Poached haddock roe

[Peter the eater]

Fish eggs can be delicious, no question. I have been trying to get some local stuff for a while now and I finally got my hands on some haddock roe. It was delicious and cheap.

Aquatic roe products typically include:

Whole ovaries

Caviar

Caviar substitutes

Processed roe products

Artificial caviar

“…the term ‘caviar’ unqualified should be applied only to the product prepared by salting sturgeon roe.” [FDA Service and Regulatory Announcement No. 3, March 19??]

Russia is by far the biggest producer of caviar and other roe products, after that it's Scandinavia and China. North America barely registers, according to my research.

Is it just me or am I on to something? This stuff is very tasty and at 99 cents per pound . . . ? Here's what I did with my pound of fresh haddock eggs:

I poached them in salty water, mixed in 10% cream, a bit of smoked mackerel and smoked paprika. Served on toasted light rye:

[sanrensho]

I wonder if you could make something similar to the Japanese delicacy mentaiko, which is usually made with pollock roe (and is expensive to boot!).

Mentaiko, and its spicier cousin, karashi mentaiko, makes for a wonderful spaghetti sauce.

[johnnyd]

Mentaiko is high on the list of my favorite sushi items. I always thought it was cod fish roe, or maybe I was told that at whatever sushi bar I first had it.

Peter - I have to try this. I'd use a white wine or white vermouth component in my poaching liquid, maybe sake or mirin in another batch and see what happens. If you are seeing it in your markets it can't be too far from mine - I'll post if I get some.

[Prawncrackers]

Haddock and Cod roe is still quite common and popular in Fish & Chips here in the UK, where of course it's battered and deep-fried. There is a difference between the processed stuff and fresh though, the fresh unsurprisingly being much better.

I think all fish roes are very tasty but also very easy to overcook. I don't like that grainy dry texture when it has been overcooked. That's probably why i like the soft-roe or milt from the male fish more. It's not technically speaking roe (you work it out) and the texture is fantastically creamy. My favourite way of eating roe is simply steaming them along with the fish.

[Peter the eater]

I haven't had the pleasure of tasting mentaiko but if it's considered a Japanese delicacy then count me in! When it comes to food they seem to do just about everything right - recognizing the ocean's bounty and treating it minimally and with respect. It's the perfect balance of a civilized predator.

Wikipedia says:

Mentaiko is the marinated roe of pollock, and is a common ingredient in Japanese cuisine. Mentaiko originated from myeongran jeot of Korean cuisine and was introduced to Japan after the Second World War.

and:

Jeotgal or jeot is a salted fermented food in Korean cuisine. It is made with various seafood, such as shrimp, oysters, shellfish, fish, fish eggs, and fish intestines.

I didn't follow a recipe for the poached roe pictured above but I did get inspired by a remarkable book titled North Atlantic Seafood: A Comprehensive Guide With Recipes By Alan Davidson.

Specifically, there's an Icelandic recipe on p.399 called "Sodin Ysa med Hrognum og Lifur" or "Poached Haddock with its Roe and Liver". I didn't have the lifur nor the actual Hrognum, just the ovaries. Apparently, the old school Icelandic approach would be to use mutton fat instead of butter. I can only imagine what that would taste like!

My experiment yielded a rather granular spread, but it tasted very good. I suspect the ovaries were overcooked, I should have eaten a few raw eggs just to gauge the difference poaching makes. Tucking into that raw pink blob is not for the faint of heart. Deep frying them seems like overkill to me, no offense to the UK. I mixed all the cooked ingredients in a mortar and pestle and still it felt gritty. Next time I'll try to improve the texture somehow . . .

[sanrensho]

I wonder if you could do something like a hybrid between the mentaiko spaghetti I referred to and a carbonara.

Break open the egg sacks (optionally brine in sake/salt/sugar/soy sauce first) and mix with a bit of cream and grated parmesan or pecorino. Maybe an egg yolk or two to help bind the sauce to the pasta. Toss this with drained spaghetti, letting the yolks and roe cook just with the residual heat from the pasta.

Mentaiko spaghetti is traditionally topped with a chiffonade of shiso (or use basil) and nori.

Mind you, I've never done this before, but maybe it will give you some ideas.

Edited March 4, 2008 by sanrensho (log)

[therese]

Shad roe is another one that's eaten cooked, the entire egg sack intact. Common in the southeast U.S. (and elsewhere, I presume).

I like all sorts of roe products: mentaiko, bottarga (Italian, dried and shaved), tarama (Greek, used to make taramasalata). There's a really nice white roe that I can sometimes get in local sushi restaurants---the source escapes me at the moment.

Weirdest roe product that I've had recently was uova di seppie (cuttlefish roe) while in Rome last month. Anybody else had this?

[Prawncrackers]

Weirdest roe product that I've had recently was uova di seppie (cuttlefish roe) while in Rome last month. Anybody else had this?

Nope but i've eaten squid roe plenty of times, do they have the same waxy texture, look colourless and little transparent?

[Peter the eater]

Shad roe is another one that's eaten cooked, the entire egg sack intact. Common in the southeast U.S. (and elsewhere, I presume).

The community that I live in is actually called Shad Bay, but the shad are mostly gone. Some of the village elders here say they ate shad roe when they were kids. I've seen the fish for sale but never the roe.

Weirdest roe product that I've had recently was uova di seppie (cuttlefish roe) while in Rome last month. Anybody else had this?

Mmmmmmm. . . . unborn cephalopods! I've heard of cuttlefish roe served with the ink, as a Mediterranean dish. I've yet to taste it though.

[therese]

Weirdest roe product that I've had recently was uova di seppie (cuttlefish roe) while in Rome last month. Anybody else had this?

Nope but i've eaten squid roe plenty of times, do they have the same waxy texture, look colourless and little transparent?

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They were in a sauce, so difficult to say. Difficult even to describe them, as the menu described the dish as including granchio (crab) and so I found myself wondering whether a particular piece of something was actually crab or actually cuttlefish roe. Just about the time I'd decided that something was crab I'd realize that it didn't really taste like crab, and that it must be roe.

It was white, and the texture best described as somewhere between mollusk and crustacean. I did ask the waiter for some help, but he was clueless (though he did want to know what I thought so that he could advise others). I didn't go so far as to carry my query to the kitchen. The meal was lunch, eaten outside in Trastevere just opposite a museum that give the history of the area. I'll see if I can figure out the name.