Fishy Delights 49: Brunswick Flavored Sardines

I've liked sardines as long as I can remember, and even though they seem to have fallen out of favor in the past 20 years or so, I still enjoy them and seek them out. There's been a lot of buyouts and consolidations in the sardine business as the years have gone by - that, and the huge decline in the Atlantic herring population, has pretty much killed off the American sardine industry, with the last US cannery closing in 2010. These days, the sardines available in your local supermarkets come from Morocco, Poland, Norway, and - like these Brunswick flavored sardines - Canada.

These are not the million-or-so-sardines-to-a-can tiny fish most of us think of when we think of sardines, but average 3 to 5 largish fish per can. Although they're bigger, the fish are no less tender and delicious as the tiny ones. All three varieties had that in common.

Soybean Oil with Hot Peppers - Packed with slices of hot chili peppers which infused the fish and the oil with noticeable but mild spicy heat. I found the heat level to be rather mild; if you're not into chili spice, you may find it a little more kicky. Very good.

Tomato and Basil Sauce - Sardines have been packed in tomato sauce since forever. The difference here is the savoriness of the sauce. Instead of just some simple unadorned tomato sauce, Brunswick uses a sauce that's heavy on the basil and sprinkled with a few other Italian herbs as well. This results in a surprisingly good (albeit fishy) tomato sauce with a certain hearty character.

Mustard and Dill Sauce - The mustard is very mild - even milder than out-of-the-jar yellow mustard - and is loaded with dill. Too loaded for me, because dill is my least favorite of all herbs (I like it dill pickles and that's about where it stops.) Because I particularly loathe the flavor of fish with dill, I didn't like these at all. Do you like dill? Then you might like these.

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Review: Arby's Fish Sandwich

I don't like Arby's. I haven't liked them since they stopped using whole beef roasts for their sandwiches (they use some kind of strange oval-shaped roast-like thing that they make by gluing various chunks of beef together. Eww.)

Anyway, I would never even give them a thought at lunch time if it weren't for the big signs in the front windows of the local Arby's advertising two fish sandwiches for five dollars, which is a decent deal.  The signs caught Maryanne's eye as we drove by yesterday, and it was lunch time, and Maryanne said, "Let's get that fish sandwich deal from Arby's for lunch."

Arby's has been advertising that they have "the best fish sandwich in the business." I am astonished to find myself agreeing with them. Their fish sandwich is pretty awesome. It's a fairly large patty, rather oddly shaped into an irregular pentagon. There is shredded iceberg lettuce - not too much, and obligatory tartar sauce - not too much. The fish had a very pleasant crunchy coating and the whole thing was served on a soft sesame roll. And I'm certainly not going to complain about the price, since the two of us each got a sandwich for that five-dollar bill.

Props also to Arby's for their curly fries and their mozzarella sticks, two more menu items which were very good and very fairly priced.

I would probably go to Arby's for their fish sandwich again, even if it were the regular price. But it won't be at the Arby's in my hometown.

You see, the Arby's in Enfield (right off I-91's Exit 48) is usually deserted. The half-mile stretch of Elm Street in town is home to a bunch of fast-food and casual-dining restaurants: Arby's, McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, Denny's, Friendly's, and Dunkin Donuts are all within eyeball range of each other. McDonald's, Arby's, and Burger King are right in a row, and Arby's regularly gets its ass kicked in terms of sales. Even at the busiest lunch and dinner hours when parking lots are full and long lines of cars wind around through the drive-thrus, Arby's drive-thru is empty and its parking lot barren. I finally found out why on Friday when we stopped for the fish:  The staff doesn't seem to know what's going on.

I don't understand how I can be at a fast food place with only two other customers and still have to wait over twenty minutes for two fish sandwiches, one medium curly fries, and one small order of mozzarella sticks. The manager and his employees seemed competent and intelligent enough, and the young man taking our order at the register was efficient and enthusiastic. And yet, there we were, waiting. And waiting. With our feet sticking to the floor (kind of disgusting, and another real anomaly, since the rest of the place seemed exceptionally clean.)

So, thumbs-up for Arby's fish sandwich, and thumbs-down for Arby's the restaurant (at least the one in Enfield.)

Sardines In A Pouch

Love 'em or hate 'em, there is one thing no one can deny about sardines: they are fragile little things, and don't take well to being indelicately handled. More than once, a little fishy morsel has broken off and tumbled back to the plate when I've tried to lift it whole with my fork.

You'd think that, of all the people familiar with sardines in the world, the people who actually process and package and sell them would know this. Apparently not, because Crown Prince actually has tried selling sardines in pouches.

When I saw these at Big Lots! it was almost mandatory that I buy them.  I couldn't think of a more ridiculous way to pack sardines, and I couldn't wait to find out what they were going to be like when I opened them up at lunchtime.  I could just imagine what they would look like after having been tumbled through the wholesale and retail distribution chain without the traditional exoskeleton of a metal can, and I was sure it wasn't going to be pretty.

I opened the first pouch - sardines in soy oil, lightly smoked - and tipped them out onto a plate.  "Not pretty" was an understatement. These fish had the shit kicked out of them. I think there might have originally been four whole sardines in the package, but without the help of a forensic ichthyologist, there was no way to tell.  I found some fair-sized fish chunks, lots of little pieces, and plenty of tiny fragments and soft-cooked bits of rib bones.  There were also some long, semi-crunchy lengths of spine. I never remove the spines or other bones when I eat whole sardines, so I didn't bother trying to remove them when I ate these.  The fish tasted fine, although the texture was a little dry despite having been packed in oil.  And of course, there was the horrifying presentation.

The second pouch were sardines in mustard sauce.  These fish had successfully retained their shape, probably thanks to the high-viscosity mustard sauce which had the consistency of gear oil and likely provided some shock absorption during shipping. Unfortunately, Crown Prince's mustard sauce isn't the best I've ever had; it is strong and rather harsh and covers, rather than enhances, the flavor of the fish.

The final pouch, containing the sardines in "Louisiana hot sauce" (not pictured) was sort of in between the other two in terms of sardine integrity. The fish were broken but not mangled but I can't really attribute that to the presence of sauce.  As interpreted by Crown Prince, "Louisiana hot sauce" is a quantity of oil colored bright red by the clots of brownish-red pepper sauce which are suspended within it. It adds little to the flavor of the sardines, but does add a mild but irritating back-of-the-throat scratchy heat in the manner of cayenne pepper powder.

It is no surprise to me that the only place I have seen sardines-in-a-pouch offered for sale is at Big Lots. Only a job lot store could possibly sell them with a straight face, and a quick check of Crown Prince's website shows me that they don't even list this packaging option as one of their products.  Hopefully, sardine pouches were a marketing experiment that won't be repeated.

Fishy Delights 43: Sea Queen Crunchy Fish Fillets and a Tartar Sauce Recipe

Okay, I admit it:  I like fish sticks, and I don't really care how cheap or gnarly they are (as long as there aren't, like, bones or fins or a chunk of fish head staring out at me when I break the crispy crumb coating with my fork.)

Other people in the family, however, are more particular, so I always double-check labels to make sure that the breaded fish patty products I am purchasing are made from whole fillets and not "minced fish."

That's how I found out about ALDI's Sea Queen brand Crunchy Fish Fillets. I was actually shopping for larger fish patties - something I could use to make fish sandwiches - and I was conned by the box art to think I was getting sandwich-sized fish fillets.  What I actually got was a box of ten roughly trapezoidal-shaped fish portions, wider on one side than on the other, each with about two fishstick's-worth of material inside them.  So: fish fillet fail, but fishstick VICTORY.

As for the fish fillets themselves:  Judging against other fish sticks I've had, these are top-notch.  The fish within (Theragra chalcogramma, aka Alaska pollack or Walleye pollack) is flaky and tender.  They're covered with a crunchy crumb coating, also very good.

The flavor holds up well to both tartar sauce and cocktail sauce, so they're just as good on the plate as they are in a fish sandwich.  And if you have any leftovers, they reheat decently in the microwave.  (Personally, I don't bother reheating them - I love 'em cold right out of the fridge for a snack.)

Luckily, Crunchy Fish Fillets don't seem to be an ALDI "special purchase," so you can nearly always find them in the freezer case. I'm glad about that because we buy them fairly regularly.

Hey, speaking of tartar sauce, here's my recipe - I hate buying bottled tartar sauce, and this takes only a minute or so to whip up:

Tartar Sauce
Makes about half a cup

¼ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sweet pickle relish
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
about a tablespoon of lemon juice (adjust to taste)
½ teaspoon sweet paprika
Salt to taste

Combine ingredients in a small bowl and serve with fish, or use as a condiment on fish sandwiches.  You can serve it immediately, or make it an hour or two ahead and let it sit (refrigerated) to allow the flavors to combine.

Why Is Canned Tuna So Crappy?

When I was a kid, my mom would buy two kinds of canned tuna:  Chunk Light, and Solid White.  The difference between them was obvious - "solid white" was a thick, solid piece of fish; flaky and white, and obviously a whole cut placed into the can, while "chunk light" was a can full of smaller bits which were darker in color.  Chunk Light was cheaper, and that's the kind Mom used for tuna salad sandwiches.  After all, if you're going to be breaking the tuna down with a fork and mixing it with mayo and stuff anyway, why start with the expensive stuff?  she saved the Solid White tuna for casseroles and pasta salads where large flaked pieces would be more appreciated.  When I went off on my own, I pretty much followed the same reasoning.

Over the years, however,  I've noticed that the quality of affordable canned tuna has dropped amazingly.  I completely avoid tuna labeled "chunk" now, because the product is almost unrecognizable.  Take, for example, this chunk white tuna by Ace of Diamonds.  There are no chunks involved - just a can full of sludgy tunawater with lots of fishy particles suspended in it.  This was really nasty stuff and it was worthless.  Other brands of chunk-style tuna have proven to be just as bad.

But I've also found out I have to be careful about which brand of solid white tuna I buy, too.  Although the quality is generally better with solid white, there is a wide variation between brands and even from can to can within brands as well.

Starkist solid white tuna is usually of decent quality, with big fillets of flaky white tuna, just like I remember as a kid.  It's great for a casserole or a macaroni salad, and it makes delicious tuna salad as well.

Similarly, this can of 3 Diamonds solid white tuna was excellent as well.  Mitsubishi, the corporate overlords of the 3 Diamonds brand, have changed this brand name to "Ace of Diamonds" since then (and they were the folks responsible for the tuna slurry pictured above) so I'm not sure if this older photograph is still representative of the actual product.  I hope so, but I won't find out until the next time it goes on sale.

Bumblebee solid white tuna, on the other hand, is just barely acceptable for a "solid" tuna.  The picture at left is typical of what you'll find in the can:  No solid pieces at all, just chunks.  If the color was darker it would look exactly like the "chunk light" tuna of my youth.  At least I've found Bumblebee to be consistent - every time I open a can of their solid white tuna, I know I'm going to find this - so I don't turn away an opportunity to buy a few cans when they go on sale for less than a dollar a can at the local supermarkets.  I just wouldn't pay full price for it.

And then there are brands which vary from can to can.  Here are two cans of Chicken of the Sea solid white tuna (undrained) side by side.  I purchased them at the same time from the same supermarket.  The one of the left was filled with bits and pieces; the one on the right was what I expected to find when I bought "solid tuna."  Do they have no quality control at the canneries?

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Fishy Delights 25: Roland Canned Sprats

Roland Sprats are lightly smoked little fishies packed in soybean oil, so similar to sardines that the difference hardly matters. As canned fish go, they're very good - the smoke flavor is subtle but distinct and the fish are scaleless, tender, and quite delicious.

These probably would have been better if they were packed in olive oil, but they would have been a lot more expensive as well. (These were $1.60 at Ocean State Job Lot.)

Fishy Delights 24: "Gourmet" Canned Tuna vs. Standard Canned Tuna: Worth The Price?

After being disgusted by lesser grades of tuna, I made up my mind to only buy Solid White Albacore canned tuna. Even that's not as good as it used to be, but it's still acceptable for most uses.

Anyway, on a recent shopping trip, a tuna brand I hadn't noticed before caught my eye: Henry & Lisa's Natural Seafood Solid White Albacore Tuna. It jumped out at me for a couple of reasons: It's in a big six-ounce can, and it was about $8.00. Eight bucks is a lot for a can of fish.

As it turns out, that eight bucks pays for a big backstory. Henry and Lisa Lovejoy are the human faces for EcoFish, a seafood company which takes environmental responsibility, sustainable fisheries, and support for small family fishermen very seriously. Henry and Lisa founded EcoFish in 1999, and have been growing ever since, showing that a company that does good can also do well.

And yet...I can buy Chicken of the Sea for a dollar a can on sale. EcoFish's tuna is out of the price range for a lot of people who, feeling the economy squeeze their budgets, need to feed a family inexpensively with a batch of Tuna Wiggle. So how well does Henry & Lisa's "sashimi grade" canned tuna stack up?

First of all, I'm really skeptical about the "sashimi grade" claim. It might very well be sashimi-grade when the tuna is carved, but after being stuffed into a can and processed, it's just another block of cooked fish.

But what a nice block of cooked fish indeed. Firm and delicious and - unlike most canned tuna - not swimming in a huge water bath, because Henry & Lisa's albacore is packed only with the natural juices and oils in the piece of fish itself.

The tuna looks quite gorgeous unmolded onto a plate, holding its shape well and showing off its attractive golden-brown glow. I pulled a chunk of it loose for the photo to show how nicely it flakes. Visible quality indeed.

The Chicken Of The Sea solid white albacore, in contrast, wasn't nearly as appetizing. True, it isn't the foul sludge that first turned me against "chunk" tuna of any kind, but it doesn't come out of the can nearly as nicely as the Henry & Lisa brand. The Chicken of the Sea tuna needs to be well-drained before using. It's a dirty little secret of the packers that the drained weight of fish in a "five-ounce" can of tuna is a little over 3¼ ounces these days - so if you had a sneaking suspicion you needed more cans to make tuna salad sandwiches for the family than you used to, you were probably right.

But for all the differences, once the tuna is finely flaked, tossed with minced onion and celery, seasoned as you like it, and dressed with mayonnaise, the flavor is identical. Seriously. In a blind tasting, no one I asked could tell the two tuna salads apart. And even given that you might need two cans of Chicken of the Sea to equal the amount of fish in one can of Henry & Lisa's, that's still a six dollar difference in price for no noticeable difference in flavor or quality.

There are times, of course, when the beautiful presentation of a perfectly cylindrical canned tuna filet is important. But I think most of us are just trying to feed our families on a budget. EcoFish has noble goals, and I admire and support them when I can (they have quite a line of products.) But I don't know if I can often afford eight dollars for a can of tuna.

Link:

EcoFish's website. Learn about the company's history, their corporate philosophy, products, where to buy their stuff, and more.

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Fishy Delights 22: Dubay Sardines in Soybean Oil

Dubay Sardines in Soybean Oil are great. In fact, they're pretty much the blueprint of what an inexpensive, yet high-quality, sardine can be.

Each can contains a single layer of medium-sized dressed sardines (no heads, tails, or guts.) There are no scales or nasty surprises - just delicious, tender little fish in a small amount of soybean oil. I was very pleased with these, and it's going to be tough to find another inexpensive brand that will measure up to them. Not surprisingly, Dubay is an ALDI brand, so many of you will be able to find them easily.

Fishy Delights 21: Yankee Clipper Sardines

Yankee Clipper All Natural Lightly Smoked Sardines in Soybean Oil.

Decent-quality sardines packed by a manufacturer who doesn't give a damn about quality control. In other words, once again I find a brand of sardines that packs the fish without scaling them first.

The can contained three rather large fish torsos. Two of them were fine - delicious, hint of salt, hint of smoke, no scales. The third - the one in the center - needed to be raked off with my fork. That's the deal-breaker: These are off my list.

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Fishy Delights 20: SeaBear Smoked Salmon

My family really enjoys smoked fish, especially the hot-smoked (or "smoke roasted") variety. We love smoked bluefish when it's in season, I follow the sales at local stores so I can smoke salmon and steelhead trout when the prices are at their best, and there are several New England companies that sell excellent, ready-to-eat smoked salmon from the refrigerated sections of supermarket seafood departments. So, I had high expectations when I bought a package of SeaBear brand Thai Chili Smoked Salmon, planning to enjoy it as a part of Sunday breakfast.

My daughter was less enthusiastic. "Oh, it's that salmon-in-a-box stuff," she said. "We've had that before. It'll be in a foil package like an MRE, and the fish will be mushy and overcooked. Disgusting cat food."

"Well, let's give this one a try anyway. Look, it's got Thai chili peppers. Maybe it will be better than that plain one," I replied. I had forgotten about that other "boxed salmon" we'd had; it was a gift from a client a few years before and although it was a thoughtful, heartfelt, and appreciated gift the salmon was indeed wet and mushy inside its plasticized foil coffin. At any rate, I didn't want to start making comparisons when I couldn't remember the brand name of the other stuff and hadn't even opened this one yet.

When I opened the box, the gold foil pouch that came out made it obvious that my daughter has a better memory than I do.

I opened the pouch and brought the fish out onto a plate, making sure to include at least some of the liquid that it was packed in (the foil pouch was printed with instructions that read THE POUCH WILL CONTAIN NATURAL JUICES OF THE SALMON. WE RECOMMEND POURING OVER THE FILLET FOR EXTRA MOISTNESS AND FLAVOR.

The salmon was indeed quite thoroughly cooked and very wet. The surface was varying shades of smoky brown. It smelled good; smoky, pleasantly fishy, a hint of hot red pepper. The juices appeared peppery - lots of fine grains of something and flaky chips of red pepper that looked like it might have been purchased as dried flakes and added to the pouch just before processing.

Unfortunately, the texture and taste of the fish left a lot to be desired. It was, as I said, wet. Refrigerated ready-to-eat smoked salmon is firm and moist with a fresh taste, but the SeaBear pouched stuff was overcooked and falling apart even before it could be touched with a fork. There wasn't a lot of flavor - some salmony taste, a hint of smoke, and seriously little heat - if it hadn't been labeled "Thai Chili" I never would have known by eating it. In fact, if I had been blindfolded and given a taste of it, I'm not sure I would have been able to tell the difference between this and plain old run-of-the-mill canned salmon. A six-ounce piece of fish pricetagged at $14.99, or about $40.00 a pound, shouldn't be mediocre - it should be awesome.

SeaBear has a big and loyal following, but it's hard to believe that any of it was won by this truly awful product. I hope that some of the other salmon they carry on their website is better, but browsing through the pages there I see a lot of pouches and I'm not eager to do any experimenting.

Link:

SeaBear Smoked Salmon

Fishy Delights 19: Sunny Sea Sardines in Tomato Sauce

Sunny Sea sardines are yet another in a long line of substandard tinned fish products I inexplicably continue to purchase at job lot stores.

We can start with the can. I just don't understand why companies stopped putting "keys" on sardine tins so they can open easily. Pull tabs are messy, and standard square cans have these small-radius rounded corners that can openers just aren't able to navigate well. It's messy and frustrating.

The fish inside are thick-bodied but short; the ends of the sardines don't come anywhere near the ends of the can, and there are only four of them, swimming in a salty but otherwise very bland tomato sauce. Oh well, I've had big sardines before and the size isn't necessarily an indicator of quality, so I was still willing to give them a fair try.

But then I popped a piece into my mouth and that was STRIKE THREE. The goddamn company left the scales on the fish. I don't have words for how much I hate that.

Sunny Sea sardines are little better than dog food.

Link:
Golden Beach, Inc. is the company responsible for this crap. Click here to go to their website, where you can see photos of other products of theirs you can avoid.

Smoked Bluefish

One of the best things about living in New England is the ready availability of bluefish. A cold-water Atlantic predator fish, they are a common sport and food fish here and are especially popular along the Connecticut coastline during the annual run that goes from mid-July through August.

Blues have dark and somewhat purple-bluish flesh which is oily and tends to be on the "fishy" side, similar to mackerel. If it's handled properly - iced immediately after catching, and kept cold - the flavor is no stronger than other oily fish like salmon or swordfish. People who prefer very mild white fish often don't care much for blue, however.

Personally, I love bluefish. It's great baked or grilled or to add a richer flavor to a fish chowder, and I also like cutting fillets into small bites and making "bluefish nuggets." But most of all, I love it smoked.

Smoking bluefish isn't complicated, but it does take some time. The process is similar to making homemade bacon with the biggest difference (besides the brine itself) being that the fish doesn't have to sit in a cure for a week.

Preparing the fish:

Start by making a brine. You can make as much as you'll need to completely cover the fish - I usually make it by the quart:

1 quart water
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup kosher or pickling salt
1/4 cup sugar
3 or 4 bay leaves, crushed
2 tablespoons mustard seed
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns

Combine the water and soy sauce. Add the salt and sugar and stir or shake to dissolve completely. Pour over the bluefish to cover in a shallow pan and add the bay leaves, mustard seed, and peppercorns. Cover and refrigerate while brining - a minimum of four hours.

Brining the bluefish is important. It adds to and enhances the flavor, of course, but it also helps the fish to retain moisture during the smoking process. You should leave the fish in the brine for at least four hours, but it's okay to let it go longer (even a couple of days if you're not going to get to it right away - the brine is a great preservative also.) Just remember that the longer you leave it in the brine, the saltier it may be.

Getting ready for the smoker:

Smoke doesn't like to stick to wet surfaces, and the heat of the smoker can drive moisture out of the fish. And so, the next step is as important as the brine. When you take the fish out of the brine, place the fillets on a metal rack set above a few layers of newspapers. Allow the fish to dry for several hours, until the surface of the fish is dry and feels a bit tacky to the touch. It will take at least three hours, but if it's a damp day it can take five hours or more. If you're squeamish about leaving the fish out that long, make room in the refrigerator for the racks and dry them in there.

That dry, sticky surface is called a "pellicle," and it is formed by proteins on the surface of the fish as they are exposed to air. The pellicle will give the smoke a good surface to adhere to and protect the fish from giving up too much moisture while it's in your smoker.

Smoking the fish:

When the fish is dry, transfer it to the racks of your smoker. Bring the temperature of the smoker up to about 200 F for the first hour of smoking, then drop it to 150 F for another two hours or so.

At the end of that time, average-sized fillets will be done - moist but firm, flaky, and dry, perfect for snacking or using as an ingredient in a dip or paté.

Larger, thicker fillets may need more time. Just extend the time at 150 F for as long as needed to get the firm texture you're looking for.

The delicious finished product will look something like this - a rich chestnut brown color, slightly darker around the edges, tender and moist but firm enough to pick up without falling totally apart. The flavor will be amazing: one of my friends described it as "fish bacon."

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Smoke notes:

Bluefish has a strong flavor, so choose your smoking wood accordingly. You may want to go with an assertive smoke like mesquite, hickory, or even walnut or cherry to hold up to the taste of the fish rather than choosing a mild wood like maple or apple.

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