There’s nothing quite like a Door County Fish Boil to kick off the summer. Up on the sandy Wisconsin peninsula that’s known as the Martha’s Vineyard of the Midwest, a warm Friday night is nothing without a cold can of beer and a steaming kettle of fish. It’s a steadfast tradition and comforting and safe. But if you’re not a careful non-coastal Northerner, you might end up eating fish boil and breaded walleye sticks your whole life. If you never get beyond our Great or 10,000 other lakes, you might not realize that on this little blue planet, the world’s stock of fish is our largest and most diverse wild food supply. The number of edible species of fish is so great that no one has tasted them all.
It’s odd to think of fish as “wild.” Beyond sharks and movie piranha you rarely think of fish as being toothy and predatory. For the most part, they are thought of as docile—swimming, genteel creatures which aren’t even considered “meat” by many. Thai Buddhists, for whom vegetarianism has to do with reincarnation, will eat fish because the view is that they aren’t killed, but merely harvested from the water, like potatoes of the sea. The truth is, most fish will happily gobble up smaller fish as they have been doing since the time of the coelacanth. And ever since humans have been around, we have been gobbling them up.
Fish skeletons have been found at stone-age excavation sites and in Danish peat bogs along with bone arrows. The works of ancient Chinese and Greek authors contain detailed accounts of fishing techniques which remain the world’s favorites: line and hook, spear, and net. Fish, in all its forms and glories, has meant a great deal to many cultures. Easterners have recognized the benefits of fish for thousands of years; in China the fish is a symbol of regeneration and marital bliss, as well as abundance and prosperity. Witness, too, how Christians here at home value fish during Lent, and as an icon to be displayed on the back of the minivan.
There may be no more powerful emblem of fishy issues than the cod.
Also known as bacalao, cabillaud, dorsz, kabeljau, merluzzo bianco, torsk, and scrod, cod has been fished throughout the North Atlantic for hundreds of years. Initially thought of as “penitential” food because of its great availability and sad appearance when salted and dried, cod’s true destiny would prove to have a global impact. Because the fish breed prodigiously, large stocks have existed in the waters from the Bay of Biscay to the Arctic and back down to Cape Hatteras. “Icelandic cod” refers to the plentiful stocks in the areas around Iceland and the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. It is precisely these stocks that have tempted fishermen with the promise of greatness.
Mark Kurlansky, who wrote Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed The World, believes that the Vikings were pursuing these very stocks of fish when they stumbled upon a new land—America. The Pilgrims believed they could live off the wealth of cod in the New World, despite having no idea how, nor the equipment to do it. From Clarence Birdseye, who founded the frozen-fish industry with cod in the 1930s, to the present-day cod wars, Kurlanky details the rise and decline of the fish whose now-threatened status is still shaping world politics.
In fact, cod isn’t the only fish to swim in troubled waters. There are many who feel that the world’s fish supply in general is being overfished into extinction. Chilean sea bass is currently on the hit list among activists who boycot chefs and restaurants who carry endngered fish on their menus. Still others believe that boycotts are uninformed, not founded on real data, and can hurt or cripple small fishing communities. (Remember the swordfish scare in the late 90s?) All because a fish is fashionable.
With today’s obsession with protein and good fats, fish aren’t about to go out of fashion any time soon. When categorized by their fat content, they fall into three groups: Lean fish with less than 2.5 percent fat (cod, perch, sole), moderate-fat fish with less than 6 percent (trout, swordfish, bonito), and high-fat fish that can go as high as 30 percent but usually hover around 12 (yellowtail, bluefish, some salmon). The fish that are especially good for you are the ones packed with lots of Omega-3 oils—or “polyunsaturated oils” in Zone-speak. Good choices include pompano, tuna, herring, mackerel, sardines, Atlantic bluefish, or butterfish. As for protein, fish have a greater advantage over land animals because water supports their weight, leading to a less elaborate skeletal system and a higher flesh-to-weight ratio.
If you’re sold on international fish, but don’t have your schooner polished and ready to go, the best local source has long been Coastal Seafoods. They provide much of the seafood used by local chefs, and have a few well-stocked retail locations where they even teach classes about scary things like de-boning and wine pairing (newsflash: it’s not all about white). The key is to be open to new fish and new flavors—after all, it’s supposed to be brain food. If you’re wondering how much you need to consume for a positive effect, Mark Twain suggested “Perhaps a couple of whales would be enough.” But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
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