So long and thanks for all the fish

I grew up in the landlocked flyover section of country, as y'all know, and I blame that for my unease around (or in) large bodies of water and my spotty relationship with seafood. And while I'll never become an avid scuba diver, I have come to actually quite like most seafood. My exposure to fish was relatively limited during childhood to the occasional fresh-caught trout or frozen fishstick* so my fondness for the stuff has been slow to develop -- the Great Stuffed Shrimp Debacle of 1981 being a notable setback -- and, as I learned this evening, remains tenuous.

I was never a fan of actually handling the fish we caught while camping as a kid, and even in my twenties squeamishly let me dad handle the finer points of catch and release in one of Wyoming's large reservoirs (and will frankly never forget the fishhook through the eyeball horror of the one unfortunate fish that still managed to flop out of the boat and swim ruefully away).

Though a huge fan now, it wasn't until after college that I mustered the fortitude to try my first full-on sushi meal. I had vague fears of parasitic infestations and remember the concentration it required to get past the unfamiliar mouthfeel of raw fish as it seemed to expand in my craw.

I fell in love with scallops somewhat earlier, during my freshman year in college when I visited family friends for Thanksgiving on Nantucket. The scallops were local, freshly shucked and simply divine. Seared scallops remain one of my favorite dishes, when prepared well.

Shrimp, lobster, seared Ahi, Chilean sea bass**, fried clams, and even calamari and octopus are all favorites, though I'll admit that the more I learn about squid and octopus the less inclined I am to want to eat them, given their amazing anatomy and surprising mental capacity. You know, for a mollusk.

Salmon, though, salmon is the wonder fish... Relatively inexpensive, not fishy tasting, totally easy to cook, good for you (depending on what you read about farmed salmon, dyed flesh, environmental cost, and mercury) - I end up having Salmon every couple of weeks at the least. It's usually the less-expensive Atlantic or farmed varieties, but the wild Alaskan sockeye fillets that occasionally appear n the shelves at Trader Joe's always entice me with their lovely color, if not their price. So tonight at the store I gave in and picked some up, excited to enjoy a rare treat of promised delicate flavor and superior quality.

Once home, I set about preparing some asparagus and couscous to accompany the fish. I removed the salmon fillets from their package, rinsed them off in the sink, and patted them dry with a paper towel. It was then that I noticed a curious little knot in the flesh of one of the fillets and, wanting to ensure there was no extra bone or something, dug into it with the tip of a sharp knife. To my utter horror, out popped this gruesome looking roundworm, translucent and slightly blue on one end as it unfolded itself on the paper towel where I dropped it. With growing panic, I poked and prodded the fillet until I had dug out three more worms of varying sizes - all no more than 1/4-inch long, mind you, but still. Aack!

Trying to remain rational, I went immediately to the internet, and though I didn't discover the exact type of parasite, learned at least that there was no harm to me in ingesting any of them that might still be hiding out in the meat as long as the fillets had been frozen for a certain length of time at a certain temperature and/or the salmon was cooked to a certain temperature in the oven. Even knowing that they'd been previously frozen, I proceeded cook the hell out of the fillets, just in case.

Alas, when it came time to eat my dinner, not only was the salmon overdone, dry and chewy, I simply could not get past my squeamishness at the though of parasites in the wild fish on my plate and out it went with the composting.

So that was a waste of $10. And I've pretty much also thrown out the notion of ever coming back from Alaska with a ton of fresh-caught wild salmon for my freezer.
Sigh


* I'm reading Cod by Mark Kurlansky which is a fascinating and tragic history of the fish that fueled over 1000 years of Western civilization until its population spectacularly crashed in the early 1990s. Once so abundant they filled the northern seas, they were placed on the Endangered Species List by the WWF in 2000. Fish sticks are now made with haddock or sole.

** Don't yell... I know all about the sustainability issues and illegal overfishing of the more properly but less appealingly-named Patagonian Toothfish and, though it pains me, will no longer order it unless it can be proven to have been harvested legally.