longroper

Thanks for the answer, that makes sense. French scallops (coquilles Saint Jacques aka Pecten maximus) are about 4 to 5 inches in diameter (for the shell). What is the typical shell size for Alaskan scallops? 4-5 inches is on the small side. I'd say 7 inches or so is the average shell size, though some get much larger than that. The biggest I've seen have meats the size of your palm.

This is easier to answer for Alaskan scallops than for east coast scallops. It would be extremely difficult and expensive to keep scallops alive on the boat, at the plant, on the airplane, and at the market. It's a very long chain. I don't know if any of the east coast boats do any live deliveries. I suspect the reason why live scallops aren't more common in the States is related to the reasons why pork chops outsell offal here by a large margin. I don't know how large French scallops are, but the size of these means there's an intimidating amount of guts you'd have to swallow.

I'm not sure about the "section 18" thing, but branded salmon is definitely picking up steam, mostly because fishermen in other areas see the prices the Copper River guys get and want to get in on the action. A lot of this is dealt with at the processor stage, but the way these programs usually work is that the branding organization comes up with handling standards that boats that want in have to conform to. That's different than how a specific company, like Icicle or Peter Pan or whoever, might label their products.

I've heard of tuna being caught here, but there's not an actual tuna fishery. With climate change, though, who knows? How the fish are handled obviously varies depending on catch method, species, and market. Salmon seiners scoop them up, dump them into the hold which is filled with either regular water or Refrigerated Sea Water(RSW), and then deliver them, usually the same day, to tenders who run them back to the plant. Seining is the big volume way to catch salmon, and supplies pretty much all the pinks for canning and a fair amount of the reds. Most of the canned reds come from Bristol Bay, though, and those are all gillnetted. Gillnetters going for volume don't generally bleed their fish; gillnetters who supply the higher-end fresh markets do. Trollers ("line-caught" on white-tablecloth menus) bleed and ice their fish. I *think* some of them gut, too, but don't quote me on that. Trolling is a tiny fishery and only happens in Southeast. Halibut are bled, then gutted and iced. They are always delivered fresh. Processors decide whether to sell them fresh or freeze them. Processors are where the real sorting happens with halibut- some boats have a reputation for nice fish, get a higher price, and are used to supply the fresh market; some boats have a reputation for not-so-nice fish and their stuff goes into the back of the freezer. Black cod are almost always headed and gutted, though if you deliver them within 72 hours you can leave them in the round. Since black cod grounds can take 72 hours just to get to, this isn't that common. Those are the only two species that are regularly gutted on the boat. The boat I work on guts our rockfish and ling cod, too, but that's bycatch and most people don't do it. It gets us a slightly higher price, so we make an extra three bucks a trip or something. Is taniguchi the one where they stick a wire down the spinal cord? I've never seen anybody do that, and I imagine I'd get a lot of blank stares if I asked about it.

Most of my time has been spent longlining halibut and some black cod. My other main gig these days is scalloping. I've done salmon, both seine and gillnet and pot fished for cod. But longlining's my favorite. Halibut boats are all independent and vary wildly in size. The big processor-dominated fisheries are salmon (though the fleet is almost entirely made up of independent boats), pollock (where in many cases the processing happens on the boat), and (to a lesser extent) crab. Every species is handled differently, but the only ones that are generally frozen on the boat are pollock, some cod, and scallops on all the boats other than the one I work on. Basically the big dragger fisheries. Trip length varies a lot depending on the fishery, the boat, and the market. Halibut trips probably average three or four days of actual fishing. Shorter if the fishing's good, longer if it isn't. Nobody likes delivering more than six-day-old fish (well, some people do, but the buyers know who they are and adjust their prices accordingly). Salmon seiners can stay out a long time, because they deliver to tenders that bring supplies to the boats and fish to the processors. Catcher/processor trawlers only have to go home to deliver and refuel.

Since I'm a few weeks away from starting fishing for the season, and since my internet access is paid for by people like you who buy fish, I thought I would offer to field questions about the mechanics of commercial fishing and the start of the process of getting fish out of the water and to your fish market. I've been doing an enormous amount of late-night reading on eGullet and other food-oriented forums, and I've become very aware that there's a real lack of knowledge about what exactly happens in commercial fisheries, and a lot of misconceptions about how different species are caught, processed, and managed. All of my fishing experience is in Alaska. I know a lot about a few fisheries here, a little about the rest of our fisheries, and have at least a rudimentary grasp of issues facing American fisheries outside Alaska. Let's call it boat-to-table. Any questions at all, from what the work day is like to a deckhand's view of fisheries management to how fish is taken care of on the boat to how it's sold off the boat, I'll do what I can to answer. If I can't answer, I'll feed you a line of reasonable-sounding bullshit. Because I'm a fisherman. It's part of the job.

While I have no personal experience cooking marine mammals, a quick glance through Cooking Alaskan and what knowledge I have from others suggests that walrus is best dealt with through long, slow cooking. There are more seal recipes in the book than walrus, but the animals are close enough in behavior that I'd expect their meat would be similar. The only saute recipes are for offal (apparently the liver especially is quite a delicacy); the rest tend towards either braising or simmering. In the case of steaks they are typically pounded very thin and pan fried, which helps with chewiness. There are several meat loaf recipes that use ground walrus or seal, and even one for corned walrus. Flippers are reported to be very gelatinous, like pig's feet. There's a recipe for seal head cheese, too. I've always had success braising unfamiliar game meat in wine.

I dump green beans straight out of the freezer onto a sheet pan to roast. They're fine. Crispier than fresh, for sure. I like them.

No matter how nice the weather is, do not attempt to panfry anything requiring a substantial amount of oil. I once spent half an hour holding an electric skillet full of frying chicken and hot oil in order to keep it from sloshing everywhere with the roll of the boat. Because I am a masochist, I'd always wanted to try to fry chicken on the boat, and it was a nice day, pretty flat. Of course by the time the chicken went into the pan, the wind had picked up and a nice slug of three-hundred-fifty-degree oil went all over the galley floor. So I became a human gimbal until the chicken was done. Never overfill pots. Always keep your pots secure on the stove. Always make sure the oven door is latched. Eat your fresh vegetables quickly. Don't cook as much when the weather's bad. Know the closest place you can puke thats away from the food. What kind of stove will you have? Since you're tropical, I'm assuming it'll be something like a proper cookstove. Where I live we use flat-top diesel stoves that also provide cabin heat. They can be tricky to cook on. Is this a "fishing boat" as in a "commercial fishing boat" or as in a "charter fishing boat"?

I see. Thank you. I'll give that a shot. I find agar expensive because I live in Alaska, and everything is expensive. I did look online after I bought it, and it's a lot cheaper everywhere else. It was $11 an ounce here, and there wasn't a price on the shelf. I was just a little surprised when they rang it up.

I am messing around developing a recipe for a black-eyed-pea terrine. I've got the body of it pretty close to nailed down, but I'm having trouble with the wrapping. I'm wrapping in various greens (collard, mustard, and turnip so far) that have been blanched. It looks great when unmolded, and it tastes great too. When I slice it, though, the wrapping has a tendency to fall off. If I'm extremely careful, I can avoid it, but I'd like it to be a little more robust. At some point in working out the recipe, I realized that I had accidentally made it vegan, so I decided to keep it that way. This hasn't been a problem, but obviously rules out the possibility of coating the whole thing in a gelatin aspic. Which leads inexorably to... I've never used agar before. I found it at one of my local stores. It's pretty expensive, so I'd rather have some idea of what might work before I burn through too much. I've come up with two possibilities: 1) Soak the leaves in an agar solution after blanching, then line the mold and build the terrine normally. Will the remaining agar solution on the leaves be enough to bind them together and to the rest of the terrine? Also, I've been using a vinegary water for blanching. I like the flavor of the vinegar on the greens, but I understand acid and agar don't get along very well. 2) Build the terrine as I've been doing and cover it in the agar aspic after unmolding, like a regular gelatin aspic. Is there a possibility of a strange flavor or cloudiness from the aspic? This also doesn't seem like it would help with gluing the leaves to the middle. Any guidance you can offer will be much appreciated.

No. They're Cornish/Rock hybrids, the standard meat bird in the chicken industry. They are bred to have out-of-proportion breasts and to grow very quickly. Their one mission in life is to eat. People that free range them in small flocks say that they pretty much hang around the feeder all day and eat until its empty, then wait for the next batch. They are butchering weight in 8-10 weeks. Much longer than that and yeah, they have a hard time standing up, since they're so top heavy. A dual purpose chicken, like a Rhode Island Red or a Wyandotte, won't be ready for slaughter until at least sixteen weeks. Twenty is better, and twenty-four better still. That's a lot of expensive food. The breasts will be proportionate, which to most people now looks "small". Of course, they taste like a chicken instead of "chicken". And they have big meaty legs. Steroids are illegal. And expensive. The R&D on breeding is expensive, but once you have them nailed down, the rest is cheap.