Photo by Youssef Abdelaal
OK, I’m going to come out of the closet. After 18 years as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, I’ve decided to include fish in my diet. Not just any fish – it’s got to be wild-caught, not farmed, and preferably labelled with one of the sustainable fishery seals, so I can be reasonably confident no dolphins, whales or seals were harmed in the process. Also, given the laws of kashrut, the fish have to have fins and visible scales – so no shellfish for us.
I’ve got some nice Pacific salmon filets in my freezer, and even better, northern pike and pickerel (walleye to you Amurricans) from Lake Winnipeg – as close to local as you can get in a landlocked province like mine. Well, OK, it isn’t really landlocked, but I don’t know how much of a fishery they have up in Hudson’s Bay. Some people dream of ice fishing up there … but I digress.
Now, of course, I’m looking for some good recipes. I’ve marinated the salmon and baked it in aluminium foil – I guess that’s the default for any fish, but I’d like to expand a little, especially for Shabbat. All constructive suggestions welcome!
You can also get very good and large whitefish out of Lake Winnipeg, as I recall. I used to buy them in Vancouver. It’s quite bony, but I still found it a good, inexpensive food. We used to get our salmon locally, since the First Nations had local fishing rights and would peddle the salmon in our neighborhood. With a good supply like that, I almost never had to buy meat anyway.
Mmmmm! Look forward to seeing your recipes! I have a cookbook or two all on fish – if you come by I’d be happy to lend them to you! There are so many great recipes online these days – but it is always nice to look over a hardcopy too!
Thanks, PJ! We really should get together … email me at lionsima at gmail dot com.
Great, it will do wonders for the protein intake of your family. I understand that Y of YandA has sent you a recipe. I can assure you that she does them all very well. I have childhood memories of walleyes caught by my father or myself at dawn on Caribou Lake in Minnesota and my mother frying them for us for breakfast.
In 2001, I added fish, and eventually chicken, back into my diet after 20 years of eating an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet. More recently, Aren was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (a diagnosis that has since been retracted, thanks to his changes in diet). Because his job requires a fair amount of travel, I talked him into adding fish to his diet so that he would be getting better protein while away from home.
So I don’t have a lot of fish recipes, but I do have a few that are sure winners at my house. I’ll send them to you on Sunday — there’s a Purim party complete with shpiel at my house motzei Shabbat.