3 Area Chefs Cook Fresh Catches from the Chesapeake in New PBS Series

Viewers will get a sneak peek this April at what celebrity chefs Jennifer Carroll, Spike Gjerde, and Jeremiah Langhorne discovered during local fishing expeditions when new series Good Catch airs its first three episodes as part of Maryland Public Television’s Chesapeake Bay Week.

The forthcoming show, which is being made by the same company that produced James Beard Foundation Award-winning series Chefs A’ Field, is currently scheduled to air in late 2018 or early 2019. The first three episodes all star chefs and restaurateurs that should be immediately familiar to local diners:

• Episode 1, “The new Chesapeake oyster,” features Langhorne, the chef and founder of Michelin-starred the Dabney
• Episode 2, “The beautiful blue swimmers,” features Gjerde, the James Beard Foundation Award winner behind Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore and D.C. newcomer A Rake’s Progress
• Episode 3, “Eating the invasives,” features Carroll, the Top Chef alum and co-founder of Requin Brasserie who is scheduled to open a new restaurant in Philadelphia this spring

On his trip Langhorne hits the water with the founder of White Stone Oyster Company, the operator of an oyster farm in southern Virginia.

“You have this wonderful balance of brininess, some sweetness, and these little vegetal notes that are in there,” Langhorne compliments the team after slurping one of their freshly shucked specimens. He composes two oyster recipes for the show: a grilled version that weaves together peppers, country ham, brown butter vinaigrette, and a squeeze of lemon juice, as well as raw ones dressed with aronia berry mignonette. White Stone oysters are currently included in the raw bar offerings Langhorne serves at his regionally focused wine bar, Dabney Cellar.

Good Catch Films [Official photo]

For her part, Carroll takes a shot at picking off ravenous snakehead — a predatory fish native to Asia — from a moving boat.

“The solution to this invasive fish problem is a knife and fork,” record-holding fisherman Dutch Baldwin, who says he pulled 6,000 pounds of snakehead and 8,000 pounds of catfish from local waters in recent years, tells the Good Catch crew. “We need to eat ‘em. We need to eat a lot of ‘em.”

Carroll’s contribution to the cause: she prepares blue catfish rillette, as well as seared snakehead with couscous and vegetable salad.

Good Catch’s initial run of 13 episodes is tentatively scheduled to run either late this year or in early 2019. The sneak preview episodes are scheduled to air from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 28.

• Dutch Baldwin sets snakehead record at 18.42 pounds [Baltimore Sun]
• Invasive Species Infest D.C. Restaurant Menus [EDC]
• Snakehead Snacks Sweep D.C.? [Roll Call]