Jakob's Bowl

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.

In A Pig's Eye

I try to buy pasture-raised pork when I can find it, and failing that I buy pork from one of the small local or regional farm operations such as Pure Country Pork in Ephrata, WA. Unfortunately, it seems that a growing number of outlets here in Seattle have switched from carrying pork produced by small to medium regional meat processors to carrying the “PrairieFresh” label. This is the ‘brand’ of Seaboard Foods, the third largest industrial pork producer in the country!

Back when it became clear that we were in the midst of a serious economic downturn, I wondered how it would impact small farmers and retailers that were producing ‘real’ meat, poultry, dairy, and produce - the local, the sustainable, the organic - and selling their products at prices that would allow them to put food on their own tables and to continue operating into the future. I suspected that many in the ‘market’ would start rationalizing the purchase of industrial organics and even products from Big Ag with ‘natural’ and other ‘down-on-the-farm’ sounding names. It would seem that this process is underway.

The ‘homey’ sounding name was a tip off when I first noticed the PrairieFresh brand, with a little red heart on the logo in place of the dot for the first letter 'i,' in a local high-end grocery a number of years back, and it didn’t take much research to find the facts behind the brand. Seaboard Foods has industrial pig operations, including CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation),  in the Midwest and Southwest, and it processes about 5 million hogs per year - it also markets and sells an additional 5 million hogs per year processed by Triumph Foods, the country’s second largest pork producer. Unfortunately today in the era of ‘boxed’ meat this level of transparency is not always available, especially when only select information makes it to the label on the cello wrapped white trays.

It’s In the Bag(uette)

“Wheat, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whiskey can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.”

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Ambrose Bierce

Back before I started this blog, I had envisioned doing at least one post, if not several on the ‘artisan’ bread situation here in the Pacific Northwest. I even considered some comparative tastings between the bakers here in Seattle and those in Portland, but over the last eight months it seemed like it would be a waste of time and effort given the ever shifting variables involved in the contemporary ‘artisan’ bakery scene here. The growing number of bakeries in the Seattle over the last four years has had me on quite a rollercoaster ride between expectations and realizations, the variability in the quality of bread has tied my mind and my palate in knots.

Things had gotten so estranged that my routine for much of 2008 was to bring back a rustic loaf from either Ken’s Artisan Bakery or the Pearl Bakery or a focaccia slab from little t american baker in Portland every other weekend while I enjoyed Pain de Campagne from Seattle’s Dahlia Bakery in between. This bread stasis was disturbed early in 2009, when I got my first totally mediocre loaf from Ken’s Artisan Bakery - the country brown loaf had a poorly formed crust. This made me realize that there was obviously a difference in skill or quality control from shift to shift. Even more distressing was the fact that the Dahlia’s Pain de Campagne started coming out flattened and dense on a regular basis, suggesting problems similar to those at the have been plaguing the Tall Grass Bakery for years. Needless to say, I ate less bread last year.

Dungeness Crab Nebulous No Longer

Growing up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, crabs were a real treat when I was a kid, and being only a hundred miles or so from the New Jersey Coast and the Chesapeake Bay, that meant Blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus. They were always cooked live and the meat was…sweet, sweet, sweet – of course, I’d always tear my hands up trying to get every last morsel. My first job out of college was in Northern Virginia, a stones throw away from Washington, D.C., Blue crab heaven. It wasn’t long before I was introduced to both King crab and Snow crab legs, but since they were always the frozen variety, they never stood a chance. I also spent a summer in those first few professional years working in San Francisco, and even though I remember having at least one Crab Louis on Fisherman’s Wharf, the Dungeness crab didn't make a big impression on me. Even when I moved to Chicago, it was freshly boiled Blue crabs or nothing - I eventually, experienced the joys of Florida Stone crab claws, but that’s another story.

I knew Dungeness crab, Metacarcinus magister, was king in the Pacific Northwest even before I moved to Seattle, after all the species is named after Dungeness, Washington. During the years I worked as a banquet chef for a catering company we went through tons of Dungeness crab claw meat, all from No. 10 cans. Even though no preservatives were used, and the meat tasted pretty good, it never seemed to even come close to my Blue crabs. Over the last few years, I’ve enjoyed the delicious flavor of Pacific Rock crab pulled fresh from the California coast near Santa Barbara and cooked the same day without even connecting these experiences to my history with Blue and Dungeness crabs.

Add Hock

It all started this morning with my craving for a sandwich from The Swinery in West Seattle. When I got there for a late lunch, I was pleasantly surprised the description on the chalk board made me salivate immediately, pork belly roasted with some Bourbon Mustard Glaze and house smoked ham with Gruyere and Dijon all on a house-made sandwich roll. As my sandwich was being assembled, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before in their ‘cured meat’ case, real ham hocks. Most of the times that I’ve seen or bought what was being sold as “ham hocks,” they’ve been two to three-inch little stubs of bone, skin, connective tissue and a tiny bits of meat, and who knew where or how the pigs were raised - the meat cutters never seemed to know.

In the case before me were three real ham hocks, - the entire ‘joint’ of meat the joint between the ham and the foot - and they were from real pigs; Durocs, I believe, raised out on the Olympic Peninsula. I chose the smallest of the three and it was just-under 2-1/2 pounds. When I got home and unwrapped the bundle, it looked like a small ham, and one slice told me that it had been cured for a fairly decent amount of time prior to being smoked with apple wood - I assume that it was wrapped with the cord to hang in the curing room and smoker. The ‘hard’ cure gave it an exquisite taste and texture reminiscent of a traditional southern ham. I had originally envisioned using it as the base for a bean soup, but since it tastes so good and has a fair amount of meat, I may cook it first and then decide later.

Sea Salt Suckers

It was bad enough when Campbell ran their first few campaigns, including the all too cute, “taste of taste,” trumpeting the switch to sea salt in their soups in an attempt to boost sales - the subject of my inaugural post belatedly pointed this out. Using one of the hottest ‘foodie’ trends in the last decade to pull in the ‘aping’ masses seems to be as effective as it is shameless since they are now on their third campaign. I don’t spend a lot of time watching ‘mainstream’ television, so ads often slip by my notice, but not their latest ad, which I saw for the first time yesterday. They’ve gone from the more subtle message of sea salt enhancing the flavor of their soups in a ‘healthier’ and substantial way to using a “unique, naturally flavorful sea salt…that helps us use less…” (The scallop shell filled with white salt crystals on the seashore is a great visual reinforcement.) The ad implies - no it actually indicates - that this salt contributes a flavor or flavors to the soup, rather than enhancing the flavors of all the other ingredients.