Monday evening, Polly Legendre of CleanFish, Inc. came to the kitchen again. The event was a Women Chefs and Restauranteurs comparative fish and seafood tasting, and Polly came with salmon, Irish sea trout, shrimp of all sorts and more--a few of my students helped me make hors d’oeuvres, salads, bread and dessert to serve along with the fish, and stayed to help serve. Nearly 50 people (including cooks and guests) feasted on sashimi and simply cooked fish, the better to taste the difference between species and methods of production and harvest. Flavor profiles were dramatically different, and the flavor much fuller than some of the chefs and food professionals in attendance were used to.

We talked a lot about knowing where your seafood and fish comes from. As a professional chef it’s easier to ask your wholesaler, but even at the supermarket level, you have the right to know. You’ll notice that there’s a tag on the salmon in the picture--that’s the Loch Duart salmon, which comes in from Scotland after being properly farmed so that the fish are nourished with their natural diet or as close to it as the producer can come, and the water kept clean and pollution free. This is the fish used by many top restaurants, proudly named on the menu.