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By Root 569 0

In the developed world, only Iceland expects fisheries to make a serious contribution to the economy, and even that country is trying to reduce the number of fishermen. A 1989 study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that it cost about $92 billion to operate the global fishing fleet. Revenue, on the other hand, was only $70 billion; much of the difference was made up by subsidies from governments to fishermen and boat builders. According to the FAO, by the early 1990s, the twelve-nation European Union was spending about $580 million in annual fishing subsidies, while Norway alone paid out about $150 million. The Japanese government was estimated to have extended $19 billion in credit to its troubled fishing industry, much of which credit will never be paid back.

Miles from Gloucester harbor, at the hotels along the rocky New England coastline—rocks once valued for drying cod and now loved as a scenic element—tourists eat their breakfasts and plan their day. In the distance, lobster boats and small trawlers glide by, their diesel engines out of hearing range. Many of the tourists are planning to go “whale watching.” They talk of whales as adorable pets, how they flop and dive and make a real snoring noise. On this rugged coastline where fortunes were once made hunting whales, whale watching has become a prosperous business during the tourism months. The skippers of the whale-watching boats are usually out-of-work fishermen.

There is a big difference between living in a society that hunts whales and living in one that views them. Nature is being reduced to precious demonstrations for entertainment and education, something far less natural than hunting. Are we headed for a world where nothing is left of nature but parks? Whales are mammals, and mammals do not lay a million eggs. We were forced to give up commercial hunting and to raise domestic mammals for meat, preserving the wild ones as best we could. It is harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done.

A Cook’s Tale

ONE MIGHT SAY THAT IT [COD] IS THE ONLY FOOD,

APART FROM BREAD, WHICH, ONCE ONE HAS GOT USED

TO IT, ONE NEVER GETS BORED OF, WITHOUT WHICH ONE

COULD NOT LIVE AND WHICH ONE COULD NEVER

EXCHANGE FOR ANY DELICACY.

—Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets, A Gift to Young Housewives, St. Petersburg, 1862

SIX CENTURIES OF COD RECIPES

THE CORRECT WAY TO FLUSH A COD

“YES, YES, I WILL DESALINATE YOU, YOU GRANDE MORUE!”

—Émile Zola, Assommoir, 1877

There is no general agreement on how to resuscitate stockfish or saltfish. No two pieces of cured cod are of the exact same thickness, dryness, or saltiness, and furthermore, different people prefer different tastes, often depending on the type of dish being made. Soaking will generally take more than 24 hours, but for very dry stockfish it can be several days. Most cooks agree that the only way to know when a cured fish is ready for cooking is to break off a piece and taste it. The more it has been dried, the longer it must be soaked. Salted fish needs to have the water in which it is soaking changed periodically so that the fish is not sitting in salt water.

Hannah Glasse in the 1758 edition of her British book wrote that stockfish should be soaked in milk and warm water. Most modern cooks insist on cold water and many believe it is best when soaked in a refrigerator, especially during warm weather. Others have been known to turn to another modern invention, the flush toilet.

Deep inland in France, La France profonde, as the French like to say, on the far side of the mountain range called the Massif Central, is the Aveyron. It is a rugged region of high green sheep pastures, deep gorges, and jagged rock outcrop-pings, the most famous of which, in Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, provides the natural caves for aging the world’s most famous cheese. An isolated area where shepherds still speak a local dialect, the region would get supplies all the way from distant Bordeaux on river barges. Barges would move up the