In spite of the shocking amount of nonsense information I keep in my head – the chord sequence to Roxy Music’s More than This, a good deal of the poetry in Alice in Wonderland, many, many one liners from The Simpsons, and a warehouse of shoe boxes stuffed with mental images from my travels – in spite of all that – um – detritus – I can not seem to find a place to store the contents of the Seafood Watch card. Plus, the card gets updated all the time, it’s not comprehensive, and those tricksters in the fish industry are often changing the names of fishes so’s to fool the educated into buying Chilean Sea Bass or some other endangered fish.
When you shop a good fish market, you are able to ask at the counter about the fish – getting good information at supermarkets can be trickier just because they’re so much busier than a fish only establishment. I’m pretty good at making sustainable choices, but sometimes I’ll come across something that I don’t recognize.
Today, it was the spearfish. I was suckered in not only because it was affordable – fresh salmon is 25 bucks a pound! – but because it was bearing a “Great for Grilling” sticker and I now have the cutest, shiniest, little red grill
“D’ya think it’s the same thing as marlin?” I asked J, and he shrugged. The cashier was equally as informative saying that it looked “kinda sharky. The marlin is usually cut differently.” I looked it up pronto upon our return home and was relieved to learn that our choice was a good one. I really do wish the stores would label their sustainable seafood. It doesn’t mean every consumer has to buy that stuff, but I know I’d appreciate not having to do research to eat my dinner with a clean conscience.
The fish marinated in olive oil, garlic and herbs for a while and then spent a little time on the hot grill – side by side with the broccoli. The fish was moist and very flavorful, the broccoli a nice change from your usual steamed or sauteed state, still crispy but a little charred around the edges. I could do a lot of blowing my own horn here, but I’d rather quote my understated mate: “It’s okay, you can continue with the grilling.” This is high praise from a guy who doesn’t say much. Trust me, it was awesome.
Some pals of ours recently went grill crazy too, we had a very funny conversation about the manliness of grilling, shopping for grills, the size of your grill, manning it up about the hardware store, etc… I just went online, read some reviews, found one I liked, and clicked add to shopping cart. Our grill might be girlie as hell in its procurement methods, modest size, cute package and minimal needs for space, but I cooked up some kickass fish on it.
Tomorrow, we’re doing chicken.
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Blog note: I installed a bit of code that pulls old posts from the archives and publishes them on the home page. They’re updated daily. If you’re reading this in RSS or email, you won’t have the entertainment of seeing those old posts. It’s amusing to me – click through and maybe it will be amusing to you, too.
The fish looks fantastic, glad you are liking the grill.
Spearfish, locally known as swordfish is much more tender and loose (flaky?) than shark or tuna. In areas it can be caught, it is considered a fine fish; on parallel with Dorade (or locally called dolphin, though it is not a dolphin, but they also call avocados pears, so go figure).
Yum, that sure looks tasty. And I forgot to mention how adorable your new grill is!
On Sunday we did two smallish chickens over indirect heat with a little pan of mesquite to smoke them up a bit and they were SO good.
That just looks scrumptious!
Good news on the Seafood Watch front. If you have a PDA, you can access Seafood Watch Mobile with the latest rankings of all seafood. (Spearfish is on the list twice: good alternative for Hawaii-caught; Avoid for imported.)
Happy grilling!
Ken Peterson, Communications Director
Monterey Bay Aquarium
@lia: I thought it was swordfish, but the fish finder says otherwise. That’s the thing about fish names and shopping for sustainable fish, you can’t be sure. This guy is the short billed spearfish, he’s just got a snubnosed needle. I think – but I’m no expert – that the swordfish has a much longer nose.
I grew up in Nova Scotia, where we’re constantly confused about proper names for fish, but no one’s yet come up with Spearfish!