Fish and Seafood

[Blether]

You're lucky to be able to buy those, Bob. Smoked haddock is of course also traditional for kedgeree, makes great fish cakes and a good fish pie, in bechamel with the usual seasonings and topped with mashed potato or puff pastry.

[rlibkind]

Potato in one form or another seems to be the most common appurtenance for smoked haddock!

[johnnyd]

Spanish Mackerel was $4.99/lb in Portland Maine, so I bought one and roasted it

Drizzled EVOO in and around, S&P, stuffed with lemon, red onion and parsley, splash of white wine hither and yon - 15 minutes covered at 400F and 15 minutes uncovered.

Add heirloom potatoes and a glass of pinot grigio.

[Peter the eater]

Think of kippers as the bacon of the sea.

Bob, I'm going to use that line. I love smoked seafood and there's lots of it where I live, thank goodness. Some of it's very potent, hot-smoked mackerel comes to mind. I like to make a paste and use it like a condiment, like this:

[Peter the eater]

Spanish Mackerel was $4.99/lb in Portland Maine, so I bought one and roasted it

That fish looks great roasted -- it's from the Gulf of Maine? I don't think they make up north to my place.

[rlibkind]

$4.99/pound for Spanish mackerel seems just a tad expensive. It usually goes for about $2.49-$2.99 at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Must be the transport costs, since this is basically a Mid-Atlantic and Southern fish. Not much is caught commercially from Massachusetts northward, and most of the U.S. harvest is from Florida, with NC a very lagging second.

[johnnyd]

$4.99/pound for Spanish mackerel seems just a tad expensive. It usually goes for about $2.49-$2.99 at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Must be the transport costs, since this is basically a Mid-Atlantic and Southern fish. Not much is caught commercially from Massachusetts northward, and most of the U.S. harvest is from Florida, with NC a very lagging second.

It came in the weekly delivery from Europe - baby polpo and sardines from portugal - so I thought it came from there. I will ask when I'm there next. Sardines were priced at $8.99/lb (which kills me - they were so cheap over there), polpo too. They all get snatched by local restaurants but I was there at the opening bell. Never saw Spanish Mackerel there before so I went for it. Freaking crazy-delicious, it was.

[Peter the eater]

Arctic char is the cold water country cousin of salmon and trout. They're the Northernmost freshwater fish in the world although they spend some of the life cycle in the ocean. The wild ones are doing reasonably well in Northern Canada with healthy populations ranging from Labrador to the Yukon. My relatives in Yellowknife say it's common to catch ten-pounders on guided trips.

This 2.5 lb char below comes frozen from a farm in New Brunswick for $1.99/lb. I steamed it for 20 minutes in a traditional fish poacher using water, salt and onions. I find this fish closer to trout than salmon from a cooking and tasting point of view. It was served with mash potatoes, peas, and maple-fennel carrots.

[nakji]

Arctic char is a beautiful fish. My grandmother in Labrador has a regular supply, and always brings us one, wild caught and frozen, whenever she comes to visit. I like it best grilled, stuffed with sliced onions, wrapped up in foil.

[Peter the eater]

Arctic char is a beautiful fish. My grandmother in Labrador has a regular supply, and always brings us one, wild caught and frozen, whenever she comes to visit. I like it best grilled, stuffed with sliced onions, wrapped up in foil.

I think they're beyond beautiful. I shot the digital equivalent of a whole roll on this fish. They remind me of those colorful B.C. Rocky Mountain trouts like Cutthroat, Speckled and Rainbow.

[Blether]

Have you tried this ?

(for four)

Trout with cream

Mix breadcrumbs (1 or 2 cups ? Sorry, I learned and have always done it by eye) with equal quantities chopped parsley and chives (3-4 tablespoons each ?), and season with salt & pepper.

'Poach' trout* fillets (ideally from fish of about 3/4 pound) gently in a couple of tablespoons of water till done. Drain and lay in a grill pan or other wide pan that fits under your grill. Pour on double / whipping cream - 0.5 - 1oz per serving ? Sprinkle the breadcrumb mixture over them, drizzle with melted butter and grill (that's broil to you, is it ?) till nicely golden.

Simple and very very good. I credit this recipe to my CB-trained Aunt Moira.

*trout - impossible in Tokyo, in practice. I make it quite successfully with salmon, but trout has its own special flavour, doesn't it ?

[Peter the eater]

Have you tried this ?

(for four)

Trout with cream

Mix breadcrumbs (1 or 2 cups ? Sorry, I learned and have always done it by eye) with equal quantities chopped parsley and chives (3-4 tablespoons each ?), and season with salt & pepper.

'Poach' trout* fillets (ideally from fish of about 3/4 pound) gently in a couple of tablespoons of water till done. Drain and lay in a grill pan or other wide pan that fits under your grill. Pour on double / whipping cream - 0.5 - 1oz per serving ? Sprinkle the breadcrumb mixture over them, drizzle with melted butter and grill (that's broil to you, is it ?) till nicely golden.

Simple and very very good. I credit this recipe to my CB-trained Aunt Moira.

*trout - impossible in Tokyo, in practice. I make it quite successfully with salmon, but trout has its own special flavour, doesn't it ?

That sounds like a winner. . . sweet fillets get creamy sauce and a herby-crunchy crust from the broiler aka overhead radiant heat. Gotta ask what does CB-trained mean?

[Blether]

Cordon Bleu. Sorry. NB to me the chives are crucial in this recipe, though something else oniony can substitute in a pinch. Yes, the fish-cream-chive-salt-pepper-breadcrumb thing has you (has me, anyway) licking out the cooking vessel and looking round madly for more.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Blether (log)

[helenjp]

Blether, I quite often see small rainbow trout in Japanese supermarkets...I've never eaten them that small in NZ, where rainbows and brown trout are game fish, and subject to throwback regulations for small fish, so I'm not too sure what size fish you have in mind. The small Japanese ones seem to be in need of a flavor boost, so they either go into a court-bouillon or get crisped in butter.

[Blether]

Hi, Helen. Yeah, me too, and those same trout are often on the breakfast menu as cold shioyaki in Japanese inns. In this region, the water's too warm in summer and the flesh ends up mushy, which counts them out, for me (nor are they the attractive pink I'm used to, and incidentally they're also small for filleting). I can imagine there is good trout in Hokkaido, but this far removed, Hokkaido is synonymous only with its great seafood. Maybe if I lived there I could find good trout. In Kanto ? Not yet, and I'm not an angler, either.

ETA: size, I mentioned 3/4 pound fish. Those Japanese supermarket ones are around 4 or 5 ounces to my once-trout-factory-trained eye, occasionally a bit bigger but never more than half a pound, if that.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Blether (log)

[johnnyd]

Happiness is shrimp so fresh they still snap after you tear their heads off.

Fresh Maine Shrimp Ceviche

Lime and orange juice, garlic, red onion and cilantro

Fresh Maine Shrimp steamed over rice, chicken, bokchoy, carrot, celery, garlic and ginger, seasoned with mushroom soy, black vinegar and mirin, garnished with cilantro and scallion

Local Shrimp Fishermen say it's been the best season in years - great demand and good prices.

My job is done.

[Peter the eater]

My job is done.

Johnnyd, you won't get off the hook that easily. We're enjoying good hauls North of ME, the boat guys and resto guys are embracing the sustainable shrimp. Cold water = yummy.

[Baron d'Apcher]

Sea Bream "Belle Vue"

Stuffed with shrimp, my lardo and citrus.

Shingled with carrots and beef knuckle aspic.

[BeeZee]

Wow, that is positively jewel-like.

[Blether]

Yes, these and your terrines make quite a set.

[Blether]

Uni season is coming to a close. While I can still claim it as seasonal, I made another attempt at "unibonara", or Carbonara di Mare, that I've been working on as seen in Dinner! posts here and here.

I gave up on finding appropriate smoked fish and this time went with grilled-and-cooled salted aji / horse mackerel as bacon / pancetta surrogate

- as seen in Breakfast!:

One fish, picked over and flaked:

Umeboshi

and pepper

Uni porn

cream and Parmie Reggie

garlic

mise, or for Italian speakers, ミーザン・プラス

I set the noodles aside to dry after making

seafood lasagne earlier in the month.

mise, looking the other way

Successes: The salted aji is infinitely better than the previous licquorice allsorts (hokke), and a keeper. I reduced the proportion of umeboshi this time, and the dish lost some of its exhilaration. I'll go back to the previous amount, but this counts as successful experimentation. I also stretched what was previously a sauce volume for 2 servings of pasta into 4, using the same amount of core ingredients (basically just more wine and cream), without unduly compromising flavour.

Failures: well, the garnishing doesn't set a new standard for clumsiness, but there was stiff competition and it didn't move far in the other direction, either. By concentrating too much on photography and too little on cooking, I exceeded my single-filament personal bandwidth and screwed up several points:

- added the aji with the wine and umeboshi, as I did before with the super-cured hokke. The aji is of course more fragile (West African Mahogany is more fragile, come to that) and should have gone in afterwards with the cream, just to warm through. As a result it broke down finer than ideal, but this point almost falls under successful experimentation.

- missed the pasta timing, got the sauce too thick and failed to notice and adjust with more wine

before serving the second round

- and finally, what with everything else I didn't concentrate as I should on the salt adjustment and got it a bit short thus suffering the indignity of the salt shaker at table. I have no excuse.

And it still tasted fantastic

The garnish leaves are once again 春菊 shungiku, literally 'spring chrysanthemum' and a sign of spring, so that, what with winter uni and spring greens, this version nicely symbolises the change of the seasons - albeit one week after the equinox itself.

Look out for more uni frivolity in the post-season.

Edited March 27, 2010 by Blether (log)

[Peter the eater]

Beautiful food Blether, I've got uni envy. If I want urchin, I pretty much have to harvest it myself, or go to a good local Japanese restaurant.

And that's a handsome English knife.

[Hiroyuki]

Uni season is coming to a close.

Are you sure that uni will be out of season soon?

According to one site,

ウニの産卵期は、大雑把に言うと、ムラサキウニが７～８月、キタムラサキウニが９～１０月、アカウニが１０～１１月、バフンウニが１２～２月ごろらしく、その１～２ヶ月前が一番栄養価が高く美味しいようです。

(Sorry, no translation by me; I assume you can read Japanese.)

And, I'm sure that shungiku is in "shun" (season) in fall and winter. Shungiku is so called because it will bloom in spring.

[Aloha Steve]

Sea Bream "Belle Vue"

Stuffed with shrimp, my lardo and citrus.

Shingled with carrots and beef knuckle aspic.

I wish one day to have the skill and nerve to make a whole fish prepared like that.

[Blether]

Oh, man. Are you going to burst my bubble, Hiroyuki ?

Are you sure that uni will be out of season soon?

According to one site,

ウニの産卵期は、大雑把に言うと、ムラサキウニが７～８月、キタムラサキウニが９～１０月、アカウニが１０～１１月、バフンウニが１２～２月ごろらしく、その１～２ヶ月前が一番栄養価が高く美味しいようです。

Maybe it's Chinese I've been learning all these years ? Let's see:

"Uni spawning times vary by region, but it seems for Murasaki Uni Jul~Aug, Aka Uni Oct~Nov, Bafun Uni Dec~Feb, and one or two months beforehand is when the nutritional value is highest and they are most delicious".

Murasaki means purple, and aka means red. You can translate bafun uni if you like

That looks like good information, but I'm not used to the different species. I do know what good uni looks like and what not-very-nice or not-so-good uni look like, but I've never seen anything labelled other than 'uni'. As far as I've noticed, winter time seems to be when uni is more regularly in the shops / more often available cheaper.

Other than that, to be honest, now that you've called me on it I'm not sure why I think uni is in season in winter. Normally for seasonality I use Kikkoman's chart (also Japanese-only) as a quick reference, but uni is one of the few things they don't actually list, so i didn't get it from there. If I google 'uni season' in English, the first result says

A sushi chef from Mashiko in Seattle once told me that wintertime (now) is "uni season," so everyone should get in a few uni fixes before the weather turns warm

- but I only did that search since you asked. Do you have any idea which of the types of uni are most frequently sold / most abundant in the food market ? As far as I see in the stores, in winter uni from America os most common and in summer, uni from Chile - maybe you noticed that the uni I bought were American.