You think it's snapper, but it's not

From the Naperville sun

Fish fraud

...and there's no Santa, either.

Other than "grouper," "red snapper" has got to be the most misrepresented fish in Chicago, probably the U.S. Huachinango al ala Veracruzano almost never is, either. That said, the Pacific sanapper substitutes most Mexican and Thai places use are tasty and a bargain. But in the sushi context, where you are likely paying top dollar and these issues should be taken more seriously (and where I can't ususally see the whole fish and caveat emptor) that sucks.

If you want to see/taste a real, fresh red snapper, go to Dirk's.

A good clue is "Pacific" before red snapper (or most grouper): they don't live there. The range is from Spain to the Gulf.

If you want to see/taste a real, fresh red snapper, go to Dirk's.

Which is indeed where this one came from.

Dirk's Fish & Gourmet Shop
2070 N Clybourn Ave.
(773) 404-3475

In line with this particular "lies they feed us" complaint, it seems that much of what passes for bacalao, even at Puerto Rican places, is more'n likely pollock or something other than cod.

People are JUST now finding this out? I thought it was common knowledge. I haven't eaten/ordered "snapper" sushi/sashimi in the U.S. for years... of course it's tilapia... They sell those vacuum packed fillets everywhere next to the rest of the "sushi-grade" fish. In fact it's on sale at H-mart this week for $1.99/filet. Why anyone would want to eat raw freshwater fish... I don't know...

Oh, by the way, another sort of fraud shows up in the Sun-Times article: the obvious omission that this idea for an investigative piece was taken directly from the St. Pete Times multi-part fake grouper investigation, linked here several times. To be fair, the St. Pete Times story was much more scholarly, substantive and better written.

There can never be too much truthful information out there, whether its about fish or fish stories.

I've also heard from a few different ppl that sea scallops are usually pieces of skate wing. Machines punch the holes in the skate wing kinda like a hole puncher for paper.

seebee wrote:I've also heard from a few different ppl that sea scallops are usually pieces of skate wing. Machines punch the holes in the skate wing kinda like a hole puncher for paper.

I often heard "deep-sea" scallops were pollock. Skate would be a step up.

There actually is a fish that is a very close relative of the red snapper that is available throughout the South Pacific. It looks almost identical to an atlantic Red Snapper but smaller (very much like the fish young master Myles is holding above). I have eaten it (and caught it) in Tonga and Fiji. It is an excellent fish. It is called Red Snapper, Crimson Snapper or Pink Snapper. It is also sometimes (mistakenly) called a Red "Bream" (but not a red seabream as the article suggests). Most Seabream, like the one pictured in the article, are actually in the Porgie family. To confuse things even more, some species of Tilapia are also called Bream or even River Snapper.

Like many fish names, "Bream" is a catch-all term for all fish with that body shape. That is, no doubt, how unscrupulous importers justify calling Tilapia, Snapper. They take advantage of the fact that in many languages and locales certain types of fish are grouped together based on appearance rather than common DNA. Also, European colonists in Africa and Asia tended to name the local species after fish with which they were familiar, even if they only bore a vague resemblance.

http://www.fishbase.org is a great place to lookup names for species of fish in different languages and from various locations. It is mind-boggling that a single species can have dozens of names and that a single name can refer to dozens of species. If you want to see a really abused term, look up Sea Bass. There are 22 species of "sea bass" marketed in the US alone. Chilean Sea Bass is not even in the Sea Bass family, it is actually a type of Cod.

I've also heard from a few different ppl that sea scallops are usually pieces of skate wing.

I could believe it's something, but skate wing has a very visible ribbed pattern (for her pleasure, no doubt), which would be a giveaway, no?

Chilean Sea Bass is not even in the Sea Bass family, it is actually a type of Cod.

Patagonian toothfish, isn't it? Or is that something else?

Mike G wrote:

Chilean Sea Bass is not even in the Sea Bass family, it is actually a type of Cod.

Patagonian toothfish, isn't it? Or is that something else?

Exactly
http://fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=467
In Chile it is called 'Bacalao de profundidad' (Cod of the deep). Maybe if DH wants real Bacalao, he needs to order Sea Bass

It's a shame nothing about fraud made it into Nick Tosches's "how sushi took over the world" story in this June's Vanity Fair.

seebee wrote:I've also heard from a few different ppl that sea scallops are usually pieces of skate wing. Machines punch the holes in the skate wing kinda like a hole puncher for paper.

I picked up a couple pieces of beautiful fresh skate on the bone yesterday at Isaccson and Stein. Dredged them in flour seasoned with salt pepper, and a bit of Old Bay. Sauteed them in peanut oil and Plugra and made a lemon-caper pan sauce. I enjoy crunching on the cartilage almost as much as the skate itself.

I find skate and scallops to be not even remotely similar in taste, texture or appearance.

I was unaware that you were supposed to eat the cartilage; The one and only time I'd prepared skate, I sauteed the wings similarly, but ate the flesh off each cartilage wing. I agree that they don't bear any resemblance to scallops to my taste either; The flesh came off in strings/strands - certainly an acquired taste and texture in my mind. I have not eaten skate since.

I heard the story about scallops = punched-out skate wings long ago and sort of believed it until I ran into my first store-bought wing three years ago. The Other Dr. Gale really has a jones for skate wings, so when I found them in our local mkt, I bought some and sauteed them. Lovely.

Now, in Montreal, they are quite frequently available at our neighborhood IGA. I buy them, saute them, and we chow down. Sweet and quite rich, actually. Haven't eaten the cartilege, but maybe we should try.

In any case, I don't see how the claimed punched out skate wing origin for scallops makes the least bit of sense... unless there's a part of the wing that I've never experienced. Otherwise, TODG and I just enjoy the wings for what they are, themselves.

Geo

The following is an excerpt from an article on Sit News, Ketchikan, AK.

Maggie Wall wrote:And if all that seafood lingo wasn't confusing enough, you could opt for surimi made to look and taste like shellfish. Surimi is made from Alaska pollock that is finely chopped and rinsed many times before being formed into a white paste that can be colored and flavored to imitate any number of fish-such as shrimp, scallop and crab.

My parents lived for many years in Anacortes Wa. Down the hill from their house was a Japanese factory that made surimi products. The factory was housed in a large (65,000 sqft.) prefab building surrounded by tall fences topped with concertina wire. The operation was very secretive. As near as we could tell, the entire system was automated, and there was usually only a single employee working. The factory was only in operation when the pollock ships would dock. Then it ran for 24 hours a day.

http://sugiyo.com/about.html

Bwahaha... from the sugiyo site:

ADVANTAGES OF SURIMI
SEAFOOD vs. NATURAL SEAFOOD

* Fast & requires less labor
* Price savings
* Non-Seasonal
* Shelf life is longer:
* 2 years frozen, 60-75 days refrigerated unopened, 5-7 days once opened and refrigerated.
* Recipe consistency
* Pre-cooked
* No waste
* Safe

This particularly made me lose my appetite, although I used to like surimi quite a bit and still enjoy the odd piece in a seafood hotpot from Chinatown.

AND MORE:

Contempo II: Like Contempo III but with crab essence instead of crabmeat – still an excellent taste with additional savings

Ha ha ha ha...

Jay K wrote:I was unaware that you were supposed to eat the cartilage; The one and only time I'd prepared skate, I sauteed the wings similarly, but ate the flesh off each cartilage wing. in strings/strands -

I don't eat all of it, but I do enjoy some of the that crunchy texture, similar to the cartilage in say, fried chicken wings or even rib tips.

95 percent of all sushi restaurants misrepresent their offerings, although some appear to have been misled by wholesalers. I find the widespread use of escolar in retail seafood establishments particularly irksome.

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2013/02/21/sea ... ?hpt=hp_c2

Monica Eng covered the local angle in today's Tribune:

Are Chicago diners getting the fish they paid for?

After its troubling seafood fraud investigations in East and West Coast cities over the last two years, the group expanded its testing to other cities, including Chicago. Thirty of 93 fish samples taken from Chicago restaurants, retail chains and sushi bars were mislabeled, mirroring percentages found in other cities.

So, what else is new?

Darren72 wrote:Monica Eng covered the local angle in today's Tribune:

Are Chicago diners getting the fish they paid for?

They said that one of the biggest frauds was white tuna being escolar and not tuna at all.
At this point, I thought that's what super white tuna means -- If I see that on a menu, I don't expect anything other than escolar.

JoelF wrote:

Darren72 wrote:Monica Eng covered the local angle in today's Tribune:

Are Chicago diners getting the fish they paid for?

They said that one of the biggest frauds was white tuna being escolar and not tuna at all.
At this point, I thought that's what super white tuna means -- If I see that on a menu, I don't expect anything other than escolar.

Maybe they meant white tuna (which I think of as Albacore) actually being Escolar? I def. do think Super White Tuna is always Escolar, despite being called Tuna.

I'm curious about the stuff regarding escolar causing stomach distress. Do they mean that bad escolar can cause stomach distress? Or all escolar? Is it something more dependent on the person (susceptibility or not to even very fresh escolar) or on the condition of the fish? Finally, in those cases when escolar causes a stomach problem, what kind of stomach problem is it? Indigestion? Stomach cramps? What? I've had super white tuna in sushi places many times--which I guess means I was eating escolar--without noticing ill effects. (Or at least tying any ill effects to the super white tuna.)

Riddlemay,

Wiki has your answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

Interesting that it's banned in Japan.

Geo

Thanks, Geo.

It's not pretty.

Geo wrote:Wiki has your answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

I'd heard about the, uh, unpleasant digestive issues with Escolar, so avoid "super white tuna" as a rule, but it sounds like it may be less of a risk than I though:

Wikipedia wrote:Two known ways to reduce the likelihood of escolar-induced keriorrhea are to limit portions to sixteen ounces...

Geez, who eats a pound of fish at a sitting? Even if I'm gorging on sushi, I'm certainly not going to eat a pound of just one kind of fish!

Geo wrote:Wiki has your answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

The 'yellowish-orange drops of oil' in my bowl of homemade beef soup are now 100% less appetizing.

Sooorrrreeeeee, Brendan.....

Geo

JoelF wrote:

Geo wrote:Wiki has your answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

I'd heard about the, uh, unpleasant digestive issues with Escolar, so avoid "super white tuna" as a rule, but it sounds like it may be less of a risk than I though:

Wikipedia wrote:Two known ways to reduce the likelihood of escolar-induced keriorrhea are to limit portions to sixteen ounces...

Geez, who eats a pound of fish at a sitting? Even if I'm gorging on sushi, I'm certainly not going to eat a pound of just one kind of fish!

I just read an article about escolar on thekitchn.com (sorry, don't have the direct link), and the portion limit listed was 6 ounces, so I think there's a typo in the Wikipedia piece.

Geo wrote:Riddlemay,

Wiki has your answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

Interesting that it's banned in Japan.

Geo

Wow...I think that happened to me once...not pleasant.

One restaurant I worked at offered escolar as a special for many nights. weeks running. As the Sous Chef I was never informed of a customer complaint. Maybe we got lucky.