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Fake Wasabi Alert!
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 Fake Wasabi Alert!
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Think you like wasabi with your sushi? Think again. Today's Washington Post has an article stating that 98 percent of what passes for wasabi in the U.S. and 95 percent of what passes for wasabi in Japan is fake. Those green balls that pass for wasabi are actually "just plain old horseradish, plus some mix of mustard extract, citric acid, and green die."
According to the article, real wasabi is rare. It comes from the stem of the wasabi plant which is exceedingly difficult to harvest. Because real wasabi is hard to grow and harvest, there is much more demand for it than supply, which would make true wasabi more expensive than the sushi it is supposed to complement.
It is particularly interesting that most of the wasabi in Japan is fake as well.
Over to our correspondent in Japan. Stephen, what do your Japanese friends think about their fake wasabi?
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 16 2014 14:30:49
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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It's true Bill. In one f my posts about Akune the town I live in I talked about how they grow real wasabi.
Although you can get it here, the Wash Post is being little dramatic. I stopped doing the Dispatches from Akune because a couple members were complaining that my take on Japan was too off topic.
Wasabi is a root of a water plant that grows wild in very clean mountain streams. It looks like grated ginger root, but green.
After being here for a year a half, I have decided to hold back talking about fish and sashimi because I've learned a lot of the things that are done in Sushi places in the US can not up to par. Fake wasabi is the least offensive thing I can think of. On the the other hand, just by watching and tasting I've learned how cut sashimi and make some sushi quite well.
The thing is to know how to use your local fish to best advantage and get fresh fish. many fish in US sushi places comes from somewhere else and are the same species you get in Japan. That is to make to it seem Japanese, but real good sashimi can be made many different kinds of fish, both fresh and salt water types. If I were to live in CA or DC again I would use the local catch rather than picking up imported say kampatchi. The spirit of sushi and sashimi is really a regional thing. One town or area might be very proud they have good octopus or Uni and they specialize in that, but also serve other things.
On the East Coast in the US for example, you could catch Shad and cure it in salt, rice vinegar and sugar and add a strip of kombu ( dried kelp) and then cut that and serve as sushi with sushi rice. That would be better in so many ways, environmentally too, to me than importing something from Japan or elsewhere. Several of the groundfish, the deep rock fish like groupers and rock bass can make excellent sashimi and those fish are locally caught on the East coast.
I've also had some funny things that were exceptionally good. The outer rim of the sting ray wings if cut correctly is awesome, and I've had mullet cut as sashimi, which was surprisingly good. There are also fish like Pompano and other "sea breams" that can make really good sushi. In California there are several fish you can catch at the beach that will make the best sashimi you ever had. If you can catch or buy a black fish called an Opal Eye that is fish that makes excellent sashimi. Im Japan it's called Kuro snapper, but it's the same fish as Opal Eye.
Oh,oh oh and in the US they lie about Katsuo, Bonito. They say it tastes bad. Not at all. Katsuo makes a dish called Tataki. You have a big thick strip of Bonito and then sear the outside quicky so about 1/8th inch gets cooked and sears the strip on all sides. Then you let it set in the refrigerator for a night. Then you cut the strip into medallions 1/4" thick. put them in a shallow dish with good soy and ponzu sauce mixed together. Then you lay a cover of thinly sliced onion over that and also some chopped Oba leaf. You can get all this in in CA. Tataki means "tamped down" so you push the medallions gently down into the ponzu soy mix and get it on the onions. Then set it in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve it.
I've also had straight katsuo cut as sashimi, but that is not for beginners, it can be "gamey" if you are expecting a mild fish. Also mackerel, it needs to me cured, but you can make cured mackerel at home. Europeans who eat picked herring would like cured Saba.
To me wasabi is secondary to good fish cut well. But proper wasabi is nice too. The other really important thing also missed in US sushi joints is the type of soy sauce they offer with the fish. If they offer a thicker sweeter soy sauce than the salty thin Kikkoman you know you are onto higher quality place where they have more knowledge. Soy is really important, it has different ranges of viscosity and saltyness or sweetness. The common thin soy in most places is not ideal for sashimi and in one taste of a thicker slightly sweeter soy you'll see the difference in how the fish tastes.
So as Evita Peron said: Don't cry over fake wasabi, research the soy.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Oct. 17 2014 2:02:21
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
The outer rim of the sting ray wings if cut correctly is awesome,
You have hit on one of the least known wonders of the world. I tasted sting ray for the first time in 1983, shortly after arriving on assignment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Previously, I had never thought of sting ray as edible, much less the delicacy it really is. It quickly became (and still is) my favorite sea food. I ate it frequently at sea food specialty restaurants in Malaysia and Singapore.
Sting ray in Malaysia is cooked two different ways. The Chinese steam it, and the Malays grill it. I much prefer the Malay style of grilled sting ray. As you know, the sting ray belongs to the shark family and has shark-like cartilage. The Malays grill the wings and serve them with chili sauce and other condiments. One just takes the beautiful white flesh of the wing off the cartilage and tastes the sweetest of sea foods, without any bones. I still make every effort to get sting ray when I am in Southeast Asia.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 17 2014 11:38:06
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to estebanana)
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When we came through the curtained door at Kabuto there were alway shouted greetings. As we sat down at the counter, after further greetings were exchanged in English, my girlfriend always asked, "What's good today?" Sachio-san always replied, "Everything good."
One day while we were somewhere else I asked her why she asked, since she always got the same answer. She replied, "I thought you were more observant than that." I gave her an inquisitive look. She just smiled and said no more.
Next time I watched carefully. Sachio-san always had his knife in his hand, and he was never still, always moving. As he said, "Everything good," his moving knife happened to point very casually to three or four different pieces of fish in the glass fronted display. That's what she ordered.
I don't remember whether there were ever any rolls on Kabuto's menu. I can't remember ever eating one.
Your description of Negi-Toro sounds a lot like Hawaiian poké. When poké appeared on Sachio-san's whiteboard menu, my girlfriend asked, in mock puzzlement, "Is poké a Japanese word?" Sachio-san's wisecrack reply got a laugh from that half of the customers at the counter who were part of the Japanese expatriate community.
When green tea ice cream, an American innovation, appeared on the whiteboard, she said something to Sachio-san in her teasing tone in Japanese, but "Green tea ice cream" was pronounced quite distinctly in English. Sachio-san made no reply, but went about his lightning fast preparation of sushi.
When we appeared to be ready to order the natto-maki we always finished off with, Sachio-san beat us to the punch. Addressing me, he asked, "Are you finished?" I glanced at my companion, then said, "Yes." He disappeared into the back room.
By and by he reappeared bearing a quarter of a gigantic cantaloupe on a plate. It was at least 10 inches long, maybe a foot. He placed it on the counter in front of us. I stared at it for a moment, then gesturing with my chopsticks I asked, "How are we supposed to eat this?"
Sachio-san leaned over the counter, and with his ever present knife, pushed gently on the side of the huge piece of melon. A bite size piece slid out toward us, like a drawer from a doll's dresser. The whole piece of cantaloupe had been dissected with cuts so fine they were invisible.
Tadich Grill, established in San Francisco in 1842, is across California Street from the old Bank of America building. It's an American style seafood place. In the 1980s the waiters were old, and appeared at first to be taciturn and grouchy.
You were dealt a menu, but if you opened it up you betrayed yourself as a newbie. Instead, you asked the waiter, "What's good today?" and followed his advice.
RNJ
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Date Oct. 18 2014 17:36:56
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Tadich Grill, established in San Francisco in 1842, is across California Street from the old Bank of America building. It's an American style seafood place. In the 1980s the waiters were old, and appeared at first to be taciturn and grouchy.
Tadich Grill is an iconic San Francisco institution. When I am in San Francisco, I always make it a point to eat at two places: Tadich Grill (more for old time's sake than anything else, as I have been passing through SF as long as I can remember), and Scoma's Seafood Restaurant. Scoma's is located at Pier 47 on Al Scoma Way. It is the only seafood restaurant worthy of the name in the Fisherman's Wharf area, but it is an absolute gem, and it has been serving the finest seafood in the area since 1965.
When I meet friends for a dinner at Scoma's I always arrive about a half-hour earlier than the reservation. I enter and turn to the right, up three steps, and sit at the bar with a huge picture window looking out at the sun setting in the west. A glass of wine, or beer if I am in the mood, and I am ready for a great seafood dinner and good conversation.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 18 2014 17:50:17
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Further to my ode to Sting Ray as a seafood delicacy. When I was assigned to the American Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, twice I took leave for two weeks at a time to ramble about the Riau Archipelabo, which begins just south of Singapore and runs more or less along the South China Sea side of Sumatra. I first went in 1997 and enjoyed it so much I went again in 1998.
My Malay language ability was (and remains) very good, and the Malays of the Riau Archipelago are considered to speak the purest form of Malay, as they are the remnants of the Malays of Malacca, which in the 15th century was the main entrepot of the Eastern spice trade. In 1511 the Portuguese defeated them, and they retreated south to Johore, finally centering their court in the Riau Archipelago. I was anxious to hear what linguists consider a reasonably pure form of Malay.
I flew to Singapore and took a ferry to the island of Bintan, which begins the Riau Archipelago. After a few days in bintan, I paid Malay boatmen and fishermen to take me to several islands in their prahus. I spent a few days on Lingga and surrounding islands, finally ending up on Singkep, where I spent several days. In each place I got to know the owner of a kedai or outdoor food stall (Riau lacks the modern restaurants of Singapore and Jakarta--for the most part one eats in what are known as "kedais" or outdoor food stalls, particularly in the southern part of the archipelago.)
In each place, I made a deal with the owner of the kedai that I would go to the fish market every morning to pick up the finest sting ray I could find from the catch that was brought in from the night's haul of fish, I would bring it to the kedai owner, and he would prepare it for me when I showed up for dinner each evening at about 7:00 PM. I was in linguistic and culinary heaven, learning the Riau dialect of Malay and having Malay-style, grilled sting ray for dinner each evening. It doesn't get any better than that.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 18 2014 18:22:58
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Second the motion on Scoma's.
There is also a Scoma's in Sausalito with a commanding view of the Bay and the City. In our experience until 2000 or so, the Sausalito location was as good as the one on the wharf. It's in a Victorian era building, but modernization has made it not quite as atmospheric the one on the wharf.
The Sausalito location is a joint venture between the Scoma family and the Gottis (no, not those Gottis) who ran Ernie's until it closed in 1995.
Though the one on the wharf has a funky San Francisco feel, it opened in 1965, practically the day before yesterday for a geezer like me.
At the wharf the Sicilian-American waiter asked me whether to bring a wine glass for my 16-year old son. I said I wouldn't want the restaurant to get in trouble for serving an underage customer. It was toward the end of lunchtime, there were plenty of available tables. The waiter moved us to one well out of direct view from the doorway, and promised to come pick up the glass if the authorities showed up.
Order the cioppino, a Sicilian seafood stew with a variety of fish, shellfish and crab.
The only place I've had better cioppino was in the tiny fishing village of Pescadero back just a little way from the coast, about halfway between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. At Pescadero the delicious Italian bread used to be (may still be) from the local bakery.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Oct. 20 2014 17:43:24
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Richard, I always like hearing about the showmanship and good cutting of your erstwhile sushi man. Do you have a raw fish haunt in Austin now?
I have fished for halibut several times now, but I can't find the a spot where they bite. I looked on the "fishing map" of Akune harbor, the areas where different species typically lurk is marked out, that was this past April. I found the spot where halibut are known to be caught and fished that spot with a kibinago on the bottom.
A kibinago is small fish like an anchovy, but sweeter. Makes good sashimi, you clean the 3" long fish my splitting it open with your thumbnail and removing the gut with a nail sweep through the body cavity. Then you snap the head off and fold the butterflied fish in half and lay it on a plate. You do that about twenty times and then serve it with a lemony miso based sauce. Note guitar players have an advantage cleaning kibinago due to the expert use guitar players make of the finger nail. Kibinago are succulent to both humans and game fish alike so they make great bait for halibut, or so I am told.
I was fishing my fresh kibinago on the bottom with a light sinker in 20 feet of water on an incoming tide. Good enough. Well I never got a single haibut bite, but over three weeks in April and June I pulled in several big female Kochi, in English they are called Flatheads. I knew they were ladies because they were full of tasty eggs. Kochi is a prized fish and in Tokyo or big cities. The 5 lb. Kochi's I was catching could go for upwards of $60.00 per fish retail, but more like $80 to 100.00 is realistic. People around here don't target them for some reason. I can only guess because the big squid and the Kochi spawn at the same time and the squid are more interesting to catch. I got a bit of a reputation for being the Kochi master. And the Kochi lives up to it's price, I'll tell you. I cut sashimi from it and it was about the best thing I ever tasted and we also made a delicious soup with one whole fish. The head of the kochi fish is especially good. It has a thick wide skull and a backbone you struggle to cut though. The reason is the Kochi eats crabs, mainly, but kibinago too. The Kochi has a massive head full of muscles so when it grabs a crab it can chomp it and crush it. I found crab legs in the stomaches of all the flatheads I caught. I think the Kochi's favorite meal colors the flavor of it's meat. The fish has big bones and not a lot of small ribs so flesh peels back off the skeleton with a gentle rake of your hashi.
The Kochi came & went and is more seasonal than halibut, but still the halibut has eluded me. I took it up a few times during the summer, no kochi, no halibut, but some delightful smaller fish were caught; a sea bream, called a Chinu ate the kibinago several times. Chinu is another fish that eats small crabs and clams, which grills well and has big ribs leaving you unfettered access to the flanks of meat. The halibut is difficult to find and I may have to search farther off shore, but I am told by the old fishermen they are in the port area.
As I was fishing ten days ago, I kept getting solid hits, but missed a few fish. Then more solid hits, but I would set the hook and the line would break in 30 seconds or so of connecting to solid fish. I tied on a heavier leader and bigger hook. The hits kept coming, ten minutes after a cast I would get a solid rod bending smack. I set the hook and had a fish on for longer than 30 seconds three times. Knot broke, fish gone, a line got cut on fish teeth, gone. The third one I was able to keep on the line about 3 minutes, but I could not tell what it was by how it was fighting. Was it a a Ray or a Halibut, or a big Sea Bass?
I ruled out sea bass, but since it felt like a piece of plywood dragging the bottom, I knew it was large and flat. Then Gone, the line broke right at the hook. I tied another hook on and cast out a kibinago. Just was my thoughts were wandering back to guitar making projects in the shop, the biggest hit came 'WHAM!!' I set back into it to ascertain the size of the fish and I knew it was biggest yet. It stripped 20 yards of line off the reel as it was double bending the rod. It was a speed burst. Then it stopped, brooded, and did it again. Was this my magic halibut?
A halibut will run a few times ( I've caught them before in Caifornia) and then tire and become a sea anchor as it puts it's body sideways to you. Or if it is under you while you are in a boat it will be a plywood sheet of resistance in the water. It feels like you hooked the bottom, but you'll know it is a halibut because it will swim in large circles. Then the circles get small and finally you can tilt its head up toward you with the rod and get it to slip through water vertically to you. Then it might make another dive. They do the same routine if you are shore fishing, but it is harder to tell. A Ray on the other hand will lunge, as it beats those great wings it lunges, resets the wings and flaps them again. They they move in a push push push rhythm much of the time, but still feel like an old plywood dingy encrusted into the bottom.
I was playing this really big fish and it was heading out of the port and down the dock. By that time several other fisherman I know had pulled up in their mini trucks to watch. And I began walking this fish down the dock to a cement stairway that plunges into the water. If it was a big halibut I could land it there and grab its gill flap and haul it out. Ten minutes of playing had gone by and this fish was still taking line off the reel when it felt like it. I was beginning to think it was a ray because as it began to tire it began to lunge like an underwater bird. Still I did not know what it was. Then about 15 or 20 minutes into the fight it did very Ray like turn. It turned into the dock wall from about 30 yards off shore and swam to the wall. I was able to turn its head to me then as it came to the wall and turned towards me and the stairs. A ray will follow the shore or dock walls in and out of a harbor like a highway. So I was convinced now this was a Ray and it was perhaps between 3 and 4 feet wide wing tip to wing tip. I pulled as much as I dared and drew the fish into the stairs area, but as I got it close in three feet to five feet of water it balked and told me to eat dirt. It was in four feet or less and it flashed a big gold cream colored underside and ran at 90 degrees away from the dock back out towards the middle of the harbor, and at that point it showed no sign of wanting to be reeled in.
It fought like Ray, but I can't be sure, 70% I think it was a ray, but it could have a been a freaky flounder or a halibut. It was too mad after I tried I get it to do the stair master and began to thrash around more and take more line. Then as fast as it hit the line went slack and the pole bobbed in the air free of tension. I reeled in 50 yards of loose line to see what looked like string fatigue that broke at a knot. By this time everyone had left the dock because watching someone reel in a sheet of dry wall is really boring. And my halibut rig is for halibut or kochi in the five to ten pound range. The rod is a nice flexible, but gutty 12' surf/rock fishing rod, medium sized spinning reel and 20 lb test line. You can work in a bigger fish than you might think with this if you have skill, but what ever I hooked on the last cast that day was more than this robust rig could handle.
I think it was the mother of all Sting Rays. And since Bill has said he likes Sting Ray I may go back to that spot and figure out how to finesse one in. Oh of course fishing being what it is if I go for Ray, I'll get something else. Everyone likes a delicious raw kibinago snack.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Oct. 21 2014 13:52:08
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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How you cook a ray would depend on who you talk to. Myself, I like some kinds of grilled shark so I would go for grilling and hot sauce as you would. But on Kyushu a lot of traditional cooking is done with vinegar, sugar and soy, or with miso. The sweet flavors get on my nerves if there is too much of it, it's like eating a dinner where every dish has a root vegetable which tastes like vinegar on candied yams. That is just South Kyushu regional cooking. Japan's regional styles of cooking are well intact. Up north the flavor sense is lighter in Osaka-Kyoto they have different foods and flavors. Then bit East of there in Nagoya they use red miso as a base for a lot of cooking. It is quite diverse; one constant basis for comparison of regions is what kind of soup base does an area use for ramen? On Kyushu it is pork based soup, but elsewhere it could be fish based. The Ramen-Western movie Tampopo is a funny look at the regional secrets of different ramen houses, but there is that kind of competition in a mild way.
They cook beans with lots of sugar and it destroys them, sweet beans are good every few months, if that, but they massacre them in sugar every time. If I get my hands on beans, they are like large lima beans, I cook them and put salt and butter on them. This seems bizarre to locals, but it is much better than how they murder good beans. Sweet black bean paste aside, which is good in some situations.
I have to ask around, but I'm sure there's the sweet way other than vinegar-sugar-soy to cook a ray. I did mention I had the wing tips as sashimi, but I have not learned how to cut that yet. It looks like it takes practice.
As far as hot sauces, I'll probably have to make my own. I have made a variation on Mexican picked carrots, onions and jalepenos with canned jalepenos which turned out well. I put them in a salt-vinegar-sugar pickling solution I threw together and add some of the jalepeno juice. There are lots of pickled veggies here made that way, but not hot. My carrots-onion-jalepenos where off the charts of most people here, but for you or I quite in the right hot zone. I almost feel like a proper California Mexican when I eat them with eggs and the frozen tortillas I can find.
Pinto beans, like the wily halibut, remain elusive.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Oct. 21 2014 20:17:19
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
Richard, I always like hearing about the showmanship and good cutting of your erstwhile sushi man. Do you have a raw fish haunt in Austin now?
My hypothesis is that Austin is not the best place for sushi, but I haven't conducted a comprehensive set of experiments.
Uchi and Uchiko are written up in the national magazines, and are the darlings of the local foodies. I think they just have a good publicity guy. They are not remotely in the same league as Ozumo, where we ate in San Francisco, but the prices are about the same. The rent in the financial district has to be at least three times what Uchi and Uchiko are paying in Austin.
There's a sushi place near my house where we go, but it's just OK--for Texas. Larisa likes it, so I haven't had much incentive to branch out.
The restaurant scene in Austin is very lively, with a lot of writeups in the Austin Chronicle, the local weekly that started out as a raging counter-culture rag in the '60s. The Chronicle has settled into a relatively sedate liberal middle age, with slight hipster overtones--Texas hipster, that is. More often than not we are mildly disappointed by the places that get rave reviews, but there are a few of the trendy places we really like. No sushi though, as far as I am concerned.
Now, if you wanted to talk barbecue…..or real Mexican food--not TexMex--at Fonda San Miguel….
The waiter at Fonda San Miguel Sunday brunch a couple of weeks ago is from Mexico City. Seems like an educated, well informed guy. He told us Oaxaca and San Cristobal de las Casas are perfectly safe, and that Mexico City is "normal"--about like the '70s and '80s.
I feel a Mexican excursion coming on, after Costa Rica over Christmas and New Years. He said my favorite fresh seafood place in the Capital is still going strong. Huachinango Veracruzano, anyone? Fresh pompano sauteed in a tiny bit of mojo de ajo?
RNJ
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Date Oct. 21 2014 21:20:42
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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We've gone from ever vigilant W.H. Barkell's warnings of Fake Wasabi to the 2016 spate of Fake News. And I feel we've left this hot thread under mined for content.
I have a few proposals for 2017 to be a better year than 2016-
#1 Create guitars with Wasabi Green finishes to combat the onslaught of orange finishes.
#2 Promote the eating of roast beef with wasabi in place of hose radish, as this is more international.
#3 Begin a for profit organization for the promotion of wasabi and documentary films about wasabi.
#5 Pressure the UN to form a wasabi tribunal to ensure the honesty in wasabi making and punishment of faux wasabi pushers who mis label wasabi products.
#4 Don't let anyone tell you 4 comes before 5 - that is an alt. number system.
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Last night I had a portion of katsuo sashimi that I think was the best I have ever had. It's a fish I like very much now, even though as a child I heard very discouraging stories about eating katsuo.
My grandmother moved to CA in the 1930's with her older brothers and parents to escape a life as wandering farm laborers. They were very poor and mu grandmother lost the tip of her pinky finger in an accident with a cotton processing machine. They had a tough time, but eventually made it t CA in an old car.
My grandmother was a bit of a social climber, but I say this in jest because after picking cotton as a ten year old in the Texas heat everything is up if you go to CA and go to school. Eventually she married her second husband after she was divorced from my mothers father. #2 was a much more fun than #1 and he was a contractor, who she said had $50,000 in his bank account and that was a bigger number than she had ever seen to that date.
They bought a Chris Craft boat and kept it in San Diego, and she joined the golf clubs and bridge societies and worked her self in a department store in the womens section. Eventually she joined the Marlin Club at Coronado Island in San Diego.
This has nothing to do with my like of raw Kasuo, which they call Bonito in CA, but it does lead into why I heard bad bonito stories as a child. The Chris Craft was sold when I was an infant, so I never got to fish for Yellowtail, albacore or Halibut off the back deck of the fabled boat. I did see the framed picture of my grandmother in her mid thirties on the dock at Coronado with one of her marlin catches hanging hoisted on a rope by block and tackle. She stood next to it with her rod and huge Penn reel. The rod was short and thick nit much taller than her and had roller wheel guides for the line in stead of plain wire loops. The Marlin was a small one at a hundred and sixty pounds, but it was still fresh enough to make out the vertical bars on it's flank.
My grandparents told me the story over an over because I wanted all the details over and over, like a re telling ritual. They were fish royalists, the marlin and Tunas were the king a queen and the yellowtail and Albacore were high courtiers. Halibut were the merchant class, and rock cod and others of that ilk were workers The bonito was like a whore. A stinky slut fish that stayed out too late at night, came home smelling of booze and lived off unemployment.
My grandfather #2 the fun guy, had disdain too for the mackerel, which he thought of as naught school child fish. "The mackerel were so thick that afternoon", he would say in the retelling of details of fishing trips, "that you could not get the bait down through them to the yellow tail underneath the school." He said he resorted to putting 5 ounces of sinkers on his line with a live anchovy on the hook and would try to see if he could make the anchovy sink to the yellowtail before a bad mackerel would steal the anchovy.
I grew up hearing of the noble Albacore, and fencing master Marlin. Always included in the re-tellings there were the curses on the tarted up whore Bonito and her bastard child the mackerel. However charged by my ancestors, I have found both to be a silvery edible delight.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 7 2017 1:15:33
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to Leñador)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Leñador
Interesting, you suppose these American fish preferences developed out of sport fishing?
In my extended Texan family, sport fishing diverged from subsistence fishing only in my father's generation.
During the Depression he was in the miitary, and so was among the few in the family who had a steady cash income. Before the discovery of oil and the arrival of irrigation the ranch was nearly a subsistence operation.
The Gulf of Mexico and the bays behind the barrier islands were nearby. Men fished to provide food for their families. Among the most popular were redfish (spotted sea bass), speckled trout and flounder, tasty and plentiful. Drum were not quite so desirable, but stil acceptable. Salt water catfish and mullet, though plentiful, were not on the menu. Shrimp were also plentiful in the bays.
Few had boats capable of navigating the Gulf. One of my uncles was an exception, having a moderate sized sailboat. Spanish and King mackerel appeared in seasonal "runs." During my father's youth little time or energy were spent on sport, but during a mackerel run you could catch enough fish to make the trip worthwhile.
There was one exception to this. Up until the time I was 12 years old there were still expeditions of several days or even a week to one or other of the barrier islands. These islands were sand, from one to three miles wide, tens of miles long, and uninhabited. Back from the beach sparse grasses and other low growth partially anchored the dunes.
An expedition of up to a dozen family members would set out across the bay to the island. In the early days for me most of the people traveled in 14-to-16 foot wooden skiffs, propelled by a single oarsman. Often one man would row the whole three or four miles from the mainland to the island. In later years there were small outboard motors.
In a display of macho self confidence, we took beans, bacon, cornmeal, coffee and water, with pup tents to sleep in and blankets for cover. If we caught fish, we ate them. If not, it was beans, bacon and hushpuppies. No cornbread because we brought no buttermilk or baking soda. But we always caught fish.
The first task after setting up the rudimentary camp was to seine for shrimp. The shallow water on the bay side contains patches of grassy seaweed. A fine mesh rectangular net, about 2 by 6 feet, was fastened along each end to a wooden stick. Two people, one at each end, would work the net through a patch of "grass" and fill bait buckets with shrimp.
Then it was time to set up trot lines. Water in the bays is seldom more than six feet deep. There are stretches for miles of water more shallow than that. A line of slender wooden poles, 15 or 20 feet apart, were driven into the sand or mud bottom. A line stretched between the poles, and from it descended other lines at 4 or 5 foot intervals, with floats, hooks and weights dangling into the water. The hooks were baited, then we got into the boats and fished with poles for trout over oyster beds, or redfish over sandy bottom, again using shrimp for bait. Out of the whole crew only one or two would have something as fancy as a rod and reel. It was cane poles and woven fishing line, with a short plastic leader. We usually caught enough fish for the evening meal.
After dark we would sometimes go gigging for flounder. A flounder gig is a steel fork with two sharp pointed tines, fixed to the end of a four-foot stick. You shuffle along-- usually barefoot in those days--through sandy bottomed patches of shallow water, some people bearing bright gasoline lanterns. If you see a legal size flounder, you stick it with the gig. It is illegal for a flounder gig to have barbs on the tines, so you reach under the fish and bring it to the surface, before putting it on the stringer hitched to you belt. Woe betide the man or boy who mistakes a stingray for a flounder.
The next day we ran the trot lines. If a float was submerged or bobbing in the water, we knew there was a fish on the hook. The size and species of the catch varied. We only took trout and redfish of legal size. One morning when I was eight or nine years old I was in the bow of a skiff, lifting fish into the boat. One float was sunk out of sight. I reached down and pulled on the line. Something very heavy was on the other end. I pulled harder and it pulled back. I went into the water, but it was less than four feet deep. I had to have help to get the 45-pound redfish into the boat. I have never seen or heard of one so big since that day.
Now fast forward to the late 1950s-early 1960s, when my father retired, first from the Air Force, then from a stint as stockbroker in San Antonio. They moved to Corpus Christi on the coast. Dad went fishing at least once a week, usually twice, with his regular buddies.
He owned a 19-foot "deep-vee" molded plywood boat with dual 40-horsepower outboards. It was hauled on a trailer behind a slightly superannuated Cadillac, and launched from a public boat ramp. This boat was for fishing in the bays. Dad knew the entire stretch of water from Corpus Christi to Port Mansfield (we used to call it Redfish Bay) like the back of his hand: every sandbar and oyster bed for nearly a hundred miles--or so it seemed to me. On a plane, his bay boat would do 25 knots, so he covered a sizable area over the course of a few months.
His other boat was a mahogany and chrome 42-foot Chris Craft. It was bought new in 1952 by a friend of a friend. When the first owner retired from sport fishing, he sold it to Dad's friend. When that friend got too old, he sold it to Dad. All three owners maintained the boat in pristine condition. It looked like a prized piece of furniture. Berthed at the T-head docks in the Corpus Christi marina it was maintained and driven by a retired shrimp boat captain from Mexico, who practically lived aboard the boat. He said he had nothing else to do except to see his grandchildren.
Usually once a week there would be an expedition out to the blue water of the Gulf Stream, weather permitting. The weather had to be fairly strenuous not to permit it. One of my cousins held the record for being seasick more often than anybody else. Mackerel were still an objective in the Gulf, but leisure and prosperity enabled the pursuit of marlin and sailfish.
Dad was the best sport fisherman I ever knew, or knew of. He always caught the first fish. He always caught the most fish. But if they weren't biting, he and my brother both could spend a whole day on the water, starting at first light and coming back to shore in early evening without a single bite, and enjoy themselves immensely. I was in my thirties before I learned to bring a book, a cigar and a thermos of coffee for days like that.
So from my personal perspective it was the other way around. Sport fishing tastes evolved from subsistence. Going after the big ones in the Gulf was enabled by prosperity and leisure.
But Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" is for me perhaps his greatest book. It's the account of an old Cuban fisherman, almost too old to keep at it, without a single catch for many weeks, setting out in his tiny skiff for the blue water, further out than any reasonable person would go, and his epic struggle with a giant marlin.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 8 2017 2:33:26
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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That was a Jernigan best story, very enjoyable.
I read The Old Man and the Sea in the seventh grade and used it as my book for our dramatized or extended book report. Our teacher asked us to read a book and then give book report to the class in which we convey the story by dramatic means of our own writing or create a project or object that helps listeners enter the story.
I choose Hemingway's classic because at that time my grandfather had been telling me tales of marlin and albacore caught off the Coronado islands or Santa Catalina and I was quite literary in my fishing obsession. I had also been reading Zane Grey's books about fishing the California coast for great tuna and swordfish. Later I added to these readings of my beloved coast by taking in Steinbeck's "Sea of Cortez'.
I brought the ropes, and marlin hooks to school my grandfather showed me that were left in the tackle box he had on the boat. He kept all the boat rods and that marlin reel, when I became old enough to be interested he hauled it all out a gave to to me. He sold the marlin pole and the Penn reel that went with it, or gave to Uncle Leonard who was horny to catch a marlin. I showed up at school one morning with enough lethal hooks and ropes and a flying gaff to get arrested today, then nobody looked at it as I shoved it under my seat for the afternoon book report. The adults were not the least bit concerned that I had meathooks and cords and a long spear with me. I pressed corks over each hook barb and made sure that the large marlin hooks were not going to string any other kid of like a Lakota Sundancer hanging from lanyards and hooks placed in his chest.
When the time came for the retelling of my book I simply sat on the floor in the middle of the room and pulled my props from my cardboard box. I noticed the teacher was not happy. Mr. Chous looked skeptical, he must have thought what is this little slacker bastard going to do this time? He did not really like me that much. He saw the enormous marlin hooks, and that I had corked the points, so he let it happen. he never liked me, but he knew I was smart and he himself was a fisherman, so he let the debacle progress.
I began by reciting words I had memorized from Hemingway, I set the scene for the old man oaring out to sea as far out as he could. And then the class disappeared and I slipped into some kind of alternate state, I was aware of the class, but I paid no mind to them. I reached the far point in the sea somehow by rowing in place on the floor. I reached in the box and talked to myself like an old fisherman who had spent years alone on the water, I took out the corked marlin hook and baited it, and tossed it across the floor of the school room. I remember this is when some of the other classmates seemed to tune in while others were still thinking this is odd. I fished and fished on a grey low pile carpet of ocean off the coast of Cuba. And the corks on the hooks skipped over the threads. One cork popped off and a hook dug into the carpet and I knew then I had a great fish on the line. I hauled back and dug the hook into carpet setting the hook deep into giant marlins bony mouth. I knew then the fish was mine and that the hook had found it's keep.
I left the hook buried in the carpet and Chous was not going to halt my program, he was looking over his desk at me on the floor, I in a near trance state, I could tell then Chous was fully engaged. Eventually I played my big blue marlin in, and as I got closer to him and his dangerous bill, I pushed my butt across the floor to the place the hook was stuck in the carpet and acted out playing in the huge fish by moving my boat closer pulling in line. I finally backed my small boat down on the fish after he towed me for several miles into the gulf stream. I gaffed and roped him up to the side of the gunwales of my craft and towed him off. At that point in my life I did not understand drinking rum, but me as that old man, was going to have rum and food when I got this beautiful fish to port.
It was a glorious fish and I showed my anguish as sharks began to tear his regal sides to shreds while I forced myself to make the long row back to port. Chous had bought it by this time and he was actually rooting for me. I rowed my giant fish home and used my long staff to push sharks off his flesh and beat them back with my oars until finally I had my boat at the dock. I was exhausted and the fish was bitterly wounded by shark bite.
The class stared blankly because I did not have an ending prepared that included letting them know it had ended, but Chous being an adult understood I had been living this journey in front of the class. As a drama piece it was true, but I needed to have a better indicator of an ending. My ending was how I slumped over and acted passed out from being on the sea for 18 hours or a couple days, I was so delirious I could not tell how much time had gone by while I brought in my giant marlin on that jr. high school carpet floor.
Chous stood up behind his desk and began to clap, he gestured for the class to stand up, they clapped. Chous said this is what it is all about, these book reports can come alive like this. He was pleased. Never really liked me, but he was fair. He also knew no matter what those sharks did, I hooked a great fish, in that hard grey carpet that smelled of glue.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 8 2017 11:53:55
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
But Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" is for me perhaps his greatest book. It's the account of an old Cuban fisherman, almost too old to keep at it, without a single catch for many weeks, setting out in his tiny skiff for the blue water, further out than any reasonable person would go, and his epic struggle with a giant marlin.
I would have to agree that "The Old Man and the Sea" is probably Hemingway's finest work. Hemingway goes in and out of fashion in academia, but he has never been out of print and probably never will be. My favorite Hemingway novels are "The Sun Also Rises," "A Farewell to Arms," and "The Old Man and the Sea," (which is more a novella) I am probably an outlier here, but I have always considered "For Whom the Bell Tolls" one of Hemingway's lesser works. In reading about the Spanish Civil War I much prefer George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia," which describes Orwell's experiences and observations as a participant. I just find "For Whom the Bell Tolls" a little overwritten for Hemingway.
Many of Hemingway's short stories are gems. Among my favorites are the early Nick Adams stories, particularly "Big Two-Hearted River," as well as "A Clean, Well-lighted Place," "The Killers," and probably his finest, "The Snows of Killimanjaro."
Back to favorite sea foods, my absolute favorite, which I rhapsodized about in a couple of comments earlier in this thread, is sting ray, grilled Malay style with chili sauce. Also love Opakapaka (Hawaiian Pink Snapper), which I gravitate toward whenever i'm in Hawaii. Delicious and flaky.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 8 2017 17:04:53
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to Leñador)
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There must be a few day boats still operating out of San Pedro, or closer to you. If you go out on trip try to go overnight out of San Diego and go to the Coronado islands about 18 miles south of SD. Or the boats out of Oceanside could be good.
You can also do well in the right spots fishing off the rocks in places around Laguna and Aliso Pier, and place you can get out on flat rocks. People often over look that you can catch some very good eating fish by just using a heavy sinker and a hook close to it to drop it between the rocks and hold it just off the bottom. There are small rock fish that yu can get that way, and the perch or maybe opaleye. I can show you how to make the rig that you use. A short cane pole will do it.
Off the sandy beaches there is perch and sandabs, and in the spring grunion runs........you got lots to do just on beach and rocks. There are also some Japanese rigs they don't use in CA that you could use to get Opaleye and other fish like that, I've been wanting to try that out myself. They have some clever rigging and baits for Opaleye here, and that fish can be tough to catch.
In La Jolla cove and other deep water coves you have all kinds of things that can happen, big grouper if you know how to fish it and have the strong rod. Probably close to you in Venice there are docks nearby and at night you can catch small seabass with plastic wiggle tail jigs or anchovies jigged the right way. That is always fun because after work and dinner you can slip out for an hour or two and cast and see what happens. Fishing near lighted docks at night can be very productive and if you use lures not bait messy. Bass sit under docks and boats and wait for those lures. In the summer barracuda can also move into some of the port areas. Like Newport harbor, you may get barracuda, king mackerel in the mid to late summer then the water is warmest, or halibut in winter.
Richard spent his boyhood on the Gulf Waters, I was fishing off the shore in Southern California from the time I was about seven. My last fishing in CA was when I had a shop in Alameda, I tied some streamer flies and fly fished in the estuary hoping for a wayward striped bass. I tried to make some time to drift fish for halibut at the mouth of the port of Oakland in Jan. but we never had time. You go out the port into the bay turn left and then drift a herring along the bottom, in front of the USS Hornet which is docked there.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 9 2017 4:40:29
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Fake Wasabi Alert! (in reply to Leñador)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Leñador
I'd love to just live off what I catch for a few days and eat canned beans if I fail. I think I'd actually be pretty happy either way. 
The beans weren't canned. They were dry frijoles in a burlap bag. They had to be soaked in water for hours to soften them before they were cooked. After a good soaking they went into an iron kettle, maybe five gallons if there was a big crew. Also into the pot would go a slab of bacon, cut into fist sized chunks, some salt, and a few jalapeños--not enough to make the beans really picante, just enough to give them some flavor.
Boys were sent to collect driftwood to make a fire for the bean pot. The fire was kept stoked to a bed of coals for the duration of the trip. Breakfast was usually bacon and beans. Bacon was sliced and fried in big skillets, maybe 18 inches in diameter, over a different fire. The grease was saved for frying fish and hush puppies in the evening.
If the beans weren't soaked enough to cook for the first evening meal, catching fish was more critical. If we didn't do a good enough job, it was bacon, hushpuppies and coffee for dinner.
Coffee was made in 2-gallon steel coffee pots, enameled in blue, speckled with white or gray. The water was brought to a boil, the coffee dumped in, then after a suitable time the grounds were allowed to settle, and the coffee was poured carefully into tin cups, no cream or sugar. I was drinking "cowboy coffee" when I was six or seven years old.
Canned beans reminds me of fresh water fishing expeditions with my great uncle Custis Lee Jernigan. Uncle Tuss had been in the horse cavalry. After WW I he went to Mexico with Black Jack Pershing, chasing Pancho Villa after he invaded New Mexico.
Pershing took his Buick touring car to Mexico. Uncle Tuss, who commanded an extensive cavalry vocabulary, said, "We never got within fifty miles of that Mexican son of a b1tch, because of ferrying that g0d d*mned car across streams and digging it out of mudholes." Tuss was an officer, so he hadn't personally done any digging, but he was no doubt champing at the bit to move out and give chase with his battalion.
Uncle Tuss would take a bunch of us kids along the Medina or Guadalupe river, fishing for bass and perch with live bait. During his military days he had developed a taste for cavalry rations: canned beef and canned beans. I never knew where he got the beef in olive drab tins with Army markings on them. We kids joked that they were left over from the Spanish-American War.
If we caught fish, we ate them. If we didn't have enough fish, we had "bully beef" fried with eggs and black pepper, and heated up canned beans. If we ran out of eggs, it was bully beef and beans. We joked that if we ran out of beans it was bully beef and dirt. I always thought bully beef had a decided earthy taste of its own.
RNJ
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Date Feb. 9 2017 23:16:57
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