Sometimes it's really strange how the human mind makes connections. We enjoy salmon for dinner on a regular basis. I recently wrote about wild Alaskan King Salmon in my post, "Food for the empire." It was exceptional in taste. However, it was also very expensive at nearly $20 per pound. So I started looking for farmed salmon that might be significantly better than what we usually get but perhaps not so expensive.
Luck must have been with me, because the first that I tried, Icelandic farmed salmon, has been a delicious addition to our menu. It seems to be a much more delicately flavored fish than much of the salmon that we see in Roanoke. The texture is also exceptional when grilled. So far I've been importing with the help of my cooler from Whole Foods in Reston, Va. The good news is that the Icelandic farmed salmon is also half the price of the wild salmon. Of course there's a huge debate going on about wild verses farmed salmon.
Having been a farmer, I know there are good and bad farmers out there. I did a little research and found that only recently has Iceland allowed salmon farming. The salmon farming is only allowed under very strict rules. Where I buy our food is also important though the options in the Roanoke valley are a little slim these days so sometimes we have to go with what we can find. Though the closest convenient one is in Reston, I actually trust Whole Foods since they make more of an effort than any large chain that I have seen to come up with foods that have been carefully and safely grown and harvested. They also carry Coleman Beef which is produced very similarly to the way we raised our cattle when we were farming. We didn't use any growth hormones or antibiotics, and our cattle had plenty of space to roam.
In case you haven't noticed, a new seafood labeling law makes it a little easier to tell where fish is coming from these days. There's a good article, "Seafood surprise — where is your fish from?," on EastBayRI.com . There was an interesting fact in the article, but I haven't verified it yet.
Dr. William Hogarth, an assistant administrator in the National Marine Fisheries Service, said domestic fishermen face significant competition from foreign imports...
"International seafood trade, and in particular aquaculture-raised import products, make up 70 percent of the seafood consumed by Americans," he wrote in an e-mail. "It's the second largest portion of the U.S. trade deficit behind oil."
I wonder how far behind oil it is. It is hard to believe electronics or autos wouldn't be number two.
While the intent behind the seafood law requiring labeling might have been to push consumption towards domestic sources, the opposite might happen. If my experience with Icelandic Salmon is any indication, labeling might offer a good way to find and easily differentiate better quality fish.
I found this interesting article about Salmon, in TravelLady Magazine. It quotes Executive chef Ris Lacoste of Restaurant 1789 in Washington, D.C
Lacoste, however, prefers farm-raised Atlantic salmon from Iceland or Canada. "Their pens are in the ocean so there is a constant flux of water and less need for antibiotics," she explains. She also finds the fatter Atlantic salmon very moist and easier to cook than wild Pacific salmon.
Since my Internet searching has found at least one source to back me up, I guess I'm well on the way to becoming a salmon snob. I am concerned about antibiotics in our food like this article so having the salmon raised in cold ocean driven water makes me feel a little better. Then maybe I have just bought into Iceland's pr, Iceland naturally. I've always been attracted to Iceland figuring that they got the short end of the stick when the names were passed out. After all they have much more to offer than Greenland.
I did find Iceland's tourist site, "Visit Iceland," to be very intriguing. Maybe I'll have to plan to take a trek there. The scenery looks amazing.
Of course as my random brain connections keep sparking, I did find an article, "FDA Declines to Ban Vietnamese Catfish," which indicates antibiotics have been found in imported catfish. I would have thought we had plenty of our catfish and that shipping would have made the domestic versions much more competitive.
The imported basa catfish were banned recently in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama — three of the top catfish producers in the country — after illegal antibiotics turned up in basa samples.
I'm not a big catfish consumer, but I don't know that I have ever seen the label, "basa catfish," but I suspect I will avoid it. Now that we have grocery stores listing the origin of their seafood, it would be nice to have restaurants do the same all the time, not just when it is a marketing ploy like "Prince Edward Island Mussels."
There an article,"Mussels on Prince Edward Island " in the NY Times today that starts out "On an island that produces 80 percent of North America's cultured mussels ..." Well you could probably have a lot of fun sampling mussels before you dig into the lobsters at "The Prince Edward Island International Shellfish Festival" which takes place in Charlottetown, September 16-18. Having once had a look at some of the mussel farming on PEI and having sampled plenty of them in my Halifax years, I can attest to their quality if cooked simply without too many additions.
I did come across one more interesting fish tidbit. Maureen Dowd tells us in her NY Times opinion piece, "Bike-Deep in the Big Muddy," (free registration required) that the President was dining on some catfish recently.
W. had a barbecue for the press on Thursday night. (If only the press had grilled him instead.) He mingled over catfish and potato salad with the reporters, who had to ride past Cindy Sheehan's antiwar encampment to get to the poolside party.
It might have been appropriate to serve some basa catfish from Vietnam, but I suspect the hint would have been lost.
Hopefully we will slide by the rest of this nasty weather in this image from Weather Underground and get some nicer weather.
It would be nice to see a little more blue sky before August winds down though I can't say that I miss the temperatures in the nineties. We seem to pretty well stuck at just 66 degrees Fahrenheit but that's not a bad thing at all.
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