Thursday, February 14, 2008

Farm-raised king salmon. Who knew?

Back to February 12

The next day, February 11, we met the man who was to be our guide for the rest of our trip, a Canterburian by the name of Kevin Parish.
Canterbury is the region of New Zealand most similar to England, by all accounts that I’ve heard. Its largest city, Christchurch, also is the largest city on the South Island.
Kevin flew up to Nelson on Monday morning to meet us at New Zealand King Salmon, the largest producer and supplier of farm-raised king salmon in the world.
Now I thought that was interesting, because I had no idea that king salmon was farm-raised. To my knowledge, all of the farm-raised salmon in North America is Atlantic salmon, and king is one of the five species of the Pacific Northwest (the others are sockeye, coho, chum and pink). [I have since learned that king salmon also is being farm-raised in British Columbia].
Bill King, the McCormick & Schmick’s guy who was my co-traveler on this trip — and who to my knowledge is not related either to king salmons nor to Bill McCormick, the restaurant chain’s co-founder and, perhaps not uncoincidentally, the current US ambassador to New Zealand — had told me earlier that this year’s season for wild Pacific salmon was looking bleak. Fishing for salmon on the continental U.S. West Coast and perhaps well into Canada might be severely restricted due to low numbers of fish. The imminently sustainable salmon fisheries of Alaska seem to be doing fine, however. Still, the possible dearth of wild salmon in North America might make the farm-raised kings of New Zealand particularly appealing this year.
The folks at King Salmon told us that their species of choice was harder to raise in farms than Atlantic Salmon because it was more delicate, and thus more difficult to harvest, and because its feed-to-bodyweight conversion ratio (1.6-1.7) was higher. It’s also harder to process because it can’t be pin-boned by machine.
Their particular breed originated as wild New Zealand kings, which were brought from the American West Coast, probably for sport fishing. Now they spend about a year in a hatchery and then, when they reach a weight of about 150 grams (a third of a pound, more or less), they are transferred to pens spread out in waters around New Zealand, far enough away from each other that their keepers don’t need to treat them with antibiotics or vaccines because they’re not near enough to other fish farms to risk infection. The salmon spend between 12 and 18 months there.
When it’s time to harvest the fish, they are sedated by having oil of clove poured into the water. Then they are caused to flow into another area in which carbon dioxide is pumped into the water, stopping their brain function, although their hearts continue to beat. Then the fish are harvested one at a time, their gills cut so they bleed out. They are gilled and gutted through the night and then processed.
The feed, like much farm-raised fish feed, comes from South America and is mostly fish protein, although New Zealand King Salmon is experimenting with using vegetable oils and vegetable proteins. But they don’t expect more than half of the oil to be vegetable oil, because any more than that and the salmon run the risk of having a lower content of those heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids that everybody loves.
They harvest about 6000 metric tons of salmon annually at individual gilled-and-gutted body weights between 3.5 and 4 kilos (so, 7.7 to 8.8 pounds). (For gross body weight, add 12 percent).
Just under half of that is exported, mostly to Japan, but about 10 percent of the harvest goes to the United States, mostly fresh-chilled.
The company breeds some fish to grow quickly and others to grow slowly, so they have continual harvest.
Some of the fish are sent whole to Christchurch for export, but those that are to be further processed rest for a day to go through rigor mortis.
Then they are steamed for a few seconds to kill bacteria and loosen the skin. Next they are brined or dry-cured with salt and sugar, depending on what their customers want, for as long as their customers want, and then they’re smoked, filleted and further processed.
Excess fingerlings are sold as food for penguins, orcas and other attractions at zoos, aquariums etc.
The existence of local, farm-raised salmon apparently has had a fairly dramatic effect on dining habits of New Zealanders, just as it has on Americans. In both countries salmon used to be a luxury, and now it’s an everyday food.
In fact, the NZ King Salmon folks told me that they are enjoying domestic growth of 20 percent annually. Their output is growing by just 10 percent, so they are starting to focus more on value-added stuff.
This is the obligatory hairnet photo that people very much enjoy taking when visitors tour their processing plants. Pictured here are me, Nicola Mitchell and Tanya from New Zealand King Salmon.

And now, a word from our sponsor

February 14

I don’t actually have a sponsor, but I do have a job, of which this blog is a part, as an editor at Nation’s Restaurant News. Another part of my job is making podcasts, which are now available on iTunes, and can be reached by clicking here.

Mayei Agcaoili

This was the "Sister Act" dinner. My customer Ia Kalaw reserved a dinner as a gift to her sister Mayei, who came all the way from London with her husband Dennis. They're British citizens and they're familiar with with my favorite chef–Jamie Oliver. Mayei said she doesn't like Jamie that much and I told her that according to London's websites, newspapers and TV–you either love him or hate him. As for me, I LOVE HIM! We talked about a lot of things in Jamie's life. It was a very interesting conversation that I did not want to end. I can be very talkative when it comes to certain topics. Mayei and Dennis, I had a great time!

They liked the Paella ala Juana so much.


Caramelized Benguet Strawberries with Chocolate and Cream.


Oh my I look preggy with this dress!


How can I forget to give credit to Ia who also went there that night with her special friend Miguel to bring her Ate Mayei to my place. She gave me a special little something. She told me that it's her Christmas present for me. I'm touched. I also gave her Strawberry Wine from La Trinidad, Benguet as my way of thanking her.


Nice pink earrings from Ia Alano.

Land of the Long White Cloud

February 12
MJ Loza was kind of angry with me today when he saw me in the Blenheim airport.
“Not forgiven!” he said.
He had a point.
MJ was one of my hosts and guides the last time I was in New Zealand. Usually you get along fine with hosts on press trips, occasionally you develop a seething hatred for them, and every once in awhile you become friends.
MJ and I were friends, and if I were to fly nearly half way around the world back to New Zealand, it would seem reasonable that I’d pick up the stupid phone and call him.
He’s right, of course, but my schedule here is quite full. I won’t even have time to pop over to Wellington to see my old friend from my Bangkok days, Daniel Eaton.
Then again, I mean, I could have extended my stay, or asked Dan to hop over to Nelson. It would be an imposition, but if he were in, say, Washington, D.C., I’d pop down from New York to see him. I can’t imagine asking a friend to do that for me, though, or for MJ to be terribly interested if I’m in his country, even if he had made sure to contact me the last time he was in New York.
This might require therapy.
At any rate, I’m the guest of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, which in its effort to raise the profile of all foodstuffs from this Land of the Long White Cloud — the translation of its Maori name, Aotearoa — invited me and Bill King (favorite color: blue), corporate chef of the McCormick & Schmick’s chain, to check the place out.
Nelson, on the northern edge of the South Island, and just a quick trip from Wellington, which is on the southern tip of the North Island, was our first stop, on Sunday. We were supposed to spend the afternoon sailing around Tasman Bay on a catamaran, but the weather was drizzly and overcast, and instead our hostess, Nicola Mitchell, took us to Mapua Wharf, where we spent some time in a restaurant called Smokehouse, drinking a 2006 Neudorf Sauvignon Blanc and snacking. We split a fish platter, and Bill had a calamari salad. I had a cup of seafood chowder with fish, mussels, scallops and prawns.

The fish platter, on the left, had two fish I’d never had before — terakihi, on the far right of the picture, behind the mussels, and warehou, on the far left — along with hake (hiding behind the bread), mussels and salmon. They tasted a lot like light, warm water fish, although the warehou had big, meaty flakes, something I would learn more about at dinner.
Then we sampled local ice cream. Bill tried fruit flavors while I went for indigenous kitsch. I got two scoops. One was Jaffa, which is orange and chocolate and which I assume is named for the ancient port city south of Tel Aviv now known for its oranges, although Jaffa also is an unkind nickname for someone from Auckland (just another you-know-what Aucklander).
I also had a scoop of Pinky Winky, named for a candy bar of that name with strawberry, chocolate, marshmallow and caramel.
The sun came out, and to pass the time before our dinner at The Boathouse Café, we drove along the coast, enjoying the view of gentle waves splashing along the beach.
Nelson itself has many pretty rolling hills, something I didn’t notice until the next day at breakfast, which I had on the second floor of our hotel, the Rutherford, named for physicist Ernest Lord Rutherford, a Nelsonian and the first man to split the atom.
Anyway, back to dinner.
Here’s a picture of Nicola and Bill at dinner.
I started with half a dozen Pelorus oysters, which I would learn the next day came from Pelorus Sound, not far away, off of nearby Havelock, which you will learn about shortly.
Interestingly, the oysters were removed from their shells and served in those soup spoons you get in Chinese restaurants, topped with wasabi tobiko.
My main course was more Warehou, served with crushed rosemary-infused potatoes, zucchini linguini — which is to say zucchini shredded into the shape of linguini and cooked — and smoked fish mousse. The plate was drizzled with saffron vanilla reduction.
Here it is, on the right.
The zucchini linguini was called courgette linguini, as is the custom with zucchini here — Kiwis prefer that squash’s French name to its Italian one.
Warehou is a meaty fish with big flakes and reminds me quite a bit of Chilean sea bass. I think it has mass-market potential.
We drank Te Mata Elston Chardonnay with that.
Nicola’s main course was scallop ceviche served with, among other things, hemp oil, which we all agreed tasted like marijuana.
Who would have thought?