Before I came to Maine, I knew alewives, or rather Alewife, as a subway station in Boston (end of the red line, edge of Cambridge). But I had never heard of the fish, much less eaten one. Last weekend, I remedied that – and a delicious education it was. Driving home from Camden, I passed several hand-painted signs advertising “fresh smoked alewife.” The signs operated on me much as the alewives apparently operate on lobster: I took the bait. A friend and I walked up a long driveway, helped ourselves, as the sign instructed, to two alewives hanging on racks in a small, bare shack. At a buck apiece, this was the least I’ve spent on fish in a very long time.

Many in Maine are working to restore these river herring (relatives of shad) to their historic habitats by removing dams, installing fish passages and otherwise stewarding the fish as they head upriver to spawn each May, in the Kennebec, the Penobscot and elsewhere. Alewife numbers plummeted in the mid-1980s; blame centuries of dams and pollution. “We saw populations just totally crash,” said marine scientist Claire Enterline, who is the municipal river herring harvest coordinator for the Maine Department of Marine Resources. In the last five to 15 years, the population has gradually increased, though it’s not at historic levels by any means.

Additional Images

The seasonal abundance of smoked Maine alewives can boost chowders and many other preparations. Peggy Grodinsky photo

Smoked Alewife and Corn Risotto

Risotto is a method more than a recipe. These measurements are casual – master the technique and vary the flavors however you like. Alewives contain a lot of bones. Some people eat them, Enterline says. If you’d rather not, debone the fish carefully. If your fish contains small red eggs, the roe, fry them separately and use them to garnish the risotto. Make this soon, as the alewife season is nearly at an end.

Serves 3 to 4, depending on how hungry you are

3 to 4 cups chicken stock, maybe more
3 ears corn, kernels scraped off, reserve the cobs
3 to 4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped onion or shallots
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup arborio or Carnaroli rice
2 alewives, flesh chopped into bite-size pieces
2 cups baby arugula
Lemon zest
3 tablespoons minced chives

Heat the chicken stock and leave to simmer on low. Add the scraped cobs to the broth.

Melt the butter in a medium-sized pot. Add the onion and sauté about 10 minutes over medium-low heat until translucent. Add the wine and let it hiss and bubble and evaporate, which will only take a minute or so. Add the rice and sauté another 1 to 2 minutes.

Begin adding the warm broth, a 1/2 cup at a time, stirring and letting the rice nearly absorb the broth before you add more. About 5 minutes before you think you are done, add the corn kernels. When the risotto is creamy and the rice al dente, stir in the fish to let it warm a minute or two, the arugula just to wilt and the lemon zest. Serve, sprinkling with chives and garnishing with the roe if you’ve got it.

As recently as 50 years ago, the alewife runs provided a good food source for Mainers at the end of long, lean winters. These days we go to the supermarket when our cupboards are bare, but other winter-weary animals – bass and brown trout, eagles, osprey and herons – still rely on the alewife runs. As spring arrives, Enterline said, these species “are at the end of their rope.” The alewives also help restore river water quality, she said. She encouraged Mainers to try the fish in part because, “It’s a nice connection to the annual migration cycles. It keeps you connected to the natural rhythms. We still can see them, and we still can partake.”

Old-timers add smoked alewife to chowder, which sounds wonderful. Enterline combines it with goat or cream cheese to make a dip. I “partook” by adding the fish to risotto with other items that happened to be in my kitchen – corn, chives and baby arugula. Serendipity and pure pleasure.

The smoked fish will perfume your car as you drive home and your kitchen once you get there. Like blue cheese, it’s strong stuff; friends who arrived as I was cooking mistook the smell for bacon. Chunks of smoked alewife permeated the rice with a similar meaty, smoky umami quality – all the flavors that hipster foodies go on and on about. It mystifies me that people snub these fish.

— PEGGY GRODINSKY

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