Fruits de Merde

[John Whiting]

Whenever I visit my friend Hugh in Cambridge, I follow the A1’s only soft-porn motorway sign, which points east to Baldock and west to Letchworth. The former is an ancient coaching, malting and brewing town, but the latter is England’s first garden city, dating from only a century ago. Who says that late Victorian city planners didn’t have a sense of humor?

In spite of an interest born of living in a garden suburb begun at around the same time, I have yet to visit Letchworth. My route takes me instead through historic Baldock, past the front of an ex-factory so imposing that some of the younger locals are convinced that it was once a movie studio. Its mission, however, was not to pull wool over eyes but nylon over legs. Until Britain’s failing textile trade closed it down in the ’70s, it was the Kayser Bondor factory.

The monumental façade was grade II listed, and so when Tesco turned the site into a superstore it had to be preserved. I usually pass it with only a sideways glance, but this time I stopped to top up my tank with Tesco’s cut-price petrol. Crossing the vast Saharan parking lot, almost empty this early evening, I found the temptation to peek inside irresistible.

A route march around the back and side of the enormous structure brought me to an entrance leading into the clothing section. I could have been in Wal-Mart. It was a prison warehouse of cheap rags so anonymous and uniform as to suitably clothe an army of criminal mothers and children. Then came shelves of cut-price electronic gear, enough to blast the ghettos of an empire.

Finally, the food. In the deli section there was a help-yourself salad bar offering the same alternatives you get in cut-price all-you-can-eat buffets. Next to it was a cheese counter where you could buy in bulk the same blocks of pale soap offered prepacked in late night minimarkets. Scrawny chicken wings in huge packages were going at flyaway prices.

And then the PRICED TO CLEAR cabinet caught my eye. Along with a few birds on their last legs, there was a colorful plastic tray enticingly labeled,

FINEST FRUITS DE MER

A sumptuous feast of crab claws, langoustines, cockles, mussels and prawns. This ready to eat selection of the ocean’s finest is hand-prepared and cooked to perfection for you to enjoy its many delicious flavours.

Poised on the edge of its sell-by date, it was marked down by half to only £3.49. For a seafood guzzler like me, it was irresistible.

Two hours later, having whipped up a bowl of aïoli, I was ready to empty the shells. I like to do all the work in advance and then enjoy the contrasting flavors at leisure. The first shrimp’s head separated much too easily. When I pulled away the tiny legs from underneath, part of the inner meat came with them. Its texture was loose and insubstantial, as though it had been removed, chopped and then reinserted. It was difficult to remove the shell and leave anything behind.

I tried a langoustine. Their meat is always firm and chewy, but this one was as sloppy as the shrimp; a small child could easily have cut it up with a dull spoon. On to a crab claw – same story. The points came easily and flexibly out of the end, as a fresh crab’s properly should, but the meat clung in small bits to the thin central blade, refusing to come away cleanly even with a sharp knife.

Time for a tasting – first the shrimp, then the langoustine, then the crab. Nothing. Zilch. No flavor whatsoever. Unoptimistically I tried a cockle and a muscle. Adead, Adead O! Not stale, not ammoniac, simply neutral. They all tasted as food had tasted to me several years ago when a bad cold left me for months without any oral sensations except salt, sweet and hot.

Refusing to accept defeat, I emptied the rest of the shells and put all the meat into a small bowl with a generous dollop of aïoli and another of crème fraîche. At last, real flavor – everything tasted of the rich dressing. But it might as well have been a bowl of minced supermarket chicken breast.

So how do they do it? I’ve tasted seafood that was off or unpleasantly strange, but never with such a bland anonymity. It was as though the poor little creatures had swum in the same sea of verbiage that had spewed forth the gobbledygook on the packet. The next time I read a glowing report of a Tesco product, I’ll wonder what sort of fairy dust had been sprinkled on it just before it left the storeroom.

©2004 John Whiting

[Bapi]

John,

My wife and I "treated" ourselves to two of the Tesco "Finest" Fruits de Mer about three years ago. As you write, the seafood was fairly terrible -watery, insipid, tasteless meat- especially the crab claw, that not even aioli could salvage. One wonders how they managed so successfully managed to extract any semblance of taste from the seafood.

It taught me a lesson though, as I like you, adore seafood, but will not buy such a platter from a supermarket ever again.

[John Whiting]

It's a genuine question on my part and I'm sure on yours -- how do they do it? Are the shellfish irradiated? (I don't think that's legal in Britain.) It must be a unique process, inasmuch as I've never had any other shellfish that was terrible in exactly that way, both flavor and texture.

Come to think of it, the shrimp were like the "all you can eat" shrimp my wife and I encountered in a Berlin restaurant years ago. I'm sure they were irradiated. I excaped with only a violent upchuck, but my poor wife got hepatitus-B from them. Irradiation kills the bacteria, but it doesn't remove the poisons produced by them.

[circeplum]

yep. like supermarket sushi. bleargh.

x

[GG Mora]

Is it possible that the seafood was cooked with some "magic" additive in the water, something that would extend the longevity of an otherwise perishable product and at the same time leave the flesh flaccid and flavorless?

[John Whiting]

Perhaps supermarket customers have been taught actually to demand the absence of flavor they are usually given. Waitrose does pretty well, and Sainsbury's "taste the difference" has come up with some remarkably good products, but the average supermarket shopper seems to prefer food on a level with commercial TV.

I forgot to mention -- the young woman ahead of me at the checkout wheeled away two trollies of packaged foods after laying out over £130 in cash. Maybe she's catering for a gang in hiding.

[jackal10]

To my taste the Tesco Fruits de Mer has been frozen and thawed and drained

I think that is how they achieve the cotton wool texture, and bland flavour.

A pity, because the not pre-packed fresh fish is quite good, at least at the Cambridge Bar Hill branch.

Edited March 4, 2004 by jackal10 (log)

[bleudauvergne]

So how do they do it? I’ve tasted seafood that was off or unpleasantly strange, but never with such a bland anonymity. It was as though the poor little creatures had swum in the same sea of verbiage that had spewed forth the gobbledygook on the packet.

John, I am so sorry to hear that you experienced that. I am also a certified seafood guzzler and can think of nothing more dissapointing that type of encounter. Thank goodness you made aoili and at least you could enjoy that. I can think of two things that might have happened.

1) These are farm raised fruits, raised on - and in, merde. Your description of the flavor brings an image of the poor creatures having been raised in a still and festering pool of gobbledy gook in a hole dug in a farmers' field somewhere. When I search for shrimps and the like, I always look for the ones that are clearly marked as wild, or having been fresh sea netted, preferably marked as both, since some farm raised shrimp are actually raised in sealed off areas actually in the sea, and fed a retricted diet of merde. Granted you'll never find wild netted fruits at that price under normal conditions.

2) The fruits may have been frozen and the chain may have been broken during shipment or storage. These little morsels may have been initially frozen, thawed out somehow during shipping, and re-frozen again before evenutally being thawed again and presented to you. The disentegration of and poor texture of the meat is a telltale sign.

I hope you have a better experience next time, John.

- Lucy

edited to say that seafood that has been frozen can often be absolutely wonderful, but if it's been frozen and then re-frozen, that's where the problem comes in.

Edited March 4, 2004 by bleudauvergne (log)

[MobyP]

John, I think you get serious points just for courage. I passed by the fish counters of both Tesco and Sainsbury today. Makes me shiver just thinking about it.

[phillaurie]

i seem to remember a section in Kitchen Confedential on the inadvisability of buying cut price sushi, surely this comes under the same heading.

i am glad this happens to luminaries of this site as well.

makes me feel better.

all the best

Phil

[John Whiting]

i am glad this happens to luminaries of this site as well.

I'm no luminary -- I'm just a cheapskate!

[magnolia]

I second Moby's comment, you must be confident in your stomach of iron. When I started reading about your adventures in seafood, I thought 'Uh oh, this is not going to end well. In fact it's probably going to end in a hospital. Perhaps I should stop reading now...'

[balex]

Sometimes fish and seafood is stored for a long time in an inert gas (nitrogen I guess) that reduces the rate of decomposition a lot, but probably doesn't slow down the deterioration of flavour. Or perhaps they were just grievously overcooked.

[John Whiting]

I second Moby's comment, you must be confident in your stomach of iron.

And nerves of steel. I put away plateaux des fruit de mer, steak tartare, raw egg mayonnaise, sashimi . . . But I steer clear of rare chicken and pork.

One day it will catch up with me, and my epitaph will read: "Never a sick day in his life, and now this!"

[Andy Lynes]

There's really only one organisation that can answer this question and that's Tesco's themselves. I for one would love to hear what they have to say on the matter of selling fresh and cooked fish and shell fish. To me, it's the one thing that the majority of supermarkets fail even to get close to getting right, Waitrose being an honourable exception some of the time. I can't believe that they want to sell a poor product, but equally I can't believe that they think they have it right either.

[John Whiting]

My guess is that they consider the risk of food poisoning to be so unacceptable that they will do anything to protect themselves, even if it destroys the flavor. I can verify that the only harm that came to me from those miserable specimens was to my psyche.

[Marco_Polo]

And nerves of steel. I put away plateaux des fruit de mer, steak tartare, raw egg mayonnaise, sashimi . . . But I steer clear of rare chicken and pork.

I can confirm firsthand John's intrepid approach to eating. But what, my friend, what on earth induced even you to purchase shellfish from a supermarket close enough to its sell-by date to be reduced in price?? With some things - for example, well, how 'bout tins of baked beans, what else? - it doesn't really matter if you purchase up to or even over the sell-by date, does it. But fish or shellfish? Um, er, John, brave is not the word that comes to mind.

Sad thing is, even if you had pounced on that packaged shellfish medley the day it was first put out on the shelves, it would probably have tasted not one bit better...

I'm sure the above comments are correct and that such foods are treated, pasteurised, sanitised, whatever, so that they will cause minimal harm at the expense of loss of any flavour that they ever had. Or else, they are doomed from the moment they are caught, like those flavourless scallops that are deep-frozen at sea and which look beautiful plump until you cook them, at which point they shrivel away to tasteless nothingness.

MP

[John Whiting]

But what, my friend, what on earth induced even you to purchase shellfish from a supermarket close enough to its sell-by date to be reduced in price?

Greed, buddy, sheer greed! And curiosity. And a suspicion that I might get an article out of it without killing myself.

[PoppySeedBagel]

Tesco used to be good for fish but when I went to our local one at Gatwick recently, after a 2 year gap, things had gone downhill.

They no longer keep the fish behind glass (so it's kept cool) but on a display so we customers could touch the fish if we wanted - and obviously the top side is exposed to the warmth of the atmosphere. I've never seen such dead looking mackerel in my life.

I bought some mussels (from the fridge)which were good althogh they needed a lot of prep. My 4 1/2 year old, who's not backward in coming forward, actually asked the fishmonger why they sold such horrid fish. French supermarkets manage to have open displays in which the fish is fresh, but I suppose that's because there's a faster turnover.

[Carlovski]

The Tesco near me used to have a small fish counter, but recently removed it with a sign saying customers preferred the prepackaged fish, and it gave more room for a wider range of products. I think they extended the sweets shelves to fill the gap

There is no longer anywhere to buy fresh fish in either the town where I live, or where I work, and as I don't drive, it is a pain getting hold of it (The waitrose in southampton isn't too bad, if I venture there).

[slacker]

You need a trip to Cornwall, John.

Think of it as more of a pick-your-own expedition.

[Matthew Grant]

In my local Tescos I noticed some herb crusted Trout in their "Finest" selection the other day. It had a sell by date that was still 7 days away!!!!!

[Basildog]

i am glad this happens to luminaries of this site as well.

I'm no luminary -- I'm just a cheapskate!

Cheap Skate...thats funny

[John Whiting]

Cheap Skate...thats funny

You caught it!

(signed)

a whiting

[GG Mora]

Cheap Skate...thats funny

You caught it!

(signed)

a whiting

Huh...and I thought the first one was just a fluke.