Tasty stew of homely fish served up to hungry Mainers for Christmas Eve - pressherald.com

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Servings of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association’s monkfish stew at Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program on Friday. C. Thacher Carter / The Times Record

Guests of the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program’s soup kitchen in Brunswick were served a special Christmas Eve meal this year – a locally produced monkfish stew.

The cream-based stew featuring the mild fish, vegetables and subtle spice was distributed by the local food-access organization and produced by Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association – another Brunswick-based nonprofit that works address issues facing the Maine fishing community.

The stew was created with help from the Hurricane’s Soup Company in Greene Maine, according to Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association Director of Operations Susan Olcott. Friday’s batch was the first of the final product, Olcott said, and the stew will now be sold at a growing list of restaurants and markets across Maine to benefit the organization’s Fishermen Feeding Mainers Program.

Fishermen Feeding Mainers was launched in 2020 and finances local fishermen whose catches are cut and packaged through Maine businesses and distributed to hungry Mainers statewide. Through the program, over 320,000 meals have been donated to over 50 schools and service groups, benefiting over 90 of the state’s fishermen and fish workers. As of earlier this month, the program had raised roughly $800,000.

“In order to kick it off in what we felt like was a generous way in the holidays to more directly benefit that program we decide to donate a batch of it here,” said Olcott.

Ingredients for the stew, including the monkfish, are all sourced from Maine vendors.

Amy Belanger, a volunteer with the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, preparing the stew on Christmas Eve. C. Thacher Carter / The Times Record

Approximately 150 servings of the stew were given out at Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program’s soup kitchen on Friday. By the end of the year, the organization will have served over 95,000 free cooked meals to hungry Mainers, a 55% increase over 2020.

“We usually are very short staffed volunteer-wise and staff-wise on Christmas Eve,” said Heather Arvidson, the program’s volunteer and client services manager. “So having a meal that’s simple for the volunteers that are here to do, which today was incredibly simple but also really filling and nutritious and healthy and I’m sure delicious, is great for us.”

Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program also serves the Midcoast region through a food pantry, food bank, mobile pantries, school pantries, a summer food service program and satellite pantries.

Monkfish is a well-populated, ground fish species that can be caught off Maine’s coast. Meat from the fish is primarily sourced from the tail and is characterized by its meaty texture comparable to lobster. The fish has grown in popularity in recent years, in part due to more sustainably conscious consumers and producers.

Going forward, the stew will be sold at Morning Glory Natural Foods, The Brunswick Diner, and Frontier in Brunswick as well as Free Range Fish and Fork Food Lab in Portland.

The suggested retail price is $12 a box.