Saving Seafood

Hawaiian fish-based meal takes the world by storm

February 27, 2016 — If you’re satiated with sushi and sick of ceviche but still crave the taste of raw fish, prepare to pile in for the latest pescatarian food craze: poke.

Hailing from Hawaii, poke – pronounced “poh-kay” – is usually a mix of raw cubes of fish (often tuna) with a soy sauce-based dressing, served in a bowl with rice and garnishes. It is big in the US, especially in Los Angeles and New York. And now it’s set to conquer the UK.

Pret a Manger is poised to become the first national chain to add poke to its lunchtime menu, following Bill Granger, an Australian chef who owns three London restaurants and offers a raw tuna and avocado poke dish.

Chefs love the potential for variety with poke, which means simply “to cut or section”. Anything goes when it comes to ingredients – mushrooms or beetroot are alternatives to fish. Hannah Dolan, a food developer at Pret, said: “Poke salad has been on our radar for a while and we’ll be introducing our own version inspired by the Hawaiian dish this spring. Poke salads are bright, fresh and vibrant … Ours will be centred around marinated mushrooms.”

Read the full story at Independent

Why Freezing Didn’t Keep Sushi Tuna Safe From Salmonella

September 2, 2015 — A recent outbreak of Salmonella in frozen tuna might have sushi lovers wondering if it’s safe to eat that raw fish.

The outbreak in question began in California in March. All told, it sickened 65 people in 11 states. There were 35 cases in California, with another 18 in Arizona and New Mexico. The rest of the cases were scattered across the country, including four in Minnesota.

Most of the victims interviewed by public health investigators said they’d eaten sushi made with raw tuna in the week before they became ill. It was the Minnesota Department of Health that discovered the outbreak strains of Salmonella in some frozen raw tuna imported from Indonesia. The California importer, Osamu Corp., had shipped the frozen tuna to sushi restaurants and grocery stores that make sushi throughout the U.S.

In late August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the outbreak was over. But the agency warned that some of the recalled tuna might still be lurking in the freezers of restaurants uninformed about the outbreak, so people could still get sick.

Read the full story at New York Now

THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH RAW FISH THAT HAS BEEN FROZEN

July 29, 2015 — There’s something about the clean taste and supple, sensuous texture of raw fish that is greatly appealing, but there are some risks you should be aware of, especially if you or anyone you wish to feed is pregnant, elderly, very young, or has a compromised immune system. That holds true for ceviche—which starts out with fresh seafood marinated in lemon or lime juice and then gets tricked out with whatever takes a chef’s fancy—as well as more obvious raw-fish dishes. The acid in the juice turns translucent seafood white and almost opaque, but even though ceviche may look cooked, it’s not. (Far less fraught for the home cook is a ceviche composed of lightly cooked seafood.)

There is, of course, the ever-present risk of harmful bacteria, so easily transferred to food through unhygienic handling or kitchen practices. “Most recently, sushi was believed to have caused at least 50 illnesses in a nine-state Salmonella outbreak,” reported Food Safety News on July 14, 2015. “In 2012, raw tuna contaminated with Salmonellacaused an outbreak that sickened more than 300 people in 26 states.”

And then there are the parasites that are present in certain kinds of fish. They’re a natural occurrence, not caused by contamination, and according to Seafood Health Facts—a joint project of Oregon State University, Cornell University, the universities of Delaware, Rhode Island, Florida, and California and the Community Seafood Initiative—two types of parasitic worms can infect humans: “Anisakiasis is caused by ingesting the larvae of several types of roundworm [aka nematodes] which are found in saltwater fish such as cod, plaice, halibut, rockfish, herring, pollock, sea bass and flounder. Tapeworm infections occur after ingesting the larvae of diphyllobothrium, which is found in freshwater fish such as pike, perch and anadromous (fresh-saltwater) fish such as salmon.”

Read the full story at Takepart