We’re up the Hudson this week, many miles from our home, and even further from the natural home of these dazzling Boston mackerel.  I’m very very fond of mackerel, but I’m not really cooking while we are away. That doesn’t mean however that I can’t look. The fillets pictured above were being offered by Pura Vida Fisheries when we visited the completely  charming Cold Spring Farmers’ Market in the crisp air of this first day of November.   They showed themselves magnificent in soft sunlight under tall trees on the beautiful grounds of Boscobel.  If I couldn’t take them home myself, I thought, I could at least broadcast their beauty.

I hope the dainty morsels were appreciated by a proper shopper.

It wasn’t only the fish that were performing in the Hudson Valley this afternoon.  The fish seller also had a container of other, larger and only slightly-less spectacular mackerel fillets. When I asked about their identity, he explained, “That one speaks Spanish, and this one speaks English”.