Mastering the Grill_ The Owner's Manual for Outdoor Cooking - Andrew Schloss [45]
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C. Mastering Seafood
Seafood is the largest source of edible wildlife in the world. For most of us, eating wild animals is rare. The animals we eat have been bred away from their wild state over generations, to a standard of tenderness and flavor that we have come to expect as normal. So the chicken you purchase in July tastes very much the same as the one you bought in January.
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Meat from wild animals, on the other hand, is subject to numerous changing variables. The quality of most seafood is dependent on factors such as the time of year it was caught, where the animal lived, what its diet was like, and how the animal was processed after it was killed. All of which means that when you are dealing with seafood or any wild meat, its quality can vary from season to season—or from day to day—even when sold in the same market.
01. Fish
The fishing industry has tried to control some of the vagaries of the wild by farming the most popular varieties of fish, like salmon, trout, sea bass, turbot, mahimahi, yellowfin, and tuna. Like other meats, farmed fish grow faster than their counterparts in the wild, and they are often more tender and richer tasting. They are harvested without suffering the stress and damage of being hooked or netted, and they are processed closer to the time when and nearer to the place where they are caught.
But the aquaculture story is not all positive. Raising fish in ocean pens has contaminated nearby water with waste products, food, and antibiotics. There have been cases of genetically modified farmed fish escaping into the environment, where they infiltrate the diversity of the surrounding wild population, and some studies have shown that fish meal, which is the primary component of aquaculture feed, contains elevated levels of environmental toxins, particularly PCBs, that accumulate in the flesh of farmed salmon.
How a fish lived determines most of its culinary attributes (some people think farmed fish taste bland and fatty; others think they are mild and rich), which makes it imperative that consumers become familiar not just with the signs of wholesomeness but with the qualities of particular fish families before purchasing.
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CLASSES OF FISH
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Fish are categorized in a number of ways. The broadest classification is the one made between fish that live in freshwater and fish that live in the sea. Saltwater fish make up the bulk of the fish available in coastal areas. Except for mass-produced farmed fish, most freshwater fish are available only in the regions where they were caught.
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FISH TYPE
1. Round fish body shape
2. Flatfish body shape
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Saltwater fish are broadly classified by body shape into two groups, round fish and flatfish, of which round fish is the larger classification. Round fish are about as wide from side to side as they are from back to belly, giving them a rounded silhouette when cut in cross section. They include such common fish as cod, trout, bass, and perch. Flatfish, on the other hand, are usually no more than an inch or two in depth from side to side but can be several feet wide from the dorsal fin on their back to the pelvic fin on their belly side. They have an oblique silhouette in cross section and include 200 species of flounder, sole, and halibut.
Round fish can be further categorized into lean and fat fish. Lean fish have a fat content of between 0 and 5 percent of their body weight. Since most of this fat is concentrated in the liver, which is removed when the fish is dressed, the actual edible portion of fat is even lower. Lean fish tend to have pale, dry flesh and a subtle, unassertive flavor. Fat fish can have a body fat content of anywhere from 5 to 35 percent, and unlike lean fish, the fat is distributed throughout