Community Supported Agriculture has been around for a few years, it's an excellent way to support small farms as well as eating local.  Those of us who live on the coast also have access to community supported fishing (or CSF).  The community supported fishing that we participate in offers whole fish shares as well as fillets.  And although scaling, and sometimes gutting fish may not be everyone's idea of a great time on a Monday night, the quality of fish is awesome (and way cheaper if you get the whole fish share) and the practice with a knife is worth the time (at least that's what I keep telling myself).

So far I've gotten pollock, haddock and monkfish.  This week it was redfish, along with a special share of Northern shrimp that I ordered a few weeks ago.

These are a smaller variety of fish, so these guys came with guts and all.  The fisherman process the larger fish varieties so they come gutted (and the monkfish came headless), these were the first small fish we've received so it was the first time I've had to gut anything with this share.

The three smallest fish I scaled, gutted and filleted.  Some of the fillet's I put in a marinade for later this week and the heads and bodies I saved for stock.

I sautéed onion, celery, carrot, garlic and ginger in butter until tender then placed some shrimp bodies on top (leftover from last night's dinner) followed by the fish heads.

Followed by the fish bodies.

I covered all of it with a kettle of boiling water and then simmered for one and a half hours with a few peppercorns and a bay leaf.  Be sure to skim often, I ended up straining it twice through two different sized strainers.

Dinner tonight will be some of the fillet's poached in the stock, I haven't decided whether to add tomatoes and some of my whole shrimp for a European fish stew kind of thing, or to simmer some lemongrass in the stock and add soba noodles shrimp, veggies and a few dumplings for a totally different meal.