Fish Wednesday

Too Many Cookies

I swear to Neptune, the god of the sea and all that lives in it, some of the smartest money I spent this year was on my little Road Trip Grill. When the rains started, we didn’t stow it in the garage - rather, we stowed the bench we used for piling up the grocery bags while digging for our keys and put the grill there, under the awning, out of the rain. And while we don’t have a good place to drop the groceries anymore, we do have year round grilling. Worth the nuisance of damp grocery bags, to say the least.

Unlike the rest of you who have judiciously exercised through the December cookie eating season, I find myself somewhat more generous in the middle than I was before all those damn treats appeared in our house. Confronted with our friend C’s unbelievably awesome salted dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies, there was no way I was going to exhibit moderation.

And I really like good food, I like to eat well. The problem is I like to eat a little too much, too well, and I also have a real weakness for evil evil carbohydrates. To add insult to injury, I am now the caretaker of a bread machine and when your house smells like a freshy baked loaf of bread, there’s nothing to do but find said loaf, slice it, and make toast.

What I am getting at is this: A person needs to choose their food a little more carefully now that the invasion of the sweets has ended. And yes, they could probably eat a little less and exercise a little more, though I am closing in on the 15 minute mile - I have been doing three miles three or four days a week. I’ve also added a day in the pool and am trying to make myself do more yoga. Closer attention to what’s on the plate means a renewed vigor for Fish Wednesday.

I love tuna, I love my little grill, and wow, two great tastes, etc. I coated the tuna in just a little sesame oil and some soy sauce and then I covered the tuna with sesame seeds and seared it on a very hot grill. We ate it with brown rice, a rather fancy variety that cost too much money, and steamed spinach. I put a little sesame/seaweed sprinkle on the rice and the spinach. Man, oh man, was it delicious. I promptly asked my mate to hand over 3o bucks, which is about what we paid for a rather nice seafood dinner a few nights ago. He leaped up to wash the dishes.

Back to Nerd’s Eye View

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From the archives:
Blue Wednesday

Yesterday in class I kept the hacking and sneezing to a minimum, but later in the evening I broke out in to a blazing fever. Off I went to bed to toss and turn the better part of the night, alternating between being clammy and cold and roasting hot. Today I’m dullwitted and parched and exhausted but too uncomfortable to sleep much. I have the flu.

This sucks mightily. I had to beg out of our date with the Wirtschaftskammer, though thankfully J. took care of all of it, even running home with the papers for me to sign, then delivering them right back again to be processed. Now I’m a licenced freelancer in Austria. Nerd’s Eye View is global, baby.

I also have to beg off from work tomorrow and I’m not sure what’s to become of my weekend plans with the Irish. Hopefully, this is just one of those temporary visitors that leaves you feeling sapped after 48 hours and just fine after 72. I have enough to do without being so listless that I can barely think straight.

In the meantime, I am not making jokes about bird flu, I am crawling in and out of bed, I am channel hopping though movies I’ve seen or those I’d rather not even know about at all, and I’m wondering just how many painkillers I can take in a sitting. And is it okay to wash down ibuprofen with whiskey?

I find a certain superstitiousness about sickness here that borders on medieval, but today, I’m not complaining. I’m so worn out that the rule that one shouldn’t leave the house until 24 hours after a fever has broken seems a-okay to me right now. Now, I must go toss back a few more paracetemols and find out if there are any counter indications for mixing them with schnapps.

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Guilt Shark

The trickiest thing about Fish Wednesday is staying in line with my goal to select sustainable seafood for my plate. If it’s not on the card I have in my wallet (it’s the sushi one) then I have to stand there, shuffling, while I try to remember - is it okay or not? What are the other names for this fish and are THOSE okay?

Typically, your supermarket fish guy or gal doesn’t know or isn’t saying. And labels, which are getting much better about showing country of origin, still don’t tell you if your dinner comes from a fishery that’s endangered or not. It’s maddening.

I am genuinely disappointed when I get home and find, uh oh, I’ve failed. That’s why, if you’d been anywhere near my desk on Fish Wednesday this week, you’d have heard me spew a stream of profanities when I discovered that no, no, no, you should NOT eat shark. It’s overfished and has a health warning attached to it - high levels of mercury are apparent in the world’s shark population.

I am a flawed human who likes to make only so many trips to the supermarket when the weather is bad. While I am not too self conscious to return mistaken purchases to the place from whence they came, there was no way I was going back out into the squall. I cooked the shark. We at the shark for dinner (with a side of steamed broccoli and quinoa, if you’re wondering.)

But I did not enjoy it and I did not feel good about it.

No, seriously. The shark was gamy, almost, and tough, a bit stringy even. The steak looked great, and while it seemed like it should have been similar to a decent cut of tuna, it was, well, disappointing.

I see this as a good thing. Unlike Chilean sea bass, which is so freaking delicious as to force me into a lengthy interrogation of the fish monger selling it so I can either buy it or not (usually not) based on how convincingly they tell me the origin story for that particular cut of finned deliciousness (wow, this is a rambling sentence!) I will remember, no problem, that I don’t really LIKE shark. That’s way easier than having to decipher if the shark is actually rockfish or cod or spiny dogfish or some other faux name, or being able to remember if oh, actually, it’s from British Columbia, and that’s okay. Whatever.

I do carry a Seafood Watch card in my wallet, but unfortunately, the one I have these days is the sushi version, not the all purpose one. So I can, without worry, select a nice plate of something or other as it slides past me on the conveyor belt, but when it comes to the simple task of buying fish for dinner? Fail.

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Prawn Pad Thai, Take Three

Fish sauce is unpleasant stuff, smelly and weird, but without it you can’t really get the right flavor to your home made Thai or Vietnamese food. We bought one bottle of the stuff which we threw out immediately upon opening it - it was beyond weird and smelly, it was downright nasty and there was no way I was putting it in my food. The next bottle we got proved more palatable, if you can call fish sauce palatable on its own. It really is essential, though, it adds whatever that flavor is to your food that makes it taste like The Real Thing.

I’m still toying with Pad Thai recipes, I haven’t found one that works for me 100%. Some recipes call for ketchup, some for loads of Sri Racha (hot sauce), some for tamarind… Last night’s came from The Noodle Shop Cookbook, but it was amended slightly by me - my notes say to replace the ketchup with tamarind and to go crazy with the lime. I still ended up a little short on the sauce and I should have used the little ready cooked shrimp instead of the Gulf prawns, but they looked so appealing in the seafood case.

We have loads of Asian supermarkets here. I’m torn between two of them, the lush Uwajimaya that has vast quantities of beautifully stacked groceries or the ramshackle (and always freezing cold) Viet Wah where the items are a bit more mysterious, the market a bit more like being in Vietnam. At Viet Wah you can buy fresh rice noodles, at Uwajimaya you can get fresh spinach noodles, it’s not a six of one, half a dozen of the other situation. I could not find the ginger candies that I love at Uwajimaya but they don’t seem to have the ginger cookies that make me crazy at Viet Wah.

I’m a fan of supermarkets as adventure, I always love to go grocery shopping overseas and here in Seattle we’re lucky to have a nice variety of ethic grocery stores. Mystery produce is always fun, mystery meat has a slightly terrifying edge to this vegitarian inclined eater, and I get a ridiculous amount of glee from finding things in cans that I can not identify.

Eat your fish.  It makes everything more interesting.

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Not Quite Blackened Black Cod

I get cravings sometimes. Sometimes I think, yes, crispy, blackened, spicy, that’s what I want. Sometimes I think, of the once portly Paul Prudhomme and how he seemed to start his recipes with a pound of butter, hence the irresistible deliciousness. Sometimes, I get it in my head that I can replicate the luscious, spicy food of the south here in under the mossy green glow of the Pacific Northwest.

And I fail. Not in an inedible, “Wow, that sucked” sort of way, more in a “Yeah, that was all right but not exactly what I had in mind” kind of way.

There are some cases where it is best to spring for the ready made stuff. A Cajun spice rub is probably one of those - fish sauce and black bean sauce come to mind. I was surprised to find I had most of what was needed to make a Cajun rub in my kitchen, save powdered onion and powdered garlic, which I never have. The resulting rub came out nice enough, but I probably should have cooked the fish on a blazing hot and well oiled grill rather than in the skillet in a hot oven. Or fried them on the stove top in a half a pound of butter.

As a side I’d cooked up a big batch of collard greens. For the first time I bothered to boil the greens for a sufficient amount of time in a big pot of water - wow, did that make all the difference! I tend to flash fry my greens or steam them barely at all, but collards are tough if you don’t cook them properly. In a rare instance of memory of collard green failures in the past, I remembered to start the greens good and early, and then I sauteed them with onions, Tabasco, and some tomatoes. What a difference it makes to cook the collard properly. Good stuff.

The fish was cooked perfectly, but it didn’t have the crunch I was looking for. I’m not big on pan frying, not unless it’s in someone else’s kitchen, but this fish was worse for being treated as though it was a healthy meal and not an artery clogging adventure. Next time, I’m springing for the Cajun spice mix and firing up the grill.

Because you know I care, I’ll tell you that Black Cod, also known as Sablefish, is a okay choice according to our friends at Seafood Watch. It’s best if the fish is from Alaska or BC, so see if your fish monger can tell you where, exactly, the fish is caught. It’s a mild, white, flaky fish. It’s probably a nice stew fish, but it’s firm enough to hold up to grilling.

Eat your fish, it helps you learn from your past.

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Badgering Your Server: How It’s Done

From where I sit, there are only a handful of walkable restaurants - the Waffle House, a PF Changs, something called Maggiano’s, a fancy-ish place called the Palms, a Chipotle, something else called Via! and a Mitchell’s Fish Market. I was hungry, we’re in Tampa, it’s coastal. We went with Mitchell’s. No surprises there.

Mitchell’s is a smallish chain - their website sports the Ruth’s logo, as in Ruth’s Chris steak houses. It’s shiny and noisy inside, decorated in a style inspired by old fashioned steamer ships - there are portholes and shiny wood and a faux elegance - I’m guessing it’s designed to make you forget you’re at the mall, to transport you to the grand dining room of some ocean crossing vessel. Um, okay, I’ll bite. Plus, there’s fish on the menu.

The poor waitress was not really prepared for my questions. “Where’s George’s Bank?” That’s where the scallops were from. “Is grouper the same as cod? And what fishery does the sea bass come from? Do you make sure your fish comes from sustainable fisheries?” I left her a hefty tip because in spite of the fact that she could not directly answer my questions, she scampered back to the kitchen every time to ask. I appreciated that.

I really needed to be talking to the buyer or the chef, but it was Friday night at prime time, that wasn’t going to happen. I figured I’d email Mitchell’s when I got the chance. Lucky Mitchell’s - they’ve got a statement on their site about their commitment to sustainable seafood. Kudos. Though they’re still getting an email - if they’re committed to sustainability, I think their servers should be able to talk about it. I’m quite convinced that the server didn’t understand my question because she came back with the name of the fish distributor, not the actual geographic location of the sea bass fishery.

She tried. I’m fairly confident it’s not every day that the waitstaff at the mall by the airport in Tampa gets grilled about their commitment to sustainable seafood.

And hey, about that seafood. It was okay. The scallops were perfectly cooked, no small feat - they were absolutely the best thing on the plate and worth their price. The snapper and the grouper were overdone, dry on the edges and very, very plain tasting. The preparation was nice - they call it Shang Hai style - you get a bed of rice some spinach, the lot dressed in soy and ginger and black sesame seeds - I like to do fish this way myself, at home.

I’d rather do independent/local when I have the option and probably, I should have called a cab and buzzed into town (or out to some low rise strip mall) for Cuban food. I wanted to walk, I didn’t want wheels underneath me. It was okay. Mostly, I am pleased to know that in the opposite corner of the country from my home, there’s an acceptable chain restaurant that’s openly committed to serving sustainable seafood - even if their staff doesn’t totally get it. It’s a start.

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Fish Hugger Goes to Tampa

It probably would have gone better for them if I’d called first. Then, I’d have had a date with the education coordinator and the two desk people and the nice guy who feeds the fish wouldn’t have been put on the spot like that. But since I hadn’t called, it was more of a spot check. And the Florida Aquarium failed.

For the record, I did enjoy the aquarium rather a lot. The tanks were pretty, the fish looked healthy and happy and active, and the earnest young people tending the exhibits were able to answer all my pesky questions. “Why can’t I poke that?” and “What is that fish doing?” being two of my favorites.

I also loved the local exhibits that replicated the mangroves. I liked the squat ruddy duck and the spoonbill and watching the alligators hang in the water with just their snouts sticking out. I loved the tiny watchful owl, round eyed and so adorable I wanted to put her in my pocket and take her home. The sea dragons are still miraculous, the jellies elegant and formal, and the tropical fish, oh, I’ll admit it, they always make me a little weepy, I love them so much.

But after I was done admiring the tanks, I headed down to the desk to ask about the seafood conservation programs at the aquarium. “What huh?” said the nice gal behind the desk. She passed me off to her boss, I think, who replicated some of the “What huh?” and called the guy from fish husbandry. When she heard us talking, she finally knew what I wanted. “OH! You mean fish that PEOPLE eat!” she said, while the guy who makes the food for the fish was on the walkie talkie trying to find me someone from education to talk to. They wanted to help. It wasn’t their service that was bad, it was their knowledge. Ouch.

The very nice gal who came out knew exactly what I was talking about. Maryssa was her name and she’s just moved to Tampa from where she used to work, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, home of Seafood Watch. “I asked about that as soon as I started working here, ” she said. And they are a partner, but she couldn’t hand me a Seafood Watch wallet card for this part of the country. She couldn’t point me to educational materials about seafood conservation and she didn’t know if the aquarium has worked with area restaurants in the past.

It’s an unfortunate state of affairs when the staff at an aquarium can’t answer questions about conservation programs. I don’t know what kind of training the staffers have, but if conservation and the human impact of eating fish on the marine environment isn’t even acknowledged by the facility, well, I don’t know what they’re offering beyond being an underwater zoo. I genuinely believed Maryssa’s concern - her enthusiasm for the Seafood Watch program was sincere and we traded stories about hassling the waitstaff at restaurants over the seafood, but it’s not enough. I have more Seafood Watch cards in my house than there were in this aquarium.

Florida Aquarium, It probably matters to you not one bit, but this fish hugger is watching you. Get with the program, okay?

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Drunken Snapper

Disclaimer: Tonight’s Fish Wednesday is sponsored, unofficially, by Three Olives Vodka. Why? Because they sent me the sample vodka I used in the recipe. Just so you know, I’m not much of a drinker, so I’ll bypass the deep analysis of the vodka and tell you what we had for dinner.

Penne with Vodka is one of those classic recipes - easy to make, mildly impressive, and always delicious. There are lots of variations but I think all the basics involve making a red sauce with a generous helping of vodka and heavy cream tossed in. The recipe that came with my bottle of Tomato Vodka calls for heavy cream and Parmesan cheese, but I wanted to make fish and I don’t typcially care for fish in cream sauce, it’s a little too Swedish for my Mediterranean tastes.

I amended the basic recipe by simply leaving out the dairy products and doubling the vodka for good measure. When it was almost done, I dropped a nice piece of snapper in the pan. The sauce was sweet, had a little bite, and was great over flax penne with salt cured Nicoise olives and green salad on the side. Yum

Want to make it? It’s easy. This made the perfect amount for two.

• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 Roma tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 c. tomato puree
• 1c. of vodka - I used Three Olives Tomato
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Chili oil
• 1/2 pound snapper fillet

Saute the onion until it’s just starting to brown. Add the two diced Romas - don’t use crappy supermarket tomatoes, get good ones, it makes all the difference. Grind some black pepper over it and when the tomatoes are giving up their sauce, add about half a cup of tomato puree. Pour in half a cup of tomato vodka (it’s what I had and I think the tomato flavor helps, but you can use regular vodka too, of course. If you’re so inclined, add a splash of chili oil. When all that has simmered down to a nice thick sauce, add the snapper fillet and another half a cup of vodka. Cook it until most of the liquid is gone - the sauce should be really thick and the fish should be falling apart.

Serve it over penne and wash it down with the red wine you have left on the counter from last time you made red sauce. It might also be nice to run the sauce through the food processor until it’s smooth, grill the fish, and pour the reheated sauce over the fish and the pasta, but when you’re cooking with vodka, things like the food processor seem unnecessarily complicated.

Eat your fish. It makes you willing to try new things. Like flavored vodka.

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Issaquah Salmon Days

It was gray and a bit blowy, but plenty of people filled the streets in Issaquah for the annual Salmon Days festival. Our uke club was invited to play for the second year in a row, six enthusiastic players (you see five on the stage, one of our guys had to run off) played a variety of hapa haole, cowboy, pop, and oldies tunes to a small, bemused crowd.

One of my favorite things about getting out to play at these kind of events is the startled look on the faces of passersby, as though there could not really be that many people playing ukes all at once. “You’re a ukulele band?” they ask, after eying the excessive number of ukes. “We’re more of a club. You should join us!” is the standard reply. We’re all about inclusion. This year’s audience member is next year’s performer.

As always, we made some new friends, invited strangers to join us, and got asked for business cards. “We’re having a luau…” is a typical opener. We always say the same thing: “Google for Seattle Ukulele, you’ll find us. All the contact information is there.”

In between sets we looked at and then ate salmon. The hatchery weir is closed so the big fish can’t make it upstream in spite of their determination. The next open run - I think this means they open the gate and let the big boys fly - is Tuesday, October 7th. If I’m able to clear my calendar for a few hours midday, I’m planning to run out there and take another look.

The hatchery does a great job of educating the crowds about what’s going on - fish docents are everywhere explaining the salmon lifecycle and the facility, answering questions, and generally being good natured and enthusiastic about this Pacific Northwest wonder.

The hatchery is in downtown Issaquah. Check out the Friends of the Issaquah Salmon website for lots of great information about our finned neighbors.

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Late Summer

There’s a bit of a bite in the air after about 6pm. The sun is lower in the sky and, heaven help us, the heat goes on for a bit in the mornings. The overnight temperatures are low - they dropped into the 40s and last week I spent a few days wearing a hat, a hat, dammit, while sitting at the computer. It’s been a difficult summer, weather-wise, with unwelcome throwbacks to March in the middle of August.

I go out into the garden and stare at the abundant and unripe cherry tomatoes, seeing if I can turn them yellow and red by sheer force of will.

It’s not working.

I’m able to harvest a handful every two days or so - enough to add to a salad, but not enough to make sauce. The soil is good, the plants located in a sunny and protected spot, but we have not had the consistent sunshine we need to produce a good crop. Wednesday, we pulled off just enough tomatoes to make a nice batch of tabbouleh, a salad made with chopped tomatoes, bulgar wheat, parsley, and whatever else you feel like adding. I use lots of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and fresh ground pepper. It’s good with feta cheese or olives, too, and some like to add onion or garlic. The flat leaf parsley I used was also from the garden - it gave me great pleasure to eat food that was so unmistakably fresh - from the yard to my plate. Wow.

I grilled the fish in a little lemon and olive oil, nothing fancy. Snapper is really more of a stewing fish than a grilling one - it was more successful last time round swimming in vodka and tomato sauce. The fishes with more distinctive flavor do better on the grill, anything with less character needs an intense marinade or a different method entirely.

September tends to be one of Seattle’s finest months, bright and clear and so far, it hasn’t disappointed. The school buses passed our house this morning for the first time since spring…we can no longer deny that summer is just about gone. The best season for getting fresh northwest seafood is coming to an end too. We’ll go watch the salmon make their way upstream in another week or so, just to say goodbye, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Eat your fish, it makes you understand nerdy literary references.

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Conveyer Belt Fish Fest

God help me, I hate shopping malls. But I needed new clothes, I have been wanting to learn what all the fuss over H&M is about, and sometimes, there is nothing for it but cross a giant swath of asphalt and dive into the belly of the suburban consumer beast.

Our biggest nearby mall is Southcenter; it’s now using the shiny new name of Westfield. I can’t help but ask where the field is because there’s no sign of if and to the west, there are six lanes of traffic dumping commuters into Interstate 5 and the smaller highway that goes to the airport.

Westfield on an early September evening is packed with a lot of good looking people from all kinds of different ethnic backgrounds, it’s a chain retailer’s American dream fantasy come to life. At the south entrance to the mall, there are a handful of restaurants, a giant Barnes and Noble, and a three or four story parking garage. Oh, and Blue C Sushi. As we walked past, the husband said, “Hey, it’s Fish Wednesday, how ’bout sushi?”

Why fight it? I agreed and we found ourselves in a booth next to the conveyor belt while brightly colored plates slid quietly by. Tempura eel with cream cheese. California roll. Spicy tuna roll. Braised tuna with a special dipping sauce. Sesame noodles. The random plastic toy. A bottle of soda. A plastic sign that said “Beef, it’s what’s for sushi.”

Behind the counter a bunch of cheerful Spanish speaking guys cranked out roll after roll of sushi goodness, slicing and stacking and setting in motion. I like Blue C, it’s fun to watch the little plates roll past. It’s fun to stack up the plates by color. To watch the videos of Japanese hipster kids on the big screen monitor at the back of the restaurant. There’s a lot going on but it’s not noisy (or it wasn’t last night) and most of what we had was really yummy, save the tuna sashimi, which should have been a better cut of fish. I had a Cricket Cola at the recommendation of the young man keeping an eye on us - it was tasty too.

Sushi is pretty labor intensive and it’s hard to reproduce the kind of variety you’d like at home. Blue C isn’t the best sushi I’ve had - I think that was at some nondescript place in Honolulu - but it was really quite good.

Blue C has four locations, go check it out.

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