Fish and Seafood

[docsconz]

I agree that small fish make great eating. There are few things better to eat than fresh sardines simply grilled.

[Pan]

During the recent Canadian election, one of the candidates (Stephen Harper, who won a minority) promised that Canadian patrol ships would arrest foreign fishing vessels in the Grand Banks area for overfishing, or dumping unwanted fish. Significantly, the patrols would be stepped up from the present level, and would go beyond the country's 200 mile limit.

It will be interesting to see if Harper can deliver. If he does, it will help the severe overfishing and dumping in the western Atlantic.

(I'm hoping this post is newsworthy and informative, rather than political).

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I think it is newsworthy and informative. Policies on fisheries are certainly grist for the mill here. I'd encourage you to start a new topic on this, because I'd like to ask a question but don't want to take this thread off on a tangent.

[Adam Balic]

From earlier in the year, an unknown species of red bream from the west coast of Africa, stuffed with a middle-eastern combination of herbs, spices (especially sumac) and walnuts. It think that this is one of the best stuffed fish recipes there is. It appears inthe 14th century text "al-Kitab Wasf al-At'ima al-Mu'tada's" ("The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods") and is seems to be pretty well distributed in the region.

The stuffing mix

[johnnyd]

Absolutely delicious.

Is "Book of familiar foods" the same one that chefzadi linked us up to last year?

[Adam Balic]

Absolutely delicious.

Is "Book of familiar foods" the same one that chefzadi linked us up to last year?

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More then likely, as "Kitâb Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada" appeared in "Medieval Arab Cookery" by Charles Perry et al. This book is now out of print, but the earlier work that it is based on called "Kitâb al Tabîkh" has just been published (although there are less fish recipes in this book).

Link to Book

[Adam Balic]

I read an article today by an English food writer who commented that it was all very well trying new fish types, but unless they where brill, halibut or turbot they often didn't taste that good. There is some truth in this, but I thought I would go to the fishmonger and see what 'also rans' were for sale.

This is the final selection. In all they cost £12 and would feed 8 people. Some of them are highly prized, some of them not so much.

Tub Gurnard (Trigla lucerna). A really lovely fish, if underated in the UK.

Saithe/Coley/Coalfish (Pollachius virens). Historically and commercially very important, but pretty much regarded as cat food in the UK. Young fish like this are very good though.

John Dory (Zeus Faber). High status fish, excellent eating.

Hake (Merluccius merluccius. A hugely popular fish, especially in Spain. Soft flesh, but a great flavour especially when cooked on the bone.

Red Mullet (Mullus surmuletus). Very highly prized, great flavour. There are two species in the Med, they are pretty similar in appearance and flavour, but this is the bigger species. For fish nerds the other species (Mullus barbatus) doesn't have the red stripe on the first dorsal fin.

Forkbeard (Phycis blennoides). A weird one. There are two species common around Europe, this is the larger one (if a small specimen). They have soft flesh, but a good flavour. They are highly prized in Corsica and I have also seen them for sale in Liguria. The Italian name for them is Mustella.

So after removing the fillets, this is the basis of and excellent stock which will be used to make a Sicillian couscous dish.

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And all these chaps ended up as Sicilian cuscus (couscous), which was delicious. Normally, I'm not sure the fish fillets would be eaten at the same time, but we were spoilt for choice.

Edited February 3, 2006 by Adam Balic (log)

[jayt90]

During the recent Canadian election, one of the candidates (Stephen Harper, who won a minority) promised that Canadian patrol ships would arrest foreign fishing vessels in the Grand Banks area for overfishing, or dumping unwanted fish. Significantly, the patrols would be stepped up from the present level, and would go beyond the country's 200 mile limit.

It will be interesting to see if Harper can deliver. If he does, it will help the severe overfishing and dumping in the western Atlantic.

(I'm hoping this post is newsworthy and informative, rather than political).

←

I think it is newsworthy and informative. Policies on fisheries are certainly grist for the mill here. I'd encourage you to start a new topic on this, because I'd like to ask a question but don't want to take this thread off on a tangent.

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Thanks, Pan,

I'll start it in the news section, but I haven't really researched it yet.

[athinaeos]

i also like mackerel (scumbri in greek) and would like to suggest a very simple way to prepare and eat it

it is based on a recipe a learned from fishermen, but i have changed it slightly

step 1: after cleaning the fish and removing the head and the bones you immerse the filets in very cold water (preferably with chunks of ice)for about 2 hours

this procedure removes the blood from the flesh of the fish

step 2: take a large shallow dish and sprinkle generously coarse sea salt - place the filets on the salt with the skin side up - add a second layer of salt and fish - when finished, cover the fish with salt - leave for 2 hours max - if the fish is small, 1 hour will do (the duration of this light curing is the critical issue in this recipe! if you leave it for longer it will become very salty and rubbery)

step 3: remove the salt, clean the fish with fresh water and place in airtight glass containers with virgin olive oil - refrigerate for 2 days minimum

step 4: serve the fish with the olive oil, sprinkle the flesh lightly with lemon juice

step 5: eat with freshly baked white bread - dipping it in the olive oil - and accompany with a glass of ouzo!

bon appetit

ps kindly let me know if you like it

[Adam Balic]

Sardina pilchardus, as the name suggests called either a 'Sardine'or 'Pilchard' depending who you are or who you are trying to sell them to. Found throughout the Mediterranean to southern England, "Sardines" have become a bit of a symbol of "sun and Med. lifestyle", while "Pilchards" are what poor people eat or you feed to the cat, so they have undergone somwhat of an image makeover and the English pilchard has now become a sardine. The English population tends to get bigger then the Meds, but they taste the same.

These were filleted and parmesan and herb crusted.

[Mike Hunt]

Question - Why are scallop corals generally discarded in the US ?

It's a bit like ordering T-Bone with half of it missing !!

Yours, bewildered.

[Adam Balic]

As you can see from earlier on this thread, in the USA scallops must be landed as the abductor muscle only, so no roe.

[Mike Hunt]

As you can see from earlier on this thread, in the USA scallops must be landed as the abductor muscle only, so no roe.

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Why ?

[Adam Balic]

I'm not sure. The may not have been any great historical consumption and hence no demand for it now, or it could be a fear of contamination etc.

[Mike Hunt]

I'm not sure. The may not have been any great historical consumption and hence no demand for it now, or it could be a fear of contamination etc.

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I still don't understand.

It's a bit like getting a plate of food presented to you and the server saying "enjoy your meal, oh and by the way, we've discarded the best bits"

Sorry if I'm appearing obtuse - Contamination of what exactly ?

[Kevin72]

My understanding, and rereading the earlier part of the thread confirms this, is that it's just too perishable. And I'd imagine that there's just not the demand out there to bother keeping it. Roe is often a tough sell here, sadly.

[Adam Balic]

My understanding, and rereading the earlier part of the thread confirms this,  is that it's just too perishable.  And I'd imagine that there's just not the demand out there to bother keeping it.  Roe is often a tough sell here, sadly.

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For some reason it only seems to be perishable in the States though.

[Mike Hunt]

My understanding, and rereading the earlier part of the thread confirms this,  is that it's just too perishable.  And I'd imagine that there's just not the demand out there to bother keeping it.  Roe is often a tough sell here, sadly.

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For some reason it only seems to be perishable in the States though.

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Yeah, that's what I'm thinking

Absolutely no reason whatsoever.

By the way Adam, thanks for the previous images, especially the Smokies.

We used to eat these hot straight out the smoke house.

I now get them posted to me by the same smoker, phone your order and it's posted together with an invoice to return at your leisure !!!!

Old school service.

[rlibkind]

My understanding, and rereading the earlier part of the thread confirms this,  is that it's just too perishable.  And I'd imagine that there's just not the demand out there to bother keeping it.  Roe is often a tough sell here, sadly.

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For some reason it only seems to be perishable in the States though.

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Just speculation on my part, but I agree with Kevin on both points. Roe is a "tough sell" here (even though, this time of year, the fishmongers' cases start filling up with shad roe -- for that there is a definite local market here in Philadelphia). As for perishability, most scallops here are treated with tripolyphosphate to increase water content and shelf life ("wet" scallops, vs. untreated "dry" scallops). The cooking/flavor impact of that additive is bad enough on the abductor muscle; I would imagine it's awful on the roe.

[Oyster Guy]

I really like this thread and I thought I would add a reply on (what else) oysters.

In late October, I took a trip with my best friend to visit an oyster farmer friend and supplier on his oyster lease on Marina Island in British Columbia.

He, of course, put us to work gathering oysters and bagging them for shipments to some of the finest restaurants and parties in Canada.

Some of them that we found were much too large for half shell service and he prefered to use these as "broodstock" oysters for breeding purposes.

We also took a trip over to the Gorge Inlet on Cortes Island to harvest some deep water cultured oysters hanging from the floating oyster rafts.

Being grown in trays protected from wave and tidal action, the oyster looks entirely different from it's beach grown cousin above.

Of course after all that hard work, we naturally couldn't resist and had a few to eat.

Finally, one of the many many oyster plates I shucked for guests at the Bearfoot Bistro in Whistler, BC, Canada this winter.

Perched on freshly fallen snow, we have not only 3 different types but also 3 different species as well.

We have the European Flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) grown locally on Thynne Island, BC.

The Beausoliel oyster (Crassostrea virginica) from New Brunswick on Canada's East Coast.

And last (but not least) the Kumamoto oyster (Crassostrea sikamea) from South Totten Inlet in Puget Sound, Washington State.

Love this thread.

Keep on shucking

Oyster Guy

Edited March 18, 2006 by Oyster Guy (log)

[Adam Balic]

Great images. Oysters are something I know very little about. In Melborne is it quite difficult to get oysters that haven't been pre-shucked for you and these are nearly always Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas. In NSW you get Sydney rock oysters and from the evidence on he beach I would say that there are some other native species that aren't commercailly harvested (shells look round and flattish, similar to a British native oyster). The only other oysters I have had is some Colchester Natives here in the UK.

Regarding those big oysters, I once read a report on an area in Tasmania where there had been a failed attempt to farm oysters in the 60's (?), somebody found a few survivors and these were approaching 500gm in weight.

[Adam Balic]

Whelks (Buccinum undatum) for dinner. These are an increasingly harvested species in the UK (especially Wales), while there is a domestic market, most now get exported to Korea.

Tonight will be a vague Vietnamese meal, based on a treatment for land snails. The flavours are pork fat, lemon grass, shallots, chilli, ginger, fish sauce and coriander.

After steaming for 5 minutes the animal is extracted and the fleshy foot is seperated from the yucky brown bits (Canadians eat it all it seems).

Also cooked was some local mussels (Mytilus edulis), which the fishmonger told me would be the last worth eating for a while as they are spawning at this time of the year. These were cooked in a cataplana, which isn't Vietnamese, but is a brilliant bit of cooking kit for shellfish.

The finished 'meal', eaten with crusty bread. All well and good, but sadly the mussels were not very good at all, very flabby and frankly unpleasant. So pork and leek sausages with apple for dinner instead I'm afraid.

Flabby mussel meat.

Dinner mark II.

[Kevin72]

Yes. Let's discuss mussels.

I conversely find them to be at their best this time of the year, on up through maybe early June. From then on, they're flabby or tough, stringy, thin on meat, and have alot of I'll just call it "bile"--that pouch of black stuff that makes them taste like sweatsocks. I've repeatedly asked our fishmonger about seasons, etc., and he insists that since the kind they buy (except the greenlips) are farmed, it should have no bearing on their flavor; these are the Prince Edward Island mussels he's referring to, mostly.

So, the questions:

What really is that black stuff, and am I right in saying that it is what gives mussels their off flavor if it's much more prominent?

Is this issue related to the spawning season? What is happening to them from June on that would impact their flavor, even if they are farmed? Or am I just imagining a flavor difference?

[Adam Balic]

Farmed mussels still spawn, this depends on water temperature mostly. Based on various PEI sites, spawning begins in mid-May tpically for this region. Slap your fishmonger.

Not sure about the black bile thing, it could be the sorting stomach I guess, but it is really the sperm (white fleshed mussels) and eggs (orange fleshed mussels), which are the tasty bits, so during spawning they are not so great for the lack of these.

Edited March 21, 2006 by Adam Balic (log)

[Adam Balic]

Poor weather has ment that the local (UK) fish have not been common on the slab this week. So I went for this fellow from Oman. This is a Reef Grouper (Plectropomus sp., most likely P. leopardus, the Leopard Reef Grouper). Members of this genus are highly prized and have a fairly global distribution. Good flavour and they are quite pretty as you can see.

This was prepared Sichuan fashion (slits cut in flesh, mushroom, dried shrimp and ham pushed in, steamed over ginger and spring onions, along with some rice wine). A really great recipe unfortunately, the fish was terrible. A horrible muddy flavour to the flesh, not very pleasant at all. Bugger. Will have to look into the possibility that this is a farmed fish.

[Tepee]

Hmm...the last time I had a grouper like this, hubby bought it frozen from fresh during a biz trip to East Malaysia, less than 2 hours' flight to KL. Good fish is more reasonably priced there. Since these fish are known for their tasty meat, we steamed it too. No muddy taste at all and nice firm flesh. But, I shred the ginger (loads of it) very finely and stuff it in all nooks and crannies.