Farmed Sea Scallop Cookbook: Guide to Whole Sea Scallops Sustainably Harvested

Sustainability is a fundamental ingredient of today’s cuisine and author Marsden Brewer is an innovator who has farmed sea scallops for two decades and created the model for harvesting whole farmed sea scallops year-round in ways that protect the natural ecosystem and enhance his third-generation lobster business. Because of the tide of abuse and missteps that have happened to wild-caught fisheries and fish farming worldwide, Marsden is proving he can do it right using responsible, no-waste methods that celebrate the environment and our ability to live within it. Whole sea scallops are now farmed and harvested on both coasts.

This is the guide to how and why sea scallops are farmed sustainably and a cookbook for how to steam, shuck and prepare the whole scallop using quality produce and ingredients in traditional recipes from around the world. Marnie Crowell has learned authentic regional ways to prepare, present, and eat Maine seafood and has traveled extensively collecting seafood recipes from around the globe. She includes 50 recipes for farmed whole sea scallops—pies, soups, chowders, and stews, pastas, risotto, paella and bouillabaisse—recipes from Spain/Portugal, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and Japan.

The foreword is by Barton Seaver, award-winning chef from DC and one of the world’s leading sustainable seafood experts and educators. He has an extensive resume highlighting his culinary accomplishments and he is founder of Coastal Culinary Academy and author of 7 seafood-centric books.

Marnie Reed Crowell is a natural history writer with a masters degree in biology. Marnie’s books include Greener Pastures: In Praise of Traditional Country Living (Funk & Wagnalls), Great Blue: Odyssey of a Heron (Times Books), Flycasting for Everyone (Stackpole), and The Heron Witch (Green Writers Press). Her articles appear in numerous magazines such as DownEast, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, Working Waterfront, and Audubon.

Marsden Brewer has for the past two decades focused on figuring out how to make farming scallops work for Maine. He is a third-generation Maine fisherman and has been fishing all his life, whether it’s what he calls low water urchining, scalloping, or offshore ground fishing, shrimping, and lobstering. A former member of the Department of Marine Resources Advisory Council, Marsden served as selectman for the town of Stonington for six years and so has his wife Donna. She is currently a Stonington selectman while running Red Barn Farm, their retail shop featuring scallops, lobsters, and their farm products. With his son, Bob, Marsden now farms sea scallops. See www.penbayfarmedscallops.com.