A good catch: chefs go fishing for alternative species as supplies of popular seafood dwindle

Nation's Restaurant News,  Nov 5, 2007  by Bret Thorn

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"I've just contracted a group of fishermen to get barracuda for me out of the waters of Tobago," says Barton Seaver, the chef of Hook in Washington, D.C. Seaver calls the reef fish, best known as a vicious predator, "the perfect fish" for eating.

"It has skin that crisps up very nicely and has beautiful visual appeal to it," he says. "It's a thick fillet with a pleasing, off-white color to it. It's very sweet and buttery in the way grouper is, but it has a really nice, clean finish to it the way snapper does."

Like other chefs looking to act responsibly when it comes to the seafood they serve, Seaver is welcoming into his kitchen more obscure fish species from more distant waters. Seaver says he likes to brine barracuda and then serve it with mint, pumpkin seared in brown butter with garlic, red onion, and a sauce made out of sauteed onions and pecans pureed in "copious quantities of olive oil" with lemon juice and water. He's also serving flying fish, amberjack, and anything else that is sustainably raised or caught.

Chefs are in a quandary about fish. For centuries people ate whatever was pulled out of the local waters, supplemented on both sides of the Atlantic by what seemed like an endless supply of cod, which was salted, dried and preserved for use in times of need. But as populations grew, so did our taste for fish, and the great schools of cod were nearly eaten out of existence, as were New England striped bass, north Atlantic swordfish, Chilean sea bass, bluefin tuna and others.

Farm-raised fish--corralled into netted sections of ocean or estuary, or raised in inland ponds--seemed to be a logical solution, but some chefs complained about their flavor and some environmental groups expressed concern about the sustainability of some farmers' practices.

But many chefs have found farmed fish that they like to cook with and that their customers like both for flavor and environmental practices. Meanwhile, reforms in wild fisheries have meant a return of some old favorites and renewed appreciation of fish that had been largely ignored for decades.

Alaska's wild salmon and pollock fisheries have been acknowledged as among the most sustainable in the world, and domestic farms of catfish and barramundi are regarded as safe and consistent, but other wild and farm-raised fish are getting chefs' attention, too.

When it comes to wild fish, Seaver says, "the fundamental key to sustainability is flexibility."

"There's a reason why it's called fishing and not catching," he adds.

Knowing what to do with different varieties of fish, and teaching your customers to accept them, is part of a chef's responsibility, he says.

"Consumers have to be confident in making alternative decisions, and so chefs have to be comfortable offering alternative choices," he says.

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Alison Barshak, the chef-owner of Alison at Blue Bell in Blue Bell, Pa., has a similar philosophy.

"We just call our fish person and ask what's local," she says, meaning anything from along the Eastern Seaboard.

That sometimes means explaining to customers why the small, 3- to 4-pound striped bass from Maryland are different from the larger ones from Rhode Island that they're accustomed to.

"We can say to them, this is wild striped bass from Maryland, that's why it's like this," she says. "I think they appreciate that, and how fresh it is."

These days she also is seeing enthusiasm for cod, which used to be a hard sell. She cooks it in brique dough with local peppers and serves it with a Romesco sauce.

Cod also is enjoying a renaissance in New England, according to chefs there.

"The salted, blue-collar, over-fished past of the codfish sets the stage for chefs to impress customers with its creamy, delicately textured beauty," says Chris Parsons, chef of Catch, which has locations in Edgartown and Winchester, Mass., adding that his local, highly regulated fishery is providing delicious, environmentally sound fish.

Parsons points out that the cod and striped bass from within 200 miles of the New England coastline are regulated by federal and local laws, and also are close enough to shore that they can be caught by day boats, rather than vessels that can stay out for weeks at a time, resulting in fresher fish. He likes to pan-roast cod and baste it with herbs and butter at his Edgartown restaurant. He poaches it in olive oil in Winchester.

Striped bass, which was virtually unseen when he was growing up, is back, too, but it's seasonal and carefully controlled.

"When you have it, it's wonderful, but when you hit the quota, that's it," Parsons says.

A number of chefs in the Southeast have taken a liking to the by-catch of more popular seafood items.

John Besh, executive chef of Restaurant August in New Orleans, remembers growing up shrimping in the South and the variety of fish they caught in the process--flounder, sheephead, tripletail. He points out that grouper, now hugely popular in Florida and neighboring states, is traditionally a by-catch of snap per. One of his current favorites is tripletail, also called blackfish.