NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — September 19, 2012 — Visitors should expect some changes to the food elements of the Working Waterfront Festival Sept. 29 and 30, but also will find some familiar favorites at the New Bedford event.
For instance, a new concessionaire will be filling hungry festivalgoers' orders for fried seafood plates, but the ever-popular filleting demonstrations by boat owner Carlos Rafael will be sure to draw big crowds of spectators.
Festival Director Laura Orleans explains that Liz and Ken Ackerman of the Oxford Creamery have passed the torch to cooks from the United Fisherman's Club, who will serve the finest local seafood, including fish and chips, fried scallops, and clam cakes. "In some ways it makes all the sense in the world to us," Orleans said, holding out the promise of Portuguese dishes being added in the future.
In addition, Newburyport Crab Company will offer crab and lobster rolls, while littlenecks and oysters on the half shell will be available from R. Shucks Raw Bar.
Culminating the festival on Sunday afternoon will be the popular Seafood Throwdown, which will pit chef (and City Councilor) Henry Bousquet, who teaches at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School, against Mike Fuller, sous chef at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Their challenge will be to prepare a "kid-friendly" dish with a seafood ingredient they are supplied as the contest begins.
"The kid-friendly focus was a natural choice," comments Orleans. "With all of the current concerns about childhood obesity and early onset diabetes, changes in school lunch menus, etc., we wanted to promote fish as a healthy choice." Not all that long ago, seafood was regularly served in school cafeterias, Orleans notes: in the '60s, New Bedford schoolchildren found scallops on their lunch trays!
To ensure that the chefs meet the challenge, young tasters will be on the judging panel, along with food writer Mike Urban and Martha Gonzalez, program manager of the Wellness Connection at the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center.
But the Seafood Throwdown, which begins at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 30, is just the last act in a busy two days at the Foodways Demonstration Area. The action gets under way at 11:30 a.m. Saturday and will include fishermen's wives, professional chefs and industry personnel sharing their tried-and-true techniques for preparing seafood, such dishes as monkfish stew, scallop fritters and fish tacos.
Kicking things off at 11:30 a.m. Sept. 29 will be Robin Nunes, who works at the Wharf Tavern in New Bedford. Nunes, who recently completed "The Nunes Family Cookbook," will show how to prepare baked stuffed fish.
Urban (author of "Lobster Shacks" and "Clam Shacks") will talk about his books at 1 p.m. Sunday while Chef Guy Marino of the Lobster Pot in East Wareham demonstrates the proper way to boil a lobster.
Fifteen short films will be screened during the weekend, including segments of "What's Cookin' on the Cape," in which coastal inshore fisherman Skip Barlow shows how to harvest and prepare bay scallops, quahogs and oysters. With his partner Diane Flynn, he operates Barlow's Clam Shack in Bourne.
Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times