Jakob's Bowl

Looking For The Key To California Sardines

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses.

Cannery Row
John Steinbeck, 1944

I doubt if very many regular blog readers have ever opened a tin of sardines with a key, let alone a can of sardines packed on Monterey’s Cannery Row, and I would challenge anyone who claimed to remember what the sardines canned there tasted like. I was excited when I read about sardines being canned again in California, specifically by the Cannery Row Sardine Company (CRSC), and I became ecstatic when I had my first sighting of the “Sustainably Caught Along the California Coast” Wild Sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Wild Planet. Then, a bit of recollection, a bit of tasting, and a bit of research brought me back down to earth…these aren’t your granny’s sardines, and they never will be.

The Post-Modern Sardine

IT IS NOW 2010; DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR SARDINES COME FROM?

I’ve just finished tasting nine different tins of sardines - many of them Post Modern in that they may be processed and canned thousands of miles from where they were caught - with a bit of Massa 2007 Timorasso to cleanse my palate, and it will take me a bit of time to put my thoughts down in a post and process my meager attempts at photographs, and put it all in context of the current state of the canned sardine market. I can summarize my findings though.

Of the nine tins, two - Wild Planet and Cannery Row Sardine Company - contained the California sardines (aka, Pacific sardine, aka, Peruvian Sardine, aka, Blue Pilchard), Sardinops sagax, caught off the coast of California; one – King Oscar - contained Brisling Sardines, Sprattus sprattus, caught either in the North Atlantic or the Baltic, and the remaining six - Coles, Matiz, Parodi, As do Mar, Connétable, and Pollastrini di Anzio - contained European Sardines (aka European Pilchards), Sardina pilchardus. Of the six tins of the European Sardines, Connétable appears to have been caught off the coast of Brittany, France, Matiz off the coast of Galacia, Spain, and Coles off the coast of Portugal; the Parodi and the As do Mar appear to have been caught somewhere in the Atlantic coastal area from Spain to Morocco, most likely the latter, and the Pollastrini appears to have been caught in the Mediterranean. (At least that's what their respective labels or websites indicate!) The Connétable, Wild Planet, and King Oscar were packed in extra virgin olive oil and all of the others were packed in ‘olive oil.’ The Wild Planet sardines were ‘smoked’; the Cannery Row sardines were boneless and skinless, and the Connétable sardines were boneless fillets.

The Connétable sardine fillets came out on top as the best combination of flavor and texture. However, this really isn’t fair since as fillets more of the flesh comes in contact with the extra-virgin olive oil, which cures it in a way. Of the whole sardines, the Coles just beats out the Matiz. It is significant that the top three, Connétable, Coles, and Matiz all appear to be ‘day boat’ caught and processed fresh, whereas many of the others were frozen, shipped, and then processed. The California Sardine brands both have their own issues, mainly due to their processing, but I will have more to say about that tomorrow when I layout the details.My ranking is as follows:

• 1+. Connétable


• 1. Coles
• 2. Matiz
• 3. King Oscar
• 4. Wild Planet
• 4. Cannery Row Sardine Company
• 6. Angelo Parodi
• 7. Pollastrini di Anzio
• 8. As Do Mar

Cannery Row Revival...Not Quite!

I had about the Cannery Row Sardine Company last year, and I was excited that at least someone in California was trying to take advantage of the sardine fishery off the California Coast and not just watching the entire catch being sent off to Asia. While I knew that the glory days of Cannery Row weren’t going to return anytime soon, - the sardines have been having too much fun since they moved to Peru - at least it now had some activity. I went to the company’s website and saw the round tuna-style can, and I remembered my contact in the Pacific Northwest Albacore Tuna industry telling me that there was no one in the U.S. who had the equipment to pack sardines in the rectangular tins. Actually, the traditional sardine tin has probably gone through a half dozen revisions since the last sardines were packed in this country. And even though the California Sardine Sardinops sagax, is not the same species as the European (aka Portuguese) Sardine Sardina pilchardus, at least they were ours, and I wouldn’t have to worry about all of the sourcing and counterfeiting games that were going on in the canned sardine industry these days - 21 different species of small fish can be canned and sold as ‘sardines.’

Then this past weekend I was in Whole Foods, and I stopped to see what brands of canned tuna they were carrying, when I noticed Wild Sardines in extra-virgin olive oil from Wild Planet, and on the box it read “SUSTAINABLY CAUGHT ALONG THE CALIFORNIA COAST.” My initial surprise turned to excitement as I scanned and could not find a “pack in some foreign country” anywhere on the box. The fact that they were in a rectangular can didn’t make me suspicious at the time; I just assumed that Wild Planet saw enough of a future revenue stream to invest in new equipment. The price though, $2.49, did make me suspicious since it was less than 40% of the price of the Cannery Row Sardines, as did the fact that they were ‘smoked.’ Maybe California's Cannery Row was on the way back. I planned to do a comparative tasting between the Wild Planet and the Cannery Row Sardine Company sardines with a number of the European brands. That is until the shoe dropped and my initial concerns about the Wild planet sardines were confirmed! The tasting is still on, but…the answers to this and other annoying canned sardine issues after tomorrow’s tasting.

Three Shells & An Organic Bean

I stopped in our newest Whole Foods a couple of weeks ago for something cold to drink before I hit the park with Kazmer for his midday romp, and on my way to the cold beverage case, I passed through the ‘bulk’ aisle. I had spent the week doing a lot of research on Japanese short grain rice varieties, and I stopped to see what they offered. Most of their rices were from the Lundberg Family Farms just north of Sacramento, a very high quality grower and processor. Since I’m always on the lookout for good organic dried beans and lentils, I just moved down the aisle to see what they were offering. There was a decent selection, but mainly the standard, Pinto, Cannellini, Great Northern varieties. What I did find interesting was that unlike the rices, flours and grains, the beans and lentils did not have any source information on the individual bins or anywhere in sight. This was not always the case, and it made me deeply suspicious. Back in early 2005, I tried to source organic Cannellini, Borlotti, and Marrow beans from the Western Montana-Idaho area, the same place I was buying my organic lentils. I inquired with my supplier, and while he said none of the farmers he dealt with were growing them he might be able to get them for me. Several weeks later when our pallet arrived, on it were four 25-pound bags of organic Cannellini beans from…China. I was surprised and a bit annoyed, but this was before all of the ‘tainted’ food incidents occurred.

I visited several other Whole Foods, and a few other supermarkets with bulk sections with the same result. At first, I thought, ‘well, maybe they source from a lot of different farms, and think it’s too much trouble to constantly change the information on the bin.” When I visited the local food cooperative near my home, all of their bean bins were labeled with the country of origin “USA.” Subsequent online research indicated that China is selling a lot more than just a few bags of organic Cannellini beans! I also found an article by the Cornucopia Institute about Pacific Natural Foods switching to Chinese organic soybeans to make its soy beverages without informing its customers or the public. Why doesn’t Whole Foods tell its customer the source(s) of its dried beans and lentils?

Salmon Sal(i)vation: A ‘Big Fish’ Story (Part 2)

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps on it.

Sweet Thursday
John Steinbeck, 1954

It’s not surprising to find farmed salmon in many restaurants these days nor is it surprising that most have a ‘don’t tell unless asked’ policy regarding the word ‘farmed’ in place. I was surprised, however, that a number of our most celebrated chefs were still offering salmon raised in industrial pens and doing so without labeling it ‘farmed.’ on their menus. Even more surprising was the fact that a number of these chefs are known for having a particular reverence for quality ingredients, eschewing feedlots and factory farms for the organic, sustainable, and local…a contradiction?

Chef Charlie Trotter took foie gras off the menu of his famed Chicago restaurant because of concerns over the way it was produced, and on his website he states his philosophy:

The taste of free-range and organic products is so much better than the alternative. It is also good to know that you are eating unadulterated food and supporting farmers and growers who are directly connected with the land.

Very admirable, and yet he has been selling smoked salmon direct to consumers from his website for years: “From the icy cold water of Canada and Maine comes the fresh natural salmon Charlie Trotter has selected to bear his name.” The word ‘farmed’ is never used when in fact the salmon is farmed, and then there is that word ‘natural.’ James Beard Award winning Rick Tramonto of Tru in Chicago, offered this in a 2008 post on his blog:

as a chef I consider myself a steward of the Earth and understand the implications of over-farming, over-fishing and the inhumane treatment of animals.

“Scottish salmon” is on his menu with no mention of the fact that it is ‘farmed’ - Scottish salmon had the highest concentration of pollutants of all the salmon tested in 2004.

Salmon Sal(i)vation: A 'Big Fish' Story (Part 1)

Only when the last tree has died
and the last river has been poisoned
and the last fish has been caught
will we realize
we cannot eat money.

Cree Saying

Despite the best efforts of the friends the oceans and of wild salmon in particular, the public tends to forget, or ignore, the naked facts about salmon farming unless they are constantly reminded of them. I would suggest that this ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality is exactly what Big Aquaculture and its PR consultants count on. A seemingly insatiable appetite for this pink fleshed fish has had us on a roller coaster ride for several decades now with the steepest and scariest drops having occurred in the last half dozen years. Damien Gillis’ film Farmed Salmon Exposed, was posted online last week as part of the Pure Salmon Campaign's Global Week of Action, - yet another round of serious ‘in-your-face’ truth telling about farmed salmon, just as retail giant Target has pledged to stop selling ‘farmed salmon.’ This startling film reminded me of an episode of celebrity chef Eric Ripert’s Avec Eric that I saw online a few weeks earlier. This three Michelin Star chef is one of the masters of preparing fish, and he typically offers only wild fish in his restaurant. I was stunned that he was touting the “improved” flavor of ‘organic farmed salmon,’ in this episode on Star Ingredients. He was promoting a type of ‘industrial farming’ that still has serious unanswered ecological, economic, and health questions attached to it. It set me to wondering if any other ‘star’ chefs were offering farmed salmon on their menus along with free-range chickens.