Fish and Seafood

[Adam Balic]

They look great, what would the basic sambal recipe be, I have one for cuttlefish, but that sauce looks a little more orange?

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Not a sambal...but this recipe should more or less be what's in a balitong sauce.

3 tablesp oil

5 cm knob of young ginger

4 cloves garlic

Combine:

1 teasp dark soya sauce

1 tablesp light soya sauce

1 tablesp sugar

1/2 teasp salt

1 tablesp lime or lemon

10 - 12 bird's eye chillies, sliced

5 shallots, sliced

2 - 3 stalks spring onion, cut into 1 cm lengths.

Mince together the young ginger and garlic and fry till fragrant in the oil. Add the combined sauce. Cook till it boils and thickens. Switch off heat and add chillies, shallots and spring onion.

This thread is so amazing...a lot of seafood I've never seen before. Thanks, (I think), for the worm in the fish pic...I was wondering about that, never having seen or was in the look-out for those crawlies before. Eew.

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Excellent, recipe will be sure to try it soon (maybe with the BE chillies reduced somewhat...), I had expected to see Belacan in the recipe, so it is actually good to see the it and be educated.

[Adam Balic]

From the Supermarket "Maxima" in Vilnius (Lithuania), the Sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus). This is a freshwater sturgeon. I imagine that these are derived from Aquaculturel, not idea what they taste like, but an interesting looking fish. The Males of this species are also crossed with femal Belga (Huso huso) females to produce a commercially important hybrid. I know that there are also sturgeon species in the Great Lakes are they eaten much?

[Adam Balic]

A small species of Shark. This is considered one of the best of all the sharks that are eaten around the Med., but happily in the UK which isn't really a fish eating country (other then a few exceptions) it is very cheap. The common name is the "Spur Dog" (Squalus acanthias), the spurs are located on the two dorsal fins. My fishmonger cut these off as he thinks I am a bit of a clumsy idiot.

I simply cooked this is a cataplana with some chorizo, onion and tomato.

[Carrot Top]

From the Supermarket "Maxima" in Vilnius (Lithuania), the Sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus). This is a freshwater sturgeon. I imagine that these are derived from Aquaculturel, not idea what they taste like, but an interesting looking fish. The Males of this species are also crossed with femal Belga (Huso huso) females to produce a commercially important hybrid. I know that there are also sturgeon species in the Great Lakes are they eaten much?

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I seemed to remember something about our sturgeon population being very low or even close to decimated, Adam.

So I actually did a clickey clicky and found this on the subject.

[spaghetttti]

May I contribute to this thread? We haven't been to our pasar ikan in a while because shopping at Carrefour for fish has become so convenient lately.

Edited November 12, 2005 by spaghetttti (log)

[crinoidgirl]

Oh, my goodness, spaghettti, those brightly-colored fish are gorgeous.

Are they parrotfish?

[Adam Balic]

Two of the best European fish. Dover Sole (Solea solea) and John Dory ( Zeus faber). Actually, the latter has a wide distribution.

Cute eh?

This is the filleted smaller Dory (tossed in for free by the fishmonger)

The fillet fish.

And fish and chips with mushy peas.

Edited November 24, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[johnnyd]

The season for Gulf of Maine Shrimp has begun.

[BryanZ]

I take it the green is roe, am I correct? What makes these shrimp different than thsoe from, say, the Gulf of Mexico. I'm not familiar with this species.

[hathor]

Dumb question: herring and sardines are diffenent fish, right?

The question is prompted by some posts on the Reading Terminal Market thread.

[Adam Balic]

The Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus harengus) is a different species to the true/European Sardine (Sardina pilchardus), but both names are used for lots of other different types of fish and Herring is a description of a group of closely related fish as well, so a Tarpon is often group with Herring.

Pilchards and sardines are the same species of fish, but as "Sardine" is more sexy, Pilchards caught in Cornwall are now marketed as "Cornish Sardines".

To complicate things more, in fishing jargon a young herring under 17.5cm (7") can be refered to as a "sardine".

Edited December 19, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[rlibkind]

The Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus harengus) is a different species to the true/European Sardine (Sardina pilchardus), but both names are used for lots of other different types of fish and Herring is a description of a group of closely related fish as well, so a Tarpon is often group with Herring.

Pilchards and sardines are the same species of fish, but as "Sardine" is more sexy, Pilchards caught in Cornwall are now marketed as "Cornish Sardines".

To complicate things more, in fishing jargon a young herring under 17.5cm (7") can be refered to as a "sardine".

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Since I'm the perpetrator of the Reading Terminal Market thread, I'll complicate matters further. There's also the brisling or sprat, which is canned as a sardine. And there's also a Pacific variety (it's what powered California's "Cannery Row" industry in Monterey). All of these fish are related (see "North Atlantic Seafood" by Alan Davidson) as members of the Clupeidae family. Think of sardine more as descriptive of size than a particular species. In the case of herring, it's the immature fish that is called a sardine.

[hathor]

Thank you gentlemen. Most likely I'll retain the part about size.

[Adam Balic]

That's why when it comes to fish that Scientific or official market names are the way to go, especially when fish are now traded globally.

[SG-]

The season for Gulf of Maine Shrimp has begun.

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Are these the same as the shrimp "reker" sold all over in Scandinavian countries?

[Adam Balic]

Yes, I think that they are the same species. Infomation

[Chris Amirault]

I made soup de poisson from the Les Halles Cookbook with a cod frame. My grandfather was a Gloucester fisherman and hauled thousands of these majestic fish into his boat off Georges Bank. Thought it'd be worth memorializing him before he went into the pot, so:

[Adam Balic]

Nice Cod, how was the final dish?

I often buy monster cod heads, as a large head contains a hugh amount of very good quality meat. A Cod head and shoulders was once a popular roast in the UK, and this works well, but mostly I cook Singapore Fish-head Curry, as it is a great dish that I ate often in Melbourne and miss here in the UK.

[Chris Amirault]

It was pretty good, Adam. The Bourdain recipe is deceptively simple, in both a good way (it's a complex spoonful of soup when done) and a bad way (instructions). As we all know, cod is a pretty resiliently fleshed fish, and the fibers that add such wonderful body to this rustic soup don't get sieved easily. It took me a good hour-plus to sieve the vegetables and flesh through the chinois; I had to keep stopping to pull out small bones, unclog the pores of the chinois, and ponder the ethics of telling people that a few tiny bits of knuckle flesh from my hand had been shredded into the final mix. (I went with "No.")

[Adam Balic]

A couple of lovely fish. I have no idea what these are, other then they are an Indo-Pacific species. The fishmonger mentioned that they are very popular in Hong Kong, but now extremely expensive as most go to Japan.

I also got these large wild prawns.

As I wanted to taste the flavour of the fish un-altered, I simply pan fried them. The prawns were sauted in butter and garlic. Very simple. The fish was delicious, firm flaked fish, with seaweed/iodine flavour, similar to garfish.

edit: Thanks to the power of egullet I can ID the fish as Nemipterus virgatus "Golden Threadfin Bream".

Edited January 20, 2006 by Adam Balic (log)

[johnnyd]

rapture on a plate...

[Adam Balic]

As promised may I present Anarhichas lupus, the Wolf-Fish or Sea Cat.

As you can see it is a British fish. Although, as it's range is mostly in the North, it is not that well known in England. Recipes for it are present in 18th Scottish cookbooks though.

The head has a huge amount of meat on it and it has especially large cheek muscles, most likely due to its diet of crabs, lobsters and shellfish. The flavour of the flesh reflects the diet. So it is perfect for Singapore Fish Head Curry, which looks a little blah, but tastes wonderful

Edited January 19, 2006 by Adam Balic (log)

[Kevin72]

And I thought monkfish were scary looking . . . that thing is positively nightmarish. Thanks for the closeups on the teeth, too.

Is the cheek and head meat what it's prized for? Did you use the fillets for something else?

[Adam Balic]

Kevin - the cheeks are prized by me alone, the heads are almost always throw into the waste bins. This is a smallish head, but with the veg etc it would feed 2-3 people. The fillets are the prized bit, but I didn't get any this time. In some older books the fish is described as 'being similar to a veal chop'. This is bollocks, but it does indicate the flesh isfirm, but not 'fishy'.

[miladyinsanity]

Ooh, Threadfins are good fish.

Adam, have you had the Nonya-style fish head? The one that's sourish, and does not have coconut milk?