Cup o' Joe

Food, travel, and news on the Chesapeake Bay

I made a classic Maryland recipe over the weekend: turtle soup. What possessed me to do such a thing? Actually, it was all in the name of duty. Our Traveling Gourmet, Mary Zajac, is writing an article for our sister publication, Style Magazine, on old Maryland recipes. She whipped up some crab cakes, Maryland fried chicken, corn fritters, stewed tomatoes, beaten biscuits and a Smith Island cake, among other delicacies, and invited 13 adventurous eaters over for dinner. We drank Maryland wines and beer and talked about culinary times of old. Oddly, not everyone wanted to try my turtle soup.

This was not diamondback terrapin soup, mind you. I made the soup from 5 pounds of frozen snapper turtle sourced from Martin’s Seafood in Jessup, Md.—the only place I could find turtle meat after a long search. It was apparently from a “turtle farm” somewhere in Louisiana. I brought it back to work and stashed in the refrigerator. (People look at you funny when you’re carrying a big mysterious bag of frozen brownish stuff. I didn’t tell anyone what was actually in the bag and luckily, no one mistook it for their lunch.)

So I brought the bag home, much to the consternation of my wife. She promptly left the room—and took the children as far away as possible.

If you’ve ever diced 5 pounds of turtle meat, you know what a tedious—and messy—process it is. They say that turtle contains seven different types of meat, and after spending nearly an hour cutting the thing up, I can concur. I will spare you the gory details—if you’ve even decided to read this far—but turtle meat is a weird combination of gristle, fat, tough, tender, and spongy meat in colors ranging from white to pink to blood red. Really, it’s nothing like I had ever experienced.

My recipe came from the Tidewater Inn’s old Restaurant Local. We had published Chef Richard Hamilton’s recipe previously in Chesapeake Life, and being a big fan of his soup, I thought I’d give it a try. Besides, the recipe called for an entire bottle of dry sherry, which sounded good to me.

So how did it turn out? Not bad. Add a little sherry to anything and it’ll taste good, I say. Unfortunately, I have lots of leftovers. Let me know if you’d like to try a bowl cause it’ll be a long time before my wife lets me bring home turtle meat again.

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/30/10 at 02:48 PM

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