Fish

[Deleted]

At last, I was able to liquidate my stock of panga (I was saddled with a 2 kg bag of frozen fillets). I am never buying it again.

[Deleted]

Liquidate or liquefy? What did you do with it?

[Deleted]

I ate it. I am from a poor family.

[Deleted]

I've come to realize that I have never, and likely don't plan to ever purchase frozen seafood unless I'm put in exile and have no other choice than what is available in the local region I live.
Be it snobbery? I don't care. I just can't go there.

[Deleted]

I ate tons of fresh seafood as a child, as I'm sure you can imagine -- and as a family we caught at least half of it ourselves in the Gulf of Mexico or in the local bayous. But as a child, I also ate plenty of fish sticks (fish fingers to the British) and breaded frozen shrimp was also very popular at home, even though I remember going on strike about that item for a few months simply because it was served too often. (I am horrified to think now that to bribe me to eat fried shrimp, all it took was the threat that I wouldn't be allowed to drink a Coke if I didn't eat any.)

Since it was a childhood food, I still like fish sticks every now and then (although they are fish rectangles in France). I am not a big fan of breaded shrimp, because you mostly can taste only the fried breading and not much shrimp. In modern times, it has turned out that it is even worse in Chinese restaurants with even more batter and even less shrimp -- but this is no longer a case of frozen vs. fresh seafood but instead ways that you can ruin seafood.

[Deleted]

I've written before about our inability, here on the Pacific Ocean, of getting any fresh seafood at a reasonable price. You have to go looking for it. You can pay $65 per kilo for fresh sockeye salmon, or you can take your chances with the farmed Atlantic stuff at the supermarket . One of the only reliable sources for fresh-tasting seafood is frozen seafood, believe it or not. Fish caught, cleaned and frozen at sea is in much better shape than the stuff that has been sitting on ice at Safeway for a week. All you have to do is smell them to tell the difference.

[Deleted]

I fully agree that frozen seafood is generally of excellent quality (except for panga, but that has nothing to do with the freezing process!).

I have been very happy to be able to buy Alaska salmon, Madagascar crabs or Bangladeshi prawns of wonderful quality at unbeatable prices. Although I often drool over some of the things I see at the fish market, I just can't pay 400% extra for simple items. I will appreciate a cheap frozen scallop from Chile far more than a nice fresh French scallop sold at the price of solid gold.

[fumobici]

Sept 6, 2013 19:38:49 GMT @lizzyfaire said:

I've written before about our inability, here on the Pacific Ocean, of getting any fresh seafood at a reasonable price. You have to go looking for it. You can pay $65 per kilo for fresh sockeye salmon, or you can take your chances with the farmed Atlantic stuff at the supermarket

65 CAD for a kilo of sockeye? No wonder all the Canadians come down here to buy groceries by the ton. I usually get mine free or in trade because I know a couple of fishermen, but I doubt you could pay anything like that here, even assuming you tried to. Reef net caught Lummi Island sockeye are my local favorite, followed by white king salmon.

The Japanese came over here as buyers in the '70s and raised the bar by a mile on the quality practices for frozen fish locally. Now it is normal that quality frozen will be almost indistinguishable from fresh.

[Deleted]

Sept 6, 2013 21:35:27 GMT fumobici said:

65 CAD for a kilo of sockeye? No wonder all the Canadians come down here to buy groceries by the ton.

Well, in the market on Granville Island. I imagine you would find it close to that price in Pike Place Market in Seattle. I have a native friend whose father is a fisherman and I can get Fraser River sockeye sometimes, but I have an apartment freezer and can't even fit a whole fish in there.

Meat and cheese in Canada is expensive. Fresh produce is infinitely cheaper here than in the US. Go figure. I imagine the Canadian tourists in the US are going back with cheese and processed food, as you can't transport meat, fish or produce across the border.

p.s. And I did say you CAN pay that much. Only American and Eastern Canadian tourists do. ;D

[Deleted]

I fried some flounder (limande) fillets in butter the other day and they were so incomparably better than panga that I cannot even imagine that I ever accepted to buy panga in the past. Naturally, flounder is about twice as expensive, but it was still reasonable.

[tod2]

Oh at last I have a person who has tried Flounder in place of Sole! Talking about Panga....I saw it on the menu at a local restaurant under another name " sea bream. I avoided it like the plague.
The waitrons have absolutely no idea whatesoever they are serving, and could not be bothered to find out either! Every question asked about the fish is directed at The Manager.... who knows "Sweet Buggar-All"
I went for the calamari. Genuine tubes. Not fish squiqed togehter like Calamari Steaks are.

[Deleted]

Well, as a child living on the Gulf of Mexico, I sometimes went floundering with my father at night. You have to take a Coleman lantern (or other bright light source, but back then the one and only possible bright light was a Coleman lantern) and walk carefully in clear shallow water looking for the outline of the flounder under the sand. Naturally, as a stupid child, I sometimes stepped on them and when they whiz out under your foot, it is an indescriptable moment of terror.

We used the same gigs (poles with a spike on the end) for floundering and frogging.

[htmb]

I was always afraid I'd run across a sting ray, rather than a flounder.

[Deleted]

I've stepped on a sting ray from time to time.

[lagatta]

Sea bream is not at all the same thing as panga. Sea bream is a MUCH tastier fish. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilt-head_bream

[Deleted]

Sea bream are brilliant. I used to buy them at the Portuguese fishmonger when I lived in Toronto, and I would stuff them with fresh bay leaves, parsley and lemon and grill them on my little hibachi on my fire escape. Oh, my goodness.

[Deleted]

I have said this before, but I will say it again. During my 3 trips to Vietnam, I learned from my Vietnamese guide that panga are called "shitfish" by many of the Vietnamese and most people won't eat them. When I was on a boat in the Mékong delta, they showed us the fish cages directly under the outhouses of the shacks on stilts over the water. They are full of panga who eat human feces and any kitchen trash that is thrown down there.

While I would certainly decline a meal of panga if I were invited into any of these shacks on the Mékong, I am pretty certain that the industrial panga that is exported around the world is given a slightly better diet. Apparently one of the advantages of farming panga is that they are not aggressive, so you can fill a fish pen with basically more fish than water, and they don't really mind as long as they are fed.

I assume that it is the farming techniques where the fish are grown super fast and don't have any room to swim around that makes the panga so unpleasantly mushy and tasteless.

Maybe the authentic semi wild shitfish taste better.

[Deleted]

Well, I can say with some confidence that shit-eating panga and real sea bream are not the same at all:

Panga: Pterogymnus laniarius, a small, ocean-dwelling fish, native to the southeast Atlantic Ocean and southwest Indian Ocean.



Gilt-head Sea Bream: Sparus aurata is a fish of the bream family Sparidae found in the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern coastal regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.



Thanks, Lagatta, for pointing out the difference.

On another note, I enjoyed seeing Guilt-head bream on a menu once.

[tod2]

Thank you for giving us the correct details about Panga/Seabream, Lizzy! I must go back to that seafood restaurant and order the Sea Bream. I saw the list of countries that call it Dorado. I'm sure the Dorado on our menu's is different. It is very common and served everywhere as 'Catch of the Day' - Friends have ordered it and said it was lovely. Supermarket shelves are lined with plastic covered fresh fillets. Tried them too....sorry not my cup of tea.
I ordered a sole once and got a strange wider shaped fillet of fish, so I asked the owner if this was an East Coast or West Coast sole? Neither , he replied honestly. "I buy Flounder at half the price and it's just as good". I actually thought it tasted better!

[Deleted]

In France and the Maghreb, it is a dorade.

[Deleted]

Well, hate to break it to you, tod, but I did a bit more research. According to the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative, what you have on your menus is not dorade or bream either.

The Dorado (Coryphaena hippurus), also known as mahi-mahi or dolphinfish, is a surface-dwelling fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical and subtropical waters worldwide. Mahi-mahi means "very strong" in Hawaiian. These fish, as members of the Coryphaenidae family, are very closely related to the Marlin species. Dorado is not targeted directly but is mainly caught as bycatch in the tuna and swordfish directed longline fishery. This may imply a low fishing pressure. Little is known about the Dorado stocks as there have been no assessments of the stock.

[Deleted]

I had a proper Dover sole once, in London, served in a very fancy place and boned (or is it deboned?) at table by a "waiter in a monkey suit" (as they used to say). It was an amazing experience, and not since repeated. Over here on the west coast of North America they try to sell all sorts of things as "sole". Not even close.

[Deleted]

It is absolutely true that there is an enormous amount of dissimulation and lies about all of the types of fish on the market, not to mention shellfish like scallops. Some fish names have much more market value than others, so the seafood companies use treasures of imagination to claim that certain fish are the same or almost the same as the 'noble' fish that obtain top dollar.

In France, they are obliged to also give the Latin species name of everything being sold but how many people know those names? I certainly do not.

[rikita]

my brother caught a huge grass carp recently. we had some of it the other day when we visited my mom. it was very good. that is all i wanted to say.

[Deleted]

Carp is an extremely variable fish because it can taste like "mud" as a bottom feeder(like catfish), but it can also be quite good. Basically, the smaller the carp the better.

[rikita]

well that one was big but was still good ... i think it also depends where they lived, and what you do with it. i think sometimes also it helps to let them swim in clear water for a while before killing them.

[Deleted]

You mean like in the bathtub?

[Deleted]

I had rollmops recently, thinking of Bixa's lack of them.

[bixaorellana]

I never thought of you as a cruel person, but now ...........

          

[lagatta]

yet another thing to take along, next time we pack for Oaxaca...