Charity Robey

It's the perfect time of year for a North Fork cruise

End of summer? Naaah, it’s the beginning of boating. The best time to float is here. August and September are prime-time for your water-based explorations, and the North Fork is surrounded by aquatic adventure on all sides, whether by motor, sail or paddle.  Here are some options for taking to the sea.

Take a narrated cruise to Bug Lighthouse

If you don’t own a paddle or boat shoes, all you need is two hours of calm weather on a Saturday night to go on a Bug Light Cruise with Bob Allen, great-grandson of the former lighthouse keeper. The Long Beach Bar “Bug” Lighthouse is the insect-like structure that can be seen from any East-facing vantage point in Greenport or Shelter Island. It was built to get mariners safely around a sandbar, just as the tour gets you and your fellow passengers safely from the dock at the East End Seaport Museum to the lighthouse, where you can disembark and take a look. On the way, you’ll see Greenport Harbor, Shelter Island and the most easterly part of the North Fork from a whole new perspective. Sailing dates are still available through September and can be reserved online. Bug Light Cruise and Tour, East End Seaport Museum, 103 3^rd St. Greenport. Saturdays through September. $49/adults, $19/children for a two hour cruise.

BUG LIGHT HOUSE. (CREDIT: JEREMY GARRETSON)

Book a private eco-friendly tour of Greenport Harbor

If you are looking to tread lightly on the environment as you explore local waters, pass up the stinkpots in favor of a vessel that has been operating on a battery since 1999. Glory, an environmentally friendly tour boat of antique design, runs on eight batteries charged by an array of solar panels installed on the roof of Preston’s at the Greenport waterfront.  Captain Dave Berson told me, “If the fish could vote, I’d be President.” Glory is a reproduction of a boat built for waterfront tours of an earlier era, and the back-in-the-day experience is part of what Glory delivers as she plies the waters of Greenport Harbor and Peconic Bay.  Glory is docked at Preston’s Dock, 102 Main Street, Greenport. Call 631-477-2515,  or visit http://www.greenportlaunch.com. $140 for a 45 minute private cruise for 4 people; $35 for additional adults and $20 for additional children, up to 10 people total

Live the yacht life without buying a boat

Vintage Yacht Kingfisher offers half-day, full-day, and multi-day charters out of Greenport on its beautiful 1959 50-foot Huckins Fairform Flyer. Each cruise is customized and can include extras like a private chef or tastings, said Dhardra Blake of Kingfisher Yachting and LuxuryDayCharters.com. She called an escape on the boat “the closest thing you can come to time travel”: Last fall, they even created a “Some Like It Hot” experience with retro food, music and the guests’ attire evoking the 50s era of the movie. You can also buy an annual membership starting at 30 hours of boat time. Book through October via www.yachtkingfisher.com or call 813.484.5663. Prices on request.

Sail away for the day with the Layla

How about boarding a 45-foot sailboat for a day ride with a few of your choicest friends? Captain Liz Gillooly and the elegant ship Layla (a Fastnet 45, one of only 19 made) are ready to make that dream happen. Orient is Liz Gillooly’s hometown, and she knows the local waters intimately. A lifelong sailor and U.S. Coastguard Licensed Captain, she could get you across the Atlantic, but if your schedule doesn’t permit that, you can book anything from a two-hour sunset sail to a 6-hour full day circumnavigation of Shelter Island with stops at all the nicest beaches for a swim. You’ll feel like Cleopatra on the Nile. Layla Sailing, 1410 Manhanset Ave, Dock H4, Greenport, 631-319-0161. From $700 for a private sail with 6 guests.

CAPTAIN LIZ GILLOOLY ABOARD THE LAYLA. (PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID BENTHAL)

Get some alone time out on a kayak

If your idea of bliss on the water is a journey under your own power, Shelter Island’s Marine Water Trail is ideal. Put in your kayak at the Burns Road Town Landing on Coecles Harbor, or rent one from Shelter Island Kayak Tours and spend a few hours paddling around the North shore of Mashomack Preserve, one of the most unspoiled waterways on the East End. You will see birds.  You’ll glide over jellyfish. If it’s not windy, you may have the kind of meditative experience that helps you sort out some things.  Get a map of the Coecles Harbor Marine Water Trail, and if you rent, call ahead and reserve a boat from Adam Mills at Shelter Island Kayak Tours, 80 Burns Rd. Shelter Island,  631-749-1990 . $60/adults, $30 children for a 2-hour guided tour; rentals from $30/2 hours.

Dave Daly and Ben Gonzalez, holding on to a sense of place

Ben Gonzalez,left, and Dave Daly with Paco at their Shelter Island home. (Credit: Charity Robey)

WHEN BEN GONZALEZ and Dave Daly decided to start an oyster farm, Dave knew exactly where he wanted to raise bivalves.

His great-grandfather, Thomas Daly, bought a large Southold property in 1919 to get his family away from the flu pandemic sweeping through New York. He put down roots, and over the decades the family extended and built houses all around him. Dave grew up sailing in Southold Bay, and riding the ferry across to Shelter Island for ice cream.

Dave and Ben picked out an underwater lease site in Southold Bay for their new farm in 2013, one of the 10 leases granted by Suffolk County for aquaculture that year.

“It seemed like such a reach to be starting an oyster farm, but the Bay feels like my back yard,” said Dave.

Now six years into the business, they have raised half a million oysters, and a few weeks ago moved to a new home on Shelter Island, up the hill from Chase Creek, and downhill from the golf course with the 7th hole out back, another great location.

Ben’s family is originally from Galicia in Northern Spain, but he grew up in the Dominican Republic and has lived in Buenos Aires and Texas for extended periods. After a 25-year career in marketing with Verizon, he retired. Not yet 50, Ben was ready to start a new business. “My family was extremely concerned when I told them we were going to be oyster farmers,” Ben said.

Dave had no experience raising shellfish either, but he did grow up around boats.

“Motor boats were a four-letter word in our house,” Dave said. “That classic postcard from the 1960’s you sometimes see of two men sailing in Southold Bay — it’s actually my dad and a friend.”

Even before they bought a house in Southold, Dave and Ben bought a 25-foot motorboat, a Maxum. “It’s very top-heavy, my dad calls it the floating Clorox bottle,” Dave said.

Ben told of the time they invited Dave’s dad to cruise with them. “He used to sail to Block Island every year, so we invited him to come with us on our motorboat. He showed up with all these charts and rulers, and when I said, ‘Mr. Daly, we have GPS,’ he said, ‘I don’t trust those things.’” 

Dave added, “If our GPS ever failed, I don’t know how we’d get back.”

Ben was working for Verizon in New York and Dave was in the business school at NYU when they met at the Star Lounge in the Chelsea Hotel, where Dave had gone with group of NYU friends. They married in April of 2011 in Vermont, and it must have been a great wedding because, when same-sex marriage became legal in New York a few months later, they started getting requests from friends and family to do it again.

They adopted Paco, a snaggle-tooth chihuahua mix a few years later. He was a rescue. “A couple of families rejected him because he does bite a little bit,” Dave said. “I had a very ugly dog growing up named Squiggy who looked a lot like Paco.”

Ben said, “I had been hearing stories about Squiggy for years, and I finally saw a picture. He’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.”

They only agreed to foster Paco for a weekend, but when they brought him in the adoption papers were ready, and they wouldn’t give him up.

Dave introduced Ben to the life aquatic when they started coming out to Southold on weekends, and once they found out about oyster growing, Ben went all in. With an education in oyster-raising courtesy of the SPAT (Southold Project in Aquaculture Training) program at the Cornell extension in Southold, “we got 1,000 oysters the size of a pinkie nail to grow or to kill,” Ben said.

They grew.

In the third year of the SPAT program, they learned that Suffolk County had leases for commercial oyster farming. They got into the lottery, were picked to lease a spot in Southold Bay, and joined the nearby Shellfisher Preserve, owned by the Peconic Land Trust, where they operate the land-based part of the farm operation, including tumbling and sorting the oysters.

Once they invested in the lease, they needed equipment, including a boat with a crane to lift 1,000 pounds. They found a bayman selling a scalloping boat, and named the 19-foot Mako “El Pulpo,” or, “The Octopus.”

“The boat has been working these waters for much longer than we have,” Ben said.

In the first six years of production their company, which they named Southold Bay Oysters, had annual growth of between 20% and 40%. They’ve just launched a skincare product derived from nacre, the mother of pearl coating inside an oyster’s shell.

In spite of impressive growth in their first years of farming, sales during the pandemic have been down, as they have been for all oyster farms who depend on restaurants, special events, private parties and tours. Fortunately, the oysters, unperturbed by pandemic, are patiently growing in Southold Bay.

Dave and Ben, with their combined experience in finance and marketing, considered the craft brewing and winery businesses before latching onto oyster farming. Ben was dazzled by the eco-friendly nature of this form of aquaculture, and how it bodes well for the future of the business. “The more I learn about it, the more impressed I am with how powerful oysters are — how they clean the water and establish protective reefs,” he said.

For Dave, it’s more about a sense of place. “The draw for oysters for me was a love for the North Fork and a desire to be here,” he said. “My family used to be here through Thanksgiving and then close the house until Easter. Now there’s pumpkin season and Christmas tree season. The draw for oysters for me was a love for the place and a desire to be here.”

Ben and Dave — Lightning Round

What do you always have with you?  Ben: My wedding ring. Dave: My wedding ring, and Paco.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  Ben & Dave: The Ram’s Head Inn.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  Dave: Southold Bay, the beach. Ben:Orient Point.

What exasperates you?  Ben & Dave: When people come out here to visit and bring a bottle of California wine.

When was the last time you were afraid?  Ben & Dave: Coming back from Fishers Island on our boat, we got caught in fog, and had to try to get out of the way of a massive tanker coming through The Race.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island?  Ben & Dave: Labor Day in West Neck Bay. We go to enjoy the beach and spend the night on the boat. 

Favorite movie or book?  Dave: “Jaws.” Ben: “The Others.” 

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?   Ben & Dave: Kim Tetrault, director of the SPAT program.

Most respected elected official?  Ben & Dave: Steve Bellone, Suffolk County Executive. He represents government that really works.

Opening day is a no show–for scallops and baymen

A deserted Congdon Creek dock at sunrise on Monday’s Opening Day of scallop season. (Credit: Charity Robey)

AS THE SUN rose on the first Monday in November, Shelter Island’s Congdon Creek town dock was deserted — not what you expect on opening day for bay scallop fishing.

A few minutes later, bayman John Kotula arrived, but not to go scalloping.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Kotula said, ignoring a stiff wind and soul-sapping 39 degrees. 

One of the few remaining Shelter Island commercial fishermen, he stood in his boat, Nancy’s Devotion, trying to decide whether to check his conch pots, or go home. Going for scallops was not an option, even if the wind hadn’t been blowing hard. As he knew all too well, there weren’t any to be had.

Shelter Island bayman John Kotula was one of the few fisherman who showed up at Congdon Creek landing on Opening day for the 2200 scallop season. But it wasn’t worth it to go for the shellfish, he said. (Credit: Charity Robey)

For hundreds of years bay scallops have been a source of joy and income to East End fishermen. Tiny and sweet, their season spans the coldest months when there’s not much else to fish for. Even after the adult bay scallops died last year, there was a glimmer of hope with a bumper crop of juvenile scallops.

Keith and Louise Clark of Shelter Island renewed the license for the scallop-processing facility in their basement, an act that was equal parts stubbornness and ungrounded optimism.

“We registered our shop and got our licenses all squared away, but got nothing to deal with,” said Mr. Clark.

The advance reports were so grim, the Clarks didn’t even go out long enough to see for themselves, although Mr. Clark put the culling boards on the boat, and will go out for a look later this week if the wind dies down.

“Most of us need some type of income,” Mr. Clark said. “We’ve just come to the conclusion that there is no money to be made on scalloping.”

Island bayman Tom Field was also a no-show for opening day 2020. Last year he took 12 scallops the first day, and spent the rest of the winter on an 86-foot squid trawler, work he used to do in high school, before he was on his own. This year, he’s fishing the Hudson Canyon instead of the Peconic Bay, even though he said, “I’d rather be working for myself than somebody else.”

Mass mortality

The death of the adult bay scallops in 2019 was shocking, but hope truly eroded in August of this year when researchers and baymen documented a second mass mortality.  According to surveys conducted by Cornell Cooperative researcher Stephen Tettelbach, Ph.D., at three sites with the highest density of adult scallops in the spring of 2020, close to 100% of the adult scallops were dead by the end of August. 

While some scallopers were finding new work, like Mr. Field, researchers were trying to find out what killed the shellfish, and what if anything could be done about it.

An initial study, conducted by Bassem Allam,Ph.D., of the Marine Animal Disease Laboratory at Stony Brook University, reported in January 2020 that 100% of the scallop samples gathered in Peconic Bay carried a parasite that could kill the scallop under stressful environmental conditions. Parasites were also found in bay scallops taken in the waters around Nantucket, where the water is cooler, and where no mass die-offs have occurred.

Although he must conduct more research to prove it, Mr. Allam suspects that stressors, such as increased water temperature and low-dissolved oxygen–symptoms of climate change, in combination with the parasite, may be causing the death of the adult scallops.

Funding any kind of research in the current climate is difficult to find, but the Cornell Cooperative Extension got some federal funds through the Paycheck Protection Program, and hired baymen to conduct dredge surveys to monitor the scallop population over the summer.

One such contract went to Wayne and Donna King of Shelter Island. “We did find some bugs,” said Donna, speaking about immature scallops. “But almost no adult scallops.” They skipped opening day this year. Mr. King said. “You don’t go out in wind like this if you don’t expect to get even a bushel.”

The couple hoped to go later in the week and find enough for their dinner.

A human-induced catastrophe

The progress that Mr. Allam made in understanding what is killing bay scallops gives him hope that it can be addressed. By testing scallops with different genetic backgrounds, he discovered that some are more resistant to disease and death due to environmental factors such as temperature.

“All scallops are not created equal. Some succumb more rapidly to disease,” he said. “That means there may be a way to improve the stock with selective breeding.” 

Mr. Tettelbach’s collaboration with Mr. Allam has solidified his view that the ultimate enemy of the bay scallop is the environmental effects of human-induced warming.

“High temperature, low dissolved oxygen, in combination with the disease,” he said. “Now I feel more strongly that it’s likely due to climate change.”

With the worldview of a historian, and the practicality of a fisherman, bayman Keith Clark doesn’t see how technological advances have done much to improve scallop numbers so far.

“I don’t think there is any hope that we could get back to where we were at the turn of the last century, when it wasn’t unusual for the big sailing sloops to come in with a hundred bushels a day,” he said.

He worries about the bay scallop’s ability to bounce back as it has in the past, “We had brown tide, and a bad run in the 80s,” Mr. Clark noted, “but when you see back-to-back years with zero scallop population, it’s not good.”

 

The fall that just fell

MARTIN BURKE PHOTO Autumn dawn at Congdons Creek.

The fall equinox happened right before my eyes at the Heights post office on Saturday, Oct. 19, when Jim Eklund, still dressed in his three-season uniform of shorts, nearly collided with a person wearing a bulky, hip-length Fair Isle sweater as she barreled through the front door. They do-si-doed, and she eyed his knees.

“How low did it get overnight?” she asked him.

“Shorts weather is almost over, but I’ll go kicking and screaming.”

It’s so last-century to believe that fall starts on Sept. 23 and ends on Dec. 20.

Astronomically-speaking, those dates are the brackets, but this year, the events occurring inside them (so far) have included nor’easters, hot flashes, emotional upheaval and snowfall.

The sunrise over Congdon Creek was warm and windless on the first Monday in November, a day that made some of us fear we’d lived long enough to see the end of commercial scalloping. The unusually placid weather made the disaster coming into focus even more heartbreaking.

When things go badly wrong, it is awful to be reminded that your affairs may be tangled, your life upended, your livelihood threatened, your existence in doubt, but the sun still rises and the earth turns.

Jim Pugh took advantage of the fine weather on opening day at the town dock to get his boat out of the water for the season. He maneuvered a rusty trailer into position (since few were scalloping, there was plenty of room) and proceeded to bail water from a swamped Whaler that was lolling in the water like a half-inflated swimming pool raft.

He rowed it around the dock, nosed up on the landing ramp, and hopped into the water to pull the ancient skiff up onto the trailer. He pressed a passerby (who was hanging around hoping to see some scallops) into service, positioning the boat on the trailer, while the rest of the water drained onto the pavement, down the hill and into the creek.

I was just glad to see that somebody got something good out of the water that day.

Not long after the scallop catastrophe was revealed to me, Russell Glover of Consider Bardwell Farm came by to tell me I’d better throw away that wheel of cheese I bought at the final Havens farmers market — a cheese that was going to get me through the fall.

The cheese-maker’s safety inspector found listeria — a milk-borne bacteria — from milk they had purchased from another farm. The voluntary recall meant they had to shut down production, destroy their inventory and let their staff go, a nightmare scenario for a small cheese maker like Consider Bardwell. Their reaction prevented anyone from getting sick, but how and when they can start making cheese again is in doubt. A GoFundMe effort is under way now that may help them hang on.

Feeling pretty low as I contemplated a winter without affordable scallops and my favorite cheese, I voted. It made me feel much better, even though I had to convince a pollworker that my signature was actually a match with the one they had on file. My penmanship is slipping.

In November and December, steep declines in the striped bass and bluefish population in our waters got headlines and prompted stricter recreational fishing regulations.

Fewer bluefish were landed along the mid-Atlantic coast in 2018 than in any year on record, an existential threat to Bob’s bluefish and blue cheese special, and the snapper derby, not to mention the recreational fishing industry.

It’s not just the people who enjoy fishing, make cheese and round up their winter income on scalloping that are in pain, and have had setbacks this fall. Maybe a new hip kept you inside, or you had to skip a gathering of friends while battling a head cold. You lost an election, or your old dog is spending less time on the porch lying in the sun now that the shadows are sharper, and the sun sets early.

We’re a community that cares for neighbors who are hurting, and likes to support people who need a hand. We are really good at making change locally, but more and more the roots of our problems are global.

The other day, I decided to walk my favorite trail at Mashomack backwards. My goal: to see an entirely new set of water views, hills and hollows. (The trail was backwards — I did not walk backwards, that would be stupid.) A rustle of leaves and a ringed tail sticking out from under a low boardwalk across marsh confirmed that I was not the only one surprised by my path through the woods.

It was good to look at this very familiar place with new eyes. I thought about the first time I laid eyes on Miss Annie’s Creek, 30 years ago, how important this place is to me, and how I must do what I can to take care of it.

When we voted, we made a lot of changes at the state and local level, and we’ve already seen many East End leaders take up arms against the effects of climate change.

Increasingly, it’s the job of our elected officials to figure out what to do. There has never been a more important battle to win.

The Baymen’s Nightmare: All the Scallops Are Dead - The New York Times

There have been lean years in Peconic Bay, on Long Island. But fishermen have never seen a failed harvest like this one.

via www.nytimes.com

 

Sea change-Inside Montauk's commercial fishing industry

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Newsday's Feed Me magazine.

By Charity Robey Special to Newsday Updated July 21, 2019 5:00 AM

 

When Gosman’s Dock, 14 acres of restaurants and shops at Montauk Harbor, went on the market for $52.5 million in 2015, it signaled the latest evolution in a "discovered" coastal town that used to be all about surfing, fishing and dive bars. But walk past the dumpster and ice machine onto the dock that stretches into the harbor, and you’re in another world. You will typically see a forklift operator removing boxes of fish from a boat’s hold, or two guys hefting lobsters into the back of a pickup truck. Welcome to Montauk—past its heyday, perhaps, but alive and still bringing fresh local seafood to people who know enough to buy it up while they still can.

Montauk is not only the biggest commercial fishing hub in New York, it’s one of the largest in the Northeast. But that’s not saying much. In the United States, about 80 percent of the seafood we eat is imported, and most of it has been frozen, thawed and refrozen multiple times while being shipped and processed. Prices for local wild seafood, the stuff landed at the town dock or a dock on the east side of the harbor, hit a high of $21.2 million in 2012. By 2017, this figure had slid to $14.8 million.  

Unlike Gurneys’ or the iconic Shagwong Tavern, Montauk’s commercial fishing boats don’t attract investors eager to keep their businesses afloat, and their property (boats, gear and permits) is not easily transferable from one person to another. Fishers are foragers of wild food in an industry that is heavily regulated, with quotas, licenses and practices dictated by state and federal governments. And unlike farmers, they have no federally subsidized crop insurance to tide them over when their harvest is threatened by wild weather.

John Nolan, his wife, Laurie, and their son John Nolan III are owner-operators of the F/V Seacapture (“F/V” stands for “ fishing vessel”), a boat that hauls in 25 percent of the tilefish caught in the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s region, which stretches from New York to North Carolina. John Nolan III, 32, has been captaining the boat since he was 21, fishing 100 miles off Montauk year-round with a crew of five. They are at sea for 6 to 10 days at a stretch.

Robert Aaronson, John Nolan, Tom Eshenfelder, Armaan Gretarsson, Marty Senkus and Steven Doyles on the Seacapture in Montauk with a load of Golden Tilefish. Credit: David Handschuh

 

On a brilliant October day last fall, the 82-foot Seacapture arrived in Montauk Harbor with 20,000 pounds of tilefish in the hold. It had been a longer trip than usual: While a nor’easter pounded the coast, Seacapture had stayed far offshore, out of harm’s way. The entire crew was on deck in a celebratory state, including one young salt wearing a bunny outfit (Halloween was a few days away), who helped secure the boat as Nolan III stepped onto the dock to an emotional welcome from his mom, his sister Molly and his sister Jean’s baby, a cherub named Bodie. His father was picking up a large order of bacon-and-cheese sandwiches to feed everyone. Cousin and former crewmate Robert Aaronson, who had gone out to the jetty to take in Seacapture’s safe return, was on hand to help unload. Nolan III pointed proudly to the hold, packed full of cleaned, iced fish, and said, “Oh yeah.”

The crew—Tom Eshenfelder, Stephen Doyle, Al Ellis, Mark Semkus and Armann Grettarsson—were ebullient. “We had a little bit of weather,” Nolan III said. “But we fished every day. We have a good boat for it. We were getting beaten up pretty good, good-sized waves one day. Stuck it out and caught some fish.”

Extreme weather, the sprawling thicket of regulations and quotas, and reproduction and migration changes in fish species are existential threats to today’s commercial fishing business. The key to survival is to grow and maintain a sustainable fishery, and the story of how the Nolan family developed the market for Atlantic golden tilefish out of Montauk is worthy of a Harvard Business School case study.

The Nolans catch tilefish on a longline, a 40-mile length of wire rope with 4,000 baited hooks that snap on, an innovation John Nolan introduced to the Montauk fishery in the 1980s, after he and Laurie saw it used to catch tilefish during a fishing sojourn in Florida. Prior to that, most Montauk fishers used nets for tilefish, but the Nolans’ new gear began to outperform the traditional method.

Left: Unloading Golden Tilefish from the Seacapture on the dock in Montauk. Top: Captain John Nolan III on the Seacapture. Bottom: Steven Doyles sorts Golden Tilefish by size in the hold of the Seacapture. Photo credit: David Handschuh

Although it takes a skilled crew to bait and then remove fish from the line without being gouged by the business end of a hook, line-caught fish are never damaged by a net, and the method, when properly managed, results in less bycatch.

It was Laurie Nolan, who shed for five years alongside her husband, that spearheaded another important change in the Atlantic golden tilefish industry in 2004, when she decided the fish was getting a bad rap. Since the 1970s, the FDA had put tilefish in the same category as swordfish, tuna and king mackerel—fish that contain elevated mercury levels and should not be consumed by pregnant women or small children.

Knowing that the warning was based on samples taken in 1976 from the Gulf of Mexico in the vicinity of oil drilling (which can produce mercury pollution), she wanted to see if the local tilefish, which live in deep, clean water and do not migrate, had elevated mercury levels as well. She followed testing protocols and sent samples of fish caught by her family to a lab for analysis. The results showed no danger from elevated mercury levels, the FDA amended the warning and Atlantic golden tilefish became recognized as one of the most sustainable and healthy fish around.

It’s also one of the most delicious. Most of the Nolans’ catch goes to Hunts Point, the vast wholesale market in the Bronx, where restaurants and seafood shops from all over the Northeast go to buy fish. A few thousand pounds is distributed through Dock to Dish, a community-supported fishery program that supplies Montauk seafood to restaurants and consumers, and another 1,000 pounds of whole tilefish from every load goes to Gosman’s to be filleted and sold to East End restaurants. With a firm texture, white flesh and flavor similar to lobster (because of their habit of eating crustaceans), tilefish is a favorite of chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills and makes a regular appearance on the menu at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton. The Nolans’ tilefish is a mainstay at the New York Google cafeteria, where 5,000 employees not only enjoy eating it, they know who caught it.

The same goes for the Jonah crab claws from Montauk’s John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinki. They are fishing partners who have been instrumental in establishing the viability of this meaty- clawed creature, usually considered a bycatch of lobstering. Sean Bennett of Dock to Dish said the Google employees are particularly enthusiastic when steamed Jonah crab claws are on the menu at the company cafeteria.

Googlers may not realize, however, that they’re eating the catch of bonafide media figures, ones who can tell you in harrowing detail about the dangers of the job. Aldridge and Sosinski, longtime partners on the F/V Anna Mary, fish for lobster, and in the middle of one July night in 2013, Aldridge, alone on deck, fell off the boat. He spent 12 hours in the ocean without a flotation device or GPS personal locator beacon before he was pulled out by the Coast Guard. The story of the resourcefulness and resilience he called on to survive long enough to be rescued became a book and movie, “A Speck in the Sea.”

“It’s a job for somebody who has something to prove.”

John Nolan III

Even if you don’t fall overboard, fishing is not for the faint of heart. “It’s a job for somebody who has something to prove,” said Nolan III. “For me, it was my dad, I guess. You got to dig deep some days. You wonder, ‘What am I doing?’ And you just do it anyway.”

Family plays a part even for someone like Dave Aripotch, who happens to be one of the few commercial fishers in Montauk who did not grow up in the business. At 63, Aripotch is “the oldest full-time offshore guy” in the area, and he’s been at it for enough years to prove he’s not just being rebellious. “I’ve been doing this since I was 18,” he said. “Some nights I wake up in a mad panic thinking, ‘I’m going to have to get a real job someday.’ ” Like so many baby boomers born on Long Island, Aripotch went clamming in the Great South Bay as a child, but unlike most, he graduated quickly to working on a commercial trawler, going for swordfish, tuna and tilefish on trips that would have him at sea for weeks. Today he works from the 73-foot FV Caitlin & Mairead.

Aripotch’s wife, Bonnie Brady, is his advocate and shore-side support, as well as a vital voice for commercial fishers at sea, who can’t attend the endless rounds of hearings around issues of licensing, fishing regulations and quotas. “It requires 15 plates spinning,” she said. “If you do it right, you have this great harvest of fish and you get to feed people.”

So far, none of Aripotch’s children has shown an interest in following him into commercial fishing. His first mate, Jackson Urgilez, has been working with Aripotch for more than a decade. Aripotch hopes to work out a deal to pass the boat and his fishing permits to Urgilez when he retires in a few years. “I would like to see him do it. I would like to see fishing stay in this town.”

Montauk’s fishing families have mixed feelings about government regulations and quotas, which can hurt their short-term bottom line but help keep species sustainable in the long run. A prime example is the sea scallop fishery. “Scallops made a big recovery,” Aripotch said. “You had to rotate the areas, which makes sense. They came back. So did fluke, sea bass, striped bass. They put all these regulations in place, and fishing got better.” That is not to say that Aripotch approves of government intervention in his business. A recent proposal, to allow a Danish company to build a wind farm in the middle of a prime fishing area 35 miles offshore, is one that Aripotch and most other commercial owner-operators out of Montauk consider a serious impediment to their business.

Hank Lackner, owner-operator of the trawler Jason and Danielle—at about 90 feet, the largest commercial fishing boat out of Montauk—thinks the threat the proposed wind farm poses can’t be fully appreciated by people who don’t understand how much space in the ocean fishers need to operate. When the nets of a trawler open up, they are like a huge sail moving through the water, herding schools of fish before them.

“Those windmills, you can’t tow a net around them,” Lackner said. “They become closed areas, even if they are a mile apart.”

Lackner’s main cash crop is squid, and for the past two years the cephalopods have been unusually plentiful. The handful of commercial fishers who have permits to take squid caught their quota so early, they had to stop fishing by midsummer. Lackner fishes with two of his children and is hopeful that they will continue the family business.

“We’re some of the last hunter-gatherers on Earth,” Aripotch said, as his crew unloaded 50,000 pounds of porgy—equal to the biomass of about five mastodons. The fish were iced, boxed and bound for Hunts Point. “It’s money, but I never lose sight of producing food. Like a farmer ... harvesting fish.” 

By Charity Robey Special to Newsday

True grit.The story behind Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Feed Me magazine.

 

There was a time when an East End fisherman who caught a lot more than he could sell would buy a fryer, set up some picnic tables and open a restaurant. A few of those joints, such as Commander Cody’s Seafood on Shelter Island, are still around because they have the most devoted customers and the freshest fish. Jim Hayward, who started a restaurant named for his dog Cody in 1993, says his success has more to do with simple food rooted in his raising. “If you don’t want the real deal, don’t come here, because I don’t use substitutes. I do home cooking.”

Hayward grew up in Ridgeland, heart of the South Carolina Lowcountry. He was the oldest of nine siblings, and his mother expected him to shoulder the cooking responsibilities from the age of 10. “She’d sit back and point that stick in case I’d burn the food,” he said. “I was cooking for the whole family.” He grew up cooking hearty fare in large quantities: crab boil, fried chicken, pulled pork and ribs — the foundations of his menu today.

Jim Hayward weighs out clams and muscles at Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

On a recent weekday afternoon, 84-year-old Hayward was unloading boxes of porgy, squid and clams from the back of his pickup truck, his dog Frankie (Cody passed in 1995) staying close enough to snag anything that might drop. Hayward is a big man and easily carried large boxes full of iced fish across the gravel yard to the restaurant on Smith Street, which is also the home where he raised his daughters, Chloe (39) and Amanda (35). Inside, Amanda, pastry bag in hand, was putting the finishing touches on 35 chocolate-frosted birthday cupcakes for a catering order.

The gravel yard turned into a parking lot a few hours after Hayward unloaded the seafood. Customers came in for takeout orders, to buy fresh fish or to eat fried chicken and ribs at picnic tables on the patio. To enter Commander Cody’s, they stepped past the fish-smoker still redolent of hickory, squeezed by the drinks cooler, stood next to the blue whiskery waters of the lobster tank and evaluated the vivacity of the clams before they placed their orders for locally caught, home-cooked delectables, whether smoked, steamed, grilled or fried.

Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The restaurant’s reputation extends far beyond Shelter Island — a notable accomplishment, considering a ferry ride and sophisticated navigation aids are required to find it. On a weekday in May, the Mascucchinis from Philadelphia were on their way to Montauk when a little research convinced them to detour to Commander Cody’s. Ron Mascucchini said they had to drive around and come back a few times since the hours of operation here are like the fish: subject to availability. After lunch, Mascucchini, seeing Hayward at the lobster pot on the patio, came over to thank him for the freshly prepared food, including fries with a coating of a peppery spice mix Hayward swears by. He told Mascucchini, “It won’t give you a headache, but it will make you sneeze.”

Hayward came to Shelter Island in the ’50s to farm and fish, selling his catch first from his truck and then from the seafood market in his home, and he has always kept South Carolina culture, family and food close. Hayward’s nephew Gene works with him. Eight of his nine siblings are living, and living well, several in New York. Hayward said, “If you invite the Haywards over, you better have a lot of food because this family will eat everything.”

For many years, Hayward made his living as a commercial fisher, dragging for flounder, but these days he buys most of the fish he sells. “I buy from all the guys who fish. That’s why you got cellphones. You call around and see who has fish. I usually buy striped bass from guys on the South Fork.”

Although he no longer takes a trawler out for flounder, Hayward still dredges for bay scallops, as he did this past fall after the installation of a pacemaker drew a warning from his cardiologist to avoid scalloping for at least six months. Hayward thought the doctor must have meant six weeks, because the season for bay scallops is only five months long. “I don’t know how I got it wrong. I must have seen some dollar signs,” he said. “For the time I could go out there, I felt fine.”

Decades of commercial fishing taught him where to get great fish, and also what to do with it, including preparing the notoriously bony porgy. Porgy is delicious if you can figure out how to remove the rows of short, sharp bones. Hayward stood next to a 10-gallon tub of pristine porgy fillets and said, “When I cut it, it has no bone in it. I filleted those this morning.” You could make sushi from it.

Left: The lobster roll at Commander Cody’s Seafood on Shelter Island. Top: The clam bake filled with lobster, little neck clams, shrimp and muscles. Bottom: Fried chicken. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The menu at Commander Cody’s is a combination of New England seaside cooking (lobster rolls, lobster dinners, clam bakes) with the coastal South Carolina dishes of Hayward’s youth, including a Lowcountry boil — a steaming, spicy pot of crab, corn, sausage and potatoes that hits all the major food groups. Hayward learned to make ribs by watching his uncle use a barbecue pit dug in the ground, a technique that virtually guarantees a stupendous quantity of food, as well as quality.

Hayward makes no accommodation to the contemporary food scene at Commander Cody’s. If tiny bits of parsley have been scattered over your clam bake, it’s not for decorative purposes, it’s food. The posted business hours are loosely observed, and the vibe is fast-casual without the fast. “I tell people, if you are in a hurry, don’t come here to eat. We cook everything to order. If you can’t wait, I’m still going to do it the way it’s supposed to be done. I believe in feeding people and giving them enough to eat. Not putting some rabbit food out.”

Amanda Hayward does all the baking and desserts, including an outstanding blueberry bread pudding served with homemade ice cream — available in very un-Lowcountry flavors such as blueberry-basil and Guinness. And although her dad swears he doesn’t eat ice cream (“I eat yogurt. I don’t like much sweet stuff.”), he is still proud of her exuberant use of dairy products, in line with family tradition, “If you don’t like butter and the real deal don’t come here.”

Blueberry basil bread pudding is served with homemade coconut ice cream at Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

Amanda and Chloe grew up on Shelter Island, graduated from the Shelter Island school and went to college, unlike their dad who left school in the fourth grade. Amanda, who, in addition to the baking, does much of the cooking at Commander Cody’s, worked in the restaurant business in Las Vegas after graduating from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Chloe went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and is manager of education programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem, to the delight (and chagrin) of her father, who would like her to live closer. “She says there is not enough culture out here for her.”

When Hayward’s marriage to Chloe and Amanda’s mother ended, he marked the transition with a celebration. “I do what I do and I do my best. I’ve got a lot of haters but I’m like a steamroller. I roll them over.” He invited 100 people, dug a pit, and roasted an 88-pound hog on an old bedspring in a ring of fire stoked with charcoal and cherry and hickory wood for flavor. “We partied down. When Jim Hayward gives a party, it’s a party.”

Hayward is known on Shelter Island for the big family events he has catered over the years, including celebrations at the Shelter Island home of Gov. Hugh Carey, who was a friend as well as a customer.

Shelter Islander Esther Hunt, 95, is old enough to have babysat for Jim Hayward (she didn’t) and is a devoted customer. She recently described herself as elated when she heard that Hayward had returned from his annual spring stay in South Carolina and would soon be serving up her favorites at Commander Cody’s. “The salmon is very good, and I love his scallops,” she said. “And the servings are so generous, they can last for two meals.”

It’s tricky to ask an octogenarian to articulate his vision for the future, but for Hayward, well into his eighth decade of cooking, an afterlife with food seems like a foregone conclusion. As a child, Hayward said, “I had to learn to cook in big pots,” a life skill that proved valuable. “For a wedding on Ram Island, I cooked 100 lobsters,” Hayward said. “When I go, [the lobsters] are going to be at the Gate.”

A long East End history of clam-eating

Clam chowder made from Melva Sherman’s recipe.

 

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 5, 2019

On the East End of Long Island, people have been opening clams and eating them for a very long time, starting with native Americans who left piles of clamshells behind to attest to their enthusiasm. The Shelter Island Historical Society has a letter written in 1820 by Sylvester Dering describing the discovery of a large number of clam shells found while digging a well- 40 feet down, suggesting some very old archaeological evidence of clam consumption. 

The first published fish chowder recipe in America appeared in the Boston Evening Post- a recipe in verse:

First lay some Onions to keep the Pork from burning,

Because in Chouder there can be no turning:

Then lay some Pork in Slices very thin,

Thus you in Chouder always must begin.

Then season well with Pepper, Salt and Spice;

Parsley, Sweet-Marjoram, Savory and Thyme,

Then Biscuit next which must be soak’d some Time.

Thus your Foundation laid, you will be able

To raise a Chouder, high as Tower of Babel:

For by repeating o’re the Same again,

You may make Chouder for a thousand Men,

Last Bottle of Claret, with Water eno’ to smother ‘em

You’l have a Mess which some call Omnium gather ‘em.

Aside from the brilliance of a recipe in verse (easy to memorize, you’ll never forget to add the thyme) this preparation has a lot in common with another great chowder recipe, Melva’s 1st Place Chowder, which appeared in “The Shelter Island Historical Society Cookbook.” Melva Sherman came to Shelter Island in the 1920s to work as a schoolteacher, married local boy Herbert Sherman, worked as postmaster and went on to build a Shelter Island chowder dynasty.

Her dominance in the chowder realm was crowned when her soup won first prize at the Fire Department Country Fair, and inspired her grandson Matt to capture her method since she did not work from any recipe. He sat at the table with her after they got the chowder simmering and she dictated.

This act of culinary historic preservation on Matt’s part, and the subsequent publication of the recipe he recorded in the Historical Society Cookbook, is a textbook example of how most of the American recipes we still use and cherish today came to be preserved. A person who knew how to make something delicious, let somebody turn it into a recipe, which was often shared in a community cookbook. Community cookbooks are treasure troves for culinary historians trying to understand the food and culture of the past.

Melva’s technique called for grinding the ingredients, and was accomplished with a Hamilton Beach grinder and a cast iron pot, both of which are still in the Sherman family. Since I don’t have an antique grinder I decided to adapt the Sherman family’s recipe as faithfully as I could, and here is the result. Instead of a grinder, I chopped the ingredients coarsely, cooked them, and then used a blender to puree part of the soup to achieve the desired texture. I was used the same kind of cast iron pot. 

And I understand why this clam chowder was so prized.

Adapted from Melva Sherman’s 1st Place Chowder in “The Shelter Island Historical Society Cookbook,” 2013

¼ cup salt pork

1-pound chopped onion

1-pound potatoes, coarsely chopped

12 oz carrots, coarsely chopped

1 large (28oz) can tomatoes or fresh tomatoes blanched, skins removed and coarsely chopped.

4 cups water

Salt to taste

8 dozen cherrystone or littleneck clams steamed in 2 cups water, removed from shells- should yield about 4 cups of clams and a pint of juice.

Or 

Use 4 cups canned clams and a pint of bottled clam juice

Cook the salt pork in a cast iron pot at low heat until the pork gives up its fat. Add the onions and cook over medium heat until they are soft.  Add the carrots and potatoes, and one cup of the water, and continue cooking for 45 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add the tomatoes, and another two cups of the water, bring to a simmer and cook 30 minutes. Add another cup of water as needed to make it thick, but soupy.

In the meantime, scrub and rinse the clams, put them in a pot with 2 cups of water and steam them, removing the clams as soon as they open. Reserve them in a bowl to cool, strain the clam broth into another bowl.  Chop the clam meats, and put them in the bowl of strained broth to stay moist. 

Taste the vegetables to see if they are soft, and add salt to taste. Puree the soup, using an immersion blender, or by transferring two cups of warm soup at a time to the blender and then pour the blended soup back into the pot, until you have a very thick but soupy consistency.

Add the clams and the clam broth to the pureed soup and let it simmer very low for five minutes without boiling, so the clams don’t get tough. Serve immediately.

Oysterponds Historical Society​ ​presents Ms. Robey and Jane Lear hosting Bay to Table: Clams in Oysterponds on Saturday, Sept. 14, from 2:45 to 4:45 p.m. at the Orient Yacht Club. Guests will enjoy a taste of chowder and look back on 10 years of clam-eating traditions and the chowders and clambakes enjoyed today. Admission: $25 for one person; $40 for two people.

Richie Surozenski, Shelter Island Lions Club Citizen of the Year

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Sharon and Richie Surozenski.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on May 9, 2019

Richard (Richie) and Sharon Surozenski were getting ready to watch Jeopardy when the phone rang a few weeks back.

They were in Kissimmee, Florida for a two-week vacation, but their household routine down there is about the same as here. “Sharon was doing the dishes, and I was getting the ice cream ready,” Richie said.

Sharon’s doctor was on the phone. Richie braced himself, hoping it wasn’t bad news about her back condition. When Dr. Frank Adipietro said, “I don’t know if you are going to like this or not,” he listened, as Frank informed him that the Lions Club had named him Citizen of the Year.

Richie said, “Couldn’t you find anyone else?”

He grew up in a house near Chase Creek, the only child of Stanley and Clara Surozenski. His was one of the first kindergarten classes at the Shelter Island School. He still remembers the teacher, Mrs. Kroll, and the ease of his elementary school days in the 1950s. “There would be ten dogs laying around in the schoolyard waiting for their kids to come out,” he said.

It was an adventure-filled, outdoors childhood. Chase Creek was full of blue crabs, clams, oysters and some years there were even scallops. “We caught snappers off the bridge and picked cattails at the end of the creek,” Richie said. “We’d stick the cattail in our mouth and pretend it was a cigar.”

When he was 10 he learned to fry a pork chop and has cooked for family and friends ever since. His clam chowder, which requires at least a half-bushel of clams, is legendary. His father taught him how to produce a real clambake — the kind that is buried —a dying art that he has kept alive.

Graduating from Shelter Island High School in 1965, Richie was one of almost 30 graduates, about a third of whom made lives here.

Before going into the Army a year later, Richie worked at the Saltaire Nursery, which later became The Shelter Island Nursery. He liked it so much he went back to work there years later. In the late 1960s, he worked at Kraus’s, a restaurant and scallop shack that was located at the end of what was then known as Louis’ Beach. He also worked for Jernick Moving and Storage, and was a mechanic at the auto shop known as B&D.

Shortly after getting out of the service, Richie was with a group of friends at a hangout called the Southold Inn, when he stopped in his tracks as he was heading for the last ferry back to Shelter Island. “I saw this blond girl and I flashed her a wink and she winked back and I said, ‘Boys, we aren’t going to get the last boat.’”

Sharon Jablonski, from Cutchogue, stopped at Southold Inn with her cousin to get something to eat and show off a new haircut called “the lumberjack.” Richie was felled.

In those days it was called “going around the horn” to drive from the North Fork around to the South Ferry, where they would come and get you for $5.

They married on September 12, 1971.

Their first child Richie II (Richard) was born in 1972, followed by Sherri in 1976. Richie II works for J.M. Piccozzi, and his three children, Michael, 15, Joseph, 13, and Caitlin ,10, attend Catholic schools. Sherri is a captain on the South Ferry.

In 1981, Richie went to work for the Village of Dering Harbor. “The first day I walked in, unlocked the shop, and asked myself, what am I going to do today?” he said. “I decided to treat the entire village like one big estate, plowing snow, trimming bushes and keeping the streets clear.”

The aftermath of Hurricane Bob was a little tougher. That cleanup, which he and an assistant completed, left him with a concussion from a snapped tree branch, but the village was cleared in two days.

Every year a long section of the 10K course brought thousands of runners through the Village, prompting Richie to fill every pothole the week before the race. When late afternoon storms turned the low spot along a section of Shore Road into a lake a foot deep, Richie was there with a pump so the race could go through, prompting long-time race organizer Cliff Clark to comment: “There should be more Surozenskis on Shelter Island.”

In 1984 Richie and Sharon moved in with his parents long enough to demolish their house next door and build themselves a new one. “My friends came on a Saturday morning after Thanksgiving and we tore it down,” Richie said. “Frankie Klenawicus, God bless his soul, came down here with his backhoe, and he wouldn’t take a dime. I had to put a basket of clams in the back of the backhoe.”

Richie II was in third grade at the time, and told an adult who asked what happened to his house, “My dad took it to the dump.”

Richie was on the receiving end of so much help because he spent so much time helping other Islanders. He joined the Fire Department as soon as he was old enough, and celebrated 50 years of service a few years back. He served close to 25 years on the Board of Fire Commissioners, was fire chief for three years and Fireman of the Year three times.

When he was a kid, his uncle Gene Lechmanski took him out to Taylor’s Island, a rustic cabin that became town property in the 1970s. Richie was there to mow the lawn, but he fell in love with the place at once. “Where do you find an island on an island?” he said.

In 2005 the town considered tearing down the cabin. Richie joined neighbor P.A.T. Hunt in a successful fight to preserve and restore the place, and make it easier for people to visit. “People treat it with respect,” he said.

At the annual Taylor’s Island fundraiser, Richie does the clambake, as his father did before him. In 2015, he joined with Steve Lenox and Keith Clark to replace a ship’s wheel that had hung in the cabin for years, and then had gone missing during the renovation. Finding and restoring a working ship’s wheel of the correct vintage was a labor of love. They dedicated it to the memory of their fathers.

When Brian Kavanagh, who was the chef at the Dory, got the idea to put a Christmas tree on a tiny island in Chase Creek and the rising tide shorted out the lights, Richie stepped up to build a floating platform for the tree in 1982, making it one of the Island’s most-beloved Christmas traditions. Richie made multiple trips by rowboat every year to position a fully decorated tree in the middle of the Creek, securing the 150 lights with twist-ties.

It’s a lucky man who can enjoy a spring afternoon with three generations of his family a stone’s throw from the house where four generations of this family have lived. Around the beginning of the baseball season, Richie asked his grandson if he’d like a new bat for his birthday and they went to the old softball field beside Chase Creek to try it out.

Soon the whole family, Sharon, Richie II, Sherri, Michael, Joseph, Caitlin and dog Roxy were there. Caitlin went after the ball hard, slid and would have earned the muddiest uniform award had she been wearing one.

“It was neat to see everyone there,” said Richie. “Being with the family to me is great.”

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.