The Inner Fish (Shellfish, Mollusc) Is Sweetest

[vserna]

Basically, as I can gather, the 'lotte [or lote] de rivière" (Lota lota), the only freshwater member of the cod family, is known in France as far south as the Rhône delta, but it's obviously a more northerly species and is common as far north as Sweden. We simply don't have it in Spain.

This is what it looks like:

La Lota Photograph with Spanish text.

Burbot Photograph with English text

[Boris_A]

Lota lota

Correct.

Here are some more pictures of the Trüsche as this animal is called here in Switzerland.

The meat is easy to prepare and most people like it. As I said, this fish vanished from our dishes (in favour of, em, salmon I guess).

The taste and mellowing texture of the liver can be a source of controversities (a typical element of a true delicacy, I'd say).

Miguel, if you ever can lay hands on a liver, be careful. The fishy smell is not especially strong, but it's difficult to get rid of it once oyu prepare it in the kitchen. When I prepared it the first time, the "bouquet" came out from my sink for days.

And I remember in my youth days, just saying the word "Trüsche" was enough to provoke serious protests among my compañeros.

[vserna]

Trüsche as this animal is called here in Switzerland.

I grew up in Geneva (many eons ago) and regularly go back there. I have never seen any 'lotte' in markets there that isn't the 'lotte de mer', i.e. monkfish. So obviously this freshwater cousin is rare or forgotten there (at least in the southern part of the country).

There's very little native fish sold in Geneva these days anyhow... Most of the 'filets de perche' and even the 'ombles chevaliers' are from central Europe...

[Boris_A]

There's very little native fish sold in Geneva these days anyhow...

Victor, I'm always astonished at the fact that people here is prepared to spend a lot of money for cultivated sea fish and ignore the wild fish from our lakes.

Here at the lake of Zürich we have only 12 professional fishermen for about 1 mio inhabitants around! Yet I have no problem to get my fishes. And it's relatively cheap compared to the imported seafood. True treasures for little money!

Trüsche is a bit an exotic example. But in my cookbok by Alain Chapel, there are recipes for pike, so we can assume pike being a delicacy even for that size of a cuisinier. He mentioned explicitly how glad he was about the return of good quality pike to the lakes of Savoie given the 6 hour transport time from Norway (for salmon.) And hey, I just looked up in his book and found a recipe for .... lotte de rivière! He calls it an "exceptionnelle poisson".

Pike season starts about now (when water gets warmer, the pike vanish to deeper, cooler water and you can't catch it easily then), and I'm looking forward already. For this year I'm planning a pike presented with "Service à la Russe" (whole animal). It's a bit of a fumbling with the bones, but rewarding.

It's not very Spanish centered what we are talking about here, but given the fact that so many Gallegos are living here around ....

[Boris_A]

Another little story:

After xmas, there was a little movie by a guy called Piet Eekman on arte-tv:

"The goose, 4 cooks and my mother"

What did we see? In a little Belgian village, in a modest house, there was Eekmans mother, a goose prepared by her and 4 cooks sitting at the kitchen table:

Monsieur P. Gagnaire, Señor F. Adrià, Herr D. Müller and Mr. T. Wakuda! 12 stars alltogehter!

They talked the whole meal about cooking, art and why there are so little women in the haute cuisine business. Great fun!

Anyway, when Adrià was interviewed, he told about the incredible taste of fried sardines prepared by his mother and that he was so stupid having "forgotten" this most simple, yet great food for almost 30 years.

And that's why I wanted to tell it here: Even such experts must concede that simple, almost primitive food right from our lakes and soils can still keep at the top of all gourmandrie. Fascinating, no?