| Moscow Food Co-op Recipes | |
Omnivoria:
Celebrate the Holidays with Sustainable Seafood
by Alice Swan, from the December 2006 newsletter
For many people, thoughts of holiday dinners conjure up images of whole roasted turkeys or standing rib roast; they easily feed a lot of people, and the presentation of the whole bird, or the roast with those silly little foil crowns is usually impressive.
For me, however, when the holidays roll around images of sea creatures dance in my head. A number of years ago, I convinced my mom that she could cook a turkey breast for my seafood-phobic brother and the rest of us could have poached salmon for Christmas dinner.
Around the same time, she also decided that we should have oyster stew on Christmas Eve. (Oyster stew is essentially just shucked oysters cooked in heavy cream and butter—how could that not taste good?) Some close friends of our family who often come over for Christmas dinner always bring shrimp cocktail as an appetizer, and we usually have crab legs for New Years Eve.
These days it’s difficult and confusing to keep track of what kinds of seafood are OK to eat, for a variety of reasons. Many seafood populations are declining because of over-fishing and habitat destruction from fishing practices. Farmed seafood is often subject to the same treatment that land animals in feedlots are—antibiotics, growth hormones, and food that they don’t eat in the wild. And then there are concerns about mercury and PCB contamination.
Even though I love seafood, when I was pregnant with my son, I was so afraid of overloading the baby with mercury that I pretty much avoided it altogether. Part of that was simply first-time-parent hysteria. We are lucky in Moscow to have the Fish Folks, who sell excellent quality seafood, and are always happy to answer questions about where it comes from. And now the Co-op is also carrying a small selection of frozen seafood from EcoFish, for those times other than Fridays that you’re craving seafood.
EcoFish was founded in 1999 with the mission of providing sustainable, healthy seafood and supporting sustainable fisheries, both wild and aquaculture (the technical term for fish farms). They choose products according to the recommendations of an independent advisory board made up of some of the foremost marine conservation scientists from organizations such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Blue Ocean Institute and Environmental Defense’s Oceans Program. EcoFish buys most of its products directly from family fisheries all around the world, thereby eliminating the many layers of middlemen that add considerably to the time between harvest and sale of most commercial seafood.
This also eliminates the middleman price mark-ups, meaning that the fishers get a fair price for the products they supply.
Henry Lovejoy, the founder of EcoFish, noticed the bad publicity that seafood was getting, and evidently knew that there would be over-cautious people like me out there who would simply stop eating seafood, so in 2002 he launched Seafood Safe, a seafood labeling program.
Seafood Safe uses independent labs to test seafood products for mercury and PCB contamination. Products are then labeled with the number of 4-oz. servings a woman of childbearing age can safely eat in a month.
EcoFish products available at the Co-op include Mahimahi fillets, Alaskan True Cod, farmed Wisconsin Rainbow trout, and organic farmed Ecuadorian shrimp.
For specifics on why each of these products was chosen by EcoFish’s advisory board, you can visit their Web site, www.ecofish.com.
We sampled some of the EcoFish shrimp (its Seafood Safe number is 16!), of which several varieties are available: raw with shells on, raw peeled & deveined, or cooked salad shrimp. Because we were not going to grill the shrimp, we opted for the easy peeled and deveined variety. It was delicious—sweet, tender and packed with flavor. Freezing technology has improved in recent years, and if I hadn’t known, I would have guessed that the shrimp was fresh. The texture was as firm and the taste as fresh as the shrimp I was once lucky enough to eat the same day it was caught.
Because I made a very simple shrimp scampi, recipes for which are readily available, the recipe I’m going to share is one that we had last summer with halibut from the Fish Folks, but that would also be wonderful with EcoFish Mahimahi. It has a beautiful presentation, and for people who like to mess with such things (like my husband), would make a stunning holiday entrée.
Macadamia Nut-Crusted Mahimahi with Mango Puree and Scallion Oil
From One Fish, Two Fish, Crawfish, Bluefish: The Smithsonian Sustainable
Seafood Cookbook
4 generous servings
Scallion Oil & Mango Puree may be prepared several hours in advance, recipes
below
2 pounds mahimahi fillets, thickly cut
½ c macadamia nuts
¼ loaf brioche
Salt
2 eggs
¾ cup light olive oil
1 tsp black sesame seeds
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the macadamia nuts in a pie pan and toast until golden, about 5 to 7 minutes. Cool and reserve. Pulse the brioche in a food processor until crumbs form. Pulse in the toasted nuts until a crumbly mixture forms.
Cut the mahimahi into 8-ounce pieces and season with salt. In a shallow bowl, beat the eggs and 2 ½ tablespoons water to make an egg wash. Dredge the fish in egg wash, then coat completely in the nut-crumb mixture to make a nice crust. Heat the oil in a nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Sauté the fish until golden brown on both sides, about 1 minute per side. Remove from the heat and place fish on a baking sheet; set aside.
Spread the black sesame seeds in a pie plate and toast in the oven for approximately 5 minutes.
To serve, place the baking sheet with mahimahi in the hot oven and bake for about 4 minutes. Ladle a generous amount of warm mango puree onto each plate and place a piece of fish on the puree. Garnish with a ribbon of scallion oil and sprinkle the sesame seeds around the plate. Serve immediately.
1 mango
½ cup white wine
1 Tbsp. sugar
¼ cup cream
Juice of 1 lime
Salt
Peel the mango and remove all flesh. Place the mango chunks in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the wine and sugar. Cook to reduce the volume by three-fourths, then add the cream. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool slightly, then puree in a food processor. Strain the mixture into a bowl. Add the lime juice and salt to taste. Cover and set aside.
Gently warm the sauce before serving.
1 bunch scallions, green parts only
½ cup olive oil
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of salt
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Quickly blanch the scallion greens, then immediately plunge them into cold water. Remove and dry scallions. Place them in a blender with the olive oil, sugar, and salt; puree until smooth. Place the scallion oil in a squeeze bottle.
|
Copyright: Copyright on articles, recipes, and
images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op
and the respective authors, except were otherwise noted. |
For additions or corrections to this page, please contact the Webmaster.
