. Manwaring set the price for the first day at $20 a pound, higher than last year.

He said scallop counts might be lower due to the wind that turned some scallopers back and drove seas that gave others a drenching.

“The east wind was not our friend,” he added.

Survey says scallop numbers trending up

For 14 years, marine biologists have inspected the same 20 underwater sites from Flanders Bay in the West to Orient in the East twice a year, counting and measuring bay scallops at each site to document population changes.

In the October 2018 survey, numbers of adult scallops were roughly the same as 2017, which was the most valuable harvest in two decades. Even better, the numbers for seed scallops were much higher than last year, and since these are the scallops that will spawn in spring, and be harvested next fall, there is reason to hope for a strong harvest in 2019.

Professor Stephen Tettelbach of Long Island University and his team made another positive observation during the October dives. They documented growth rings in some mature scallops that indicate they are the result of a second spawn in fall 2017, and could fuel more population growth if these middle-aged scallops live to spawn again in 2019.

Amazon HQ2 on Shelter Island- A modest proposal

COURTESY ILLUSTRATION

One of America’s top companies is narrowing down the search for a location for its new headquarters — a choice that could bring 50,000 jobs and $5 billion of construction investment to some lucky place in North America. How about here?

Amazon, the company that generates 43 percent of U.S. online sales, is in the final stages of the search, and even though they would not consider it, and we would not allow it, I enjoy thinking about what would happen if they chose an Island with ferry-only access, 100 miles east of New York, as an East Coast bookend for their current Seattle digs.

It would be the largest company to locate on Shelter Island since the Lima Bean Farmers Cooperative began to grow and process frozen beans in 1951.

Come to think of it, that Lima Bean Cooperative didn’t end well. Bad weather caused crop failures, the picking, packing and flash-freezing jobs went away, and the local farmers who established the cooperative lost their money. So maybe we don’t mention that whole saga, especially since the problem was really just climate-related, and beyond the intervention of humans.

The competition to be Amazon’s new home has given the company an excuse to detail its hopes, dreams and values like a contestant on The Bachelor. The wish list for Amazon’s new headquarters includes population, (over one million should be enough) a well-educated populace, access to recreation, (a lot is good) and proximity to universities. This list closely reflects my own process when choosing a place to live, what kind of car to drive, or a mate; do a lot of research, and find something outdoorsy and smart.

Although the last census put the population within commuting distance of Shelter Island at under half a million, we all know those figures are suspect. Like the lima bean thing, we don’t need to get too specific. Besides, Amazon currently supplements its human workforce with 45,000 robots in its warehouses, and will undoubtedly be hiring some to work in HQ2.

If Amazon did come here, we’d have new words to learn. It is said there are no workers or bosses at Amazon, only associates, and those associates are never fired, they are released like undersize porgy. Like many American companies, they refer to their warehouses as fulfillment centers. This moniker is a little confusing to me, since I think of a fulfillment center as place where happiness is attained, and in this case it’s a place where happiness is temporarily stored, packaged and sent out for delivery.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in an interview with Washington Business Journal that he likes to putter around in the morning, and he doesn’t have meetings before 10 a.m., a practice entirely in keeping with the pace of life on Shelter Island, where pretty much everyone is either taking their kids to school, working around the house (theirs or someone else’s) or engrossed in sweeping, mulching, and dump-visiting early in the day.

Amazon loves to brag about its scrappy, thrifty corporate culture as reflected in their celebration of the door desk, a staple of office furniture that, according to legend, Bezos invented when he visited Home Depot and realized he could save some money. He bought a door, attached some 4X4s, and christened it a door desk. It was by all accounts, very wobbly. On Shelter Island, we just call it a desk, and thanks to the skills of our populace, ours don’t usually wobble.

One of the suggestions in Amazon’s request for site proposals is a place that will think creatively about real estate. Finding imaginative solutions to housing problems is in our DNA, as our many citizens who have lived for extended periods on a boat moored in Dering Harbor can tell you.

Another carrot of opportunity that Amazon is dangling before the noses of civic leaders is a $15 an hour minimum wage, which sounds like a lot except the New York State minimum wage for Long Island is set to rise to $15 an hour by 2021.

It’s true that Shelter Island didn’t even make the short list for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, but that shouldn’t stop us from dreaming big. All it would take Jeff Bezos to fall in love with Shelter Island is a 15-minute ferry ride, and everyone knows that a person in love can do irrational things.