aquaculture

Branzino on the Weber—that’s Greek for fish

Branzino on the Weber—that’s Greek for fish

Posted on by Pat and David
Greeks consume about 43 pounds of fish per capita every year, roughly comparable to American consumption. The main difference is that Americans eat a lot of fried fish (calamari, clams, popcorn shrimp, fish filet sandwiches) and Greeks who can afford it favor fin fish. Part of making fish affordable is sustainable aquaculture. Greek aquaculture produces almost all of the world's supply of branzino. The European sea bass, which the French call loup de mer is also a restaurant staple from New York to San Francisco. It's the fish you'll probably get in Athens when you order whole fish—unless you get gilthead bream, another farmed fish. Above, the photo shows grilled seabream from a little street cafe just down Veikou from our rental apartment. It's simply...Read More
Sturgeon from caviar to smoked to kebabs

Sturgeon from caviar to smoked to kebabs

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_6694" align="aligncenter" width="916"]As the great sturgeon repast was being readied, we relaxed with some wine and this charcuterie board of sturgeon pâté, smoked shortnose sturgeon (rear), smoked Atlantic sturgeon, and puffed sturgeon cartilage—much like pork rinds.[/caption] A big part of the “safari” experience is the languorous luncheon that follows the harvest expedition. Cornel Ceapa and his wife, Dorina, had everything ready to cook when we returned from the river (see previous post). [caption id="attachment_6709" align="alignright" width="416"] About a zillion three-day-old sturgeon hatchlings swim in a tank at Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar.[/caption]But first we toured the hatchery, where zillions of newly hatched sturgeon swam in huge white tanks and hundreds of juvenile and adult shortnose sturgeon coursed in others. Ceapa hatches both Atlantic sturgeon and...Read More
Backhouse realizes Niagara’s great potential

Backhouse realizes Niagara’s great potential

Posted on by Pat and David
Too bad the great French gourmand Christian Millau didn't live long enough to visit Ryan and Bev Campbell's Backhouse in Niagara-on-the-Lake (242 Mary St.; 289-272-1242; backhouse.xyz). In 1968, Millau revolutionized the way the French (and, given the era, the world) regarded haute cuisine when he announced that he had discovered “the best restaurant in the world” in the provincial town of Roanne. He might have said something similar had he discovered this grill-centric, hyper-locavore restaurant in a shopping strip at the edge of this Lake Ontario resort village. “Best restaurant in the world” is hyperbole, of course. But the comparison to Les Frères Troisgros is more than fair. Backhouse serves brilliant food far from the metropolitan restaurant scene. Asador Etxebarri in the small village of...Read More

Hawaiian food with a French twist

Posted on by Pat
Perhaps it's because he's French, but George Mavrothalassitis, known to everyone simply as Chef Mavro, is the most romantic of chefs. He's still recalls his first morning in Honolulu, looking over Waikiki Beach to Diamond Head at sunrise. “I fell in love at first sight,” he says. Almost thirty years later, the love affair continues. Born in Marseilles, Chef Mavro developed an early appreciation for fresh fish paired with the strong Provençal flavors of olive oil, garlic, fennel, rosemary, bay laurel, and other herbs. “I never worked with cream and butter in my life,” he says, noting that it was easy to translate his approach to cooking to using fresh ingredients from the Hawaiian archipelago. He first cooked at some top hotel restaurants on Oahu...Read More
At Smithtown Seafood, ‘local’ is measured in feet

At Smithtown Seafood, ‘local’ is measured in feet

Posted on by Pat and David
Chef Ouita Michel, who calls Holly Hill Inn (www.hollyhillinn.com) in Midway, Kentucky, her home base, is completely on board with the vision of FoodChain (see previous post). She's so on board that she opened the little takeout seafood restaurant inside the Bread Box called Smithtown Seafood (smithtownseafood.com) and installed the immensely talented Jonathan Sanning as her chef de cuisine. (That's Jonathan below holding the fried fish.) Ouita (as everyone in Lexington seems to call her because everyone in Lexington who cares about food knows her) studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, and took as her primary lesson the observation that the best French and Italian chefs create meals out of what they find around them. She's inculcated that same respect for...Read More

Lexington’s FoodChain redefines ‘local’

Posted on by Pat and David
A Saturday afternoon tour at FoodChain (foodchainlex.org) in Lexington's Bread Box complex might change the way you look at “local” food. At the very least, it can give you a peek into a somewhat promising food future where excess building space is converted into a living factory to produce vegetables and protein—or, more specifically, salad and microgreens and big plump tilapia. The brainchild of Rebecca Self, native Lexingtonian, MIT graduate, and spouse of Ben Self (see last post on West Sixth Brewing), FoodChain is a demonstration project of an “aquaponics” farm. The growing techniques are a hybrid of aquaculture and hydroponics, which have complementary strengths and weaknesses. Aquaculture is generally used to grow fish or crustaceans in closed tanks or ponds. Most cheap frozen tiger...Read More

Making PEI mussels like the mussel master

Posted on by David
As a native Belgian and as the man who launched mussel aquaculture on Prince Edward Island (see post), Joel Van Den Bremt has eaten his share of mussels over the years. When I asked him how he preferred to cook them, he thought a bit and told me, “steamed, but with the vegetables soft enough to eat. I like the vegetables, too.” I agree with him. Some diners will pass the mussels to someone else at the table and just concentrate on the mussel-flavored broth. I prefer the three-bowl plan: one for the mussels, one of the spent shells, and a third for broth and vegetables. Although you can steam mussels in a dry pan, relying on their own juices, many people add raw vegetables...Read More

PEI folks give new meaning to foodies

Posted on by David
I can't say I've ever see an island where so many people make or gather or process wonderful food. Between judging duties at the International Shellfish Festival I had the chance yesterday to drive around the island a bit, heading up to the north shore to see a mussel processing operation (more on that later on), pay a visit to a potato farm, catch a picnic in the fields, and visit Raspberry Point oysters. That's Scott Linkletter at the top of this post, hauling a cage of oysters to show how they're grown using an Australian system of posts driven into the soft bottom of shallow waters. The cages are suspended on lines that hang on the posts. Every few days he and his staff...Read More

Fishermen feed the world (especially on PEI)

Posted on by David
I met one of my heroes yesterday at the PEI International Shellfish Festival. I say “hero” even though I had never known his name until I met him, but Jozef Van Den Bremt changed the way a lot of us eat. A Belgian immigrant who wanted to find a way to contribute to his adopted country and his new home province of Prince Edward Island, he set out in the 1970s to figure out how to grow blue mussels. It's not that mussels were uncommon. They cling to every rock and pier in the North Atlantic–and every one of those wild mussels is full of grit in its flesh. To get sweet, juicy and grit-free mussels, you need to cultivate them on a substrate where...Read More