Sushi Time. Sustainably.

Last night I went out for Sushi with friends and family. I used to restrict myself to the vegetarian selections on the menu, but now I have other options. As soon as the menus came around, I pulled out my iPhone, accessed the Seafood Watch app, and selected their sustainable sushi guide. After explaining what I was doing to my dining companions, the conversation turned to the guide itself and what sushi on the menu was sustainable.

Much to our disappointment, few of the items on the menu merited the Seafood Watch "Best Choice" stamp of approval. In fact, the only best choice was the oyster tempura. We fared somewhat better on the "Good Alternatives" with surf clam sashimi (atlantic clams); and since king crab could be ruled out, we decided that the crab choices were also either a best choice or good alternative. The eel, salmon, shrimp and scallop choices all were rated "Avoid", which didn't stop some of the diners from ordering them. (Although, I'd like to think they ordered less of their unsustainable choices in favour of the sea-friendlier ones.) "Imagine if we all had one of those guides and followed it. Sushi shops would be really challenged," said one diner. We all nodded our heads somberly.

Personally, it's my hope that sushi-goers will get their hands on this guide and use it to ask their servers questions and guide their sushi choices. It's available as a wallet card, and iPhone and iPod touch app, and on the Web. If you order a wallet card, consider ordering a couple of dozen and giving them to your friends and favourite sushi restaurants.

Have you used a sustainable sushi guide at a restaurant? What was your experience? If you haven't used a sushi guide, would you?

Top Five in Five #1: Recipe Books

With only five weeks left until Christmas and other holiday gift giving days, I thought it was time to offer up some gift suggestions for the amateurs chefs, entertainers and foodies on our lists.

Over the next five weeks, I plan to offer a weekly post with five ideas along a specific theme. To kick-off my new series, here are my top five recipe book gift ideas. In the spirit of buying local, if one of these books looks interesting, please consider buying it from an independent book-seller (like Appetite for Books in Montreal) close to home before ordering it on-line.

1. Farmers in Chef Hats by Linda Arsenault is a bilingual book featuring recipes and products from Île d’Orléans near Quebec City, where most of the farms are still family run. This book won the Gourmand World Cookbook for best local cookery book in 2007, and is a wonderful showcase for Quebec local foods.
   
2. Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by slow-food pioneer Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann is a stunning collection of recipes and articles organized by season. Many of the recipes come from the Ancaster Old Mill restaurant near Toronto, where Crump is executive chef and Schormann is the pastry chef. This book is equally at home on the cofee table as it is on the cookbook shelf.
   
3. Along a similar vein, Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, is also divided by season, but then it is also divided by vegetable. The goal here is to help folks cook with the produce from their CSA (or farm-share) baskets. Although Angelic Organics is near Chicago, almost all of the veggies have appeared in my local CSA basket. The book is also peppered with anecdotes and offers insight into biodynamic farming.
   
4. In Fish, UK's Michelin-starred restauranteur and 'green chippie' pioneer Tom Aikens teaches us how to cook-up great seafood while keeping our impact on the oceans to a minimum. It contains over 200 recipes, as well as cooking and buying tips. Since this is a British book, a drawback for cooks on this side of the pond is that some species common to and sustainable in the U.K., may not be over here. It's nothing that a local seafood guide can't overcome though.
   
5. Finally, for the baker or health-conscious foodie on your list, consider the Whole Grain Baking book by the folk at the King Arthur Flour company. Based in Vermont, King Arthur Flour is 'America's oldest flour company." It is also an employee-owned company that eschews GMO wheat and advocates sustainability.

Do you have a gift suggestion or did I miss one of your favourite books? Drop me a comment or a tweet and let me know!

Bye Bye Bluefin

Who'd have thought tuna could cause such a fuss? Scientists, environmentalists and politicians, of course. At issue in Europe this week is bluefin tuna, considered to be one of the most expensive and valuable sushi fish in the world. But the rise in popularity of sushi has taken its toll on bluefin tuna stocks. Since the 1970s, the population of Atlantic bluefin tuna has declined by as much as 90%. Bluefins are big fish and take a long time to mature. Increasingly, juvenile fishes are being caught before they have a chance to breed.

Environmentalists, including Japanese scientists, believe that overfishing is pushing bluefin tuna to extinction. One media story by ITV refers to the future of the bluefin as being 'as precarious as the Giant Panda," and some scientists believe that extinction may be as close as three years away unless firm action is taken now.

This week, the European Union (EU) executive commission urged member countries to agree to a temporary ban on bluefin catches until fish stocks recover. The United States is also calling for a ban. However, countries that regularly fish the bluefin have stalled the proposal. Japan is the main consumer of bluefin tuna and the Japanese are willing to pay a high price for the fish. Over 80% of bluefin tuna caught in the Atlantic and Mediterranean are exported there. Japan's own pacific bluefin is also overfished and there are calls to list both on the International endangered species list.

It really angers me that some politicians can't see beyond economy and politics to the bigger environmental issues. Yes, banning fishing on a lucrative export item has economic consequences, but the longer-term consequences (both environmental and economic) are more devastating. Have politicians learned nothing from the collapse of the cod fishery in the Canadian Grand Banks?

So what can we do as consumers?

• Don't consume bluefin tuna (also known as Kuromaguro, Atun de aleta azul, thon rouge)
• Order albacore tuna (shiro maguro) instead at sushi restaurants
• Encourage your local restaurant or fishmonger to purchase a sustainable alternative
• Support groups like Oceana and WWF who are lobbying for the fishing ban
• Write your minister asking Canada to support the ban

Links to other articles and videos on this topic:

• CTV news: EU fails to protect bluefin tuna
• CTV news: bluefin travel between Mexico and the Mediterranean
• New York Times: "The slaughter is happenning now"
• New York Times: A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish
• Huffington Post: Japan steps up efforts to save the bluefin

Savouring Sustainable Seafood in Ottawa

Before a recent trip to Ottawa, I asked around about restaurants serving up sustainable, local or organic fare. To my pleasant surprise, it turns out there are a lot of them in Ottawa, including a small seafood restaurant serving up sustainable fare. At the suggestion of FoodiePrints, I headed off to check it out.

The Whalesbone Oyster House is a tiny, rugged-looking but tastefully decorated little place located on Bank street. It is completely devoted to serving sustainable catches and is a member of the Vancouver Aquarium's Ocean Wise program, a program that helps consumers identify restaurants serving sustainable seafood. (Wilfrid's Restaurant in the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in Ottawa is also a member of Ocean Wise.) In addition to being its own restaurant, Whalesbone supplies fresh fish and seafood to several Ottawa area restaurants and hotels. It also offers a catering service.

Oysters are the obvious focal point Whalesbone. So while we browsed the menu, we sipped on an oyster Caesar, a basic Caesar served with a fresh oyster. We also ordered a couple of oysters to sample. Being new to oysters, our hostess suggesting trying an east coast and a west coast choice and foregoing the sauces so we could enjoy the full taste of the shellfish. The PEI Colville Bay oyster, our east coast choice, was sweet and subtle; whereas the west coast Outlandish Gems from BC were smaller, meatier and saltier. Now I understand why our server suggested enjoying the east coast ones first!

My friend opted for the catch of the day: east coast lobster. It was served without its shell on a bed of Swiss chard and delicate finger potatoes. The sauce was slightly sweet with just the right amount of butter and garlic. Since eating scallops is a very rare treat for me, I opted for the hand-picked Qualicum Beach scallops from Vancouver Island served over bitter greens, garlic sprouts, and a mixture of white beans and bacon. The scallops were large and perfectly seared. Their natural sweetness, augmented by a light maple sauce was a perfect compliment to the bitter greens. A truly brilliant combination.

Unfortunately, we only had a bit over an hour to dine, so we didn't have time to try their new sundae bar featuring Pascale's Natural Ice Cream. We also passed on the wine list, which is divided in light-bodied, medium-bodied, full-bodied and sweet wines, making it easier to pair them with your meal. That's okay. We'll just have to go back!

Whalesbone Oyster House
430 Bank Street
Ottawa, Ontario
613.231.8569

Head Chef: Charlotte Langley
Owner: Joshua Bishop

Dinner for two, including oysters and drinks ~ $100

Making Sustainable Seafood Choices

I picked up Bottom Feeder by Taras Grescoe this week. It's a topic dear to my heart and a book I wish I'd written myself. A paragraph from the promo description of the book hits the proverbial nail on the head with the paradox that has become modern sea food production and comsumption:

"Just when opting for omega-3-rich seafood is being recognized as one of the healthiest dietary choices a person can make, the news seems to be full of stories about mercury-laden tuna, shrimp contaminated with antibiotics, and collapsing fish stocks. In a world of endangered cod, pirate-caught Chilean sea bass, and sea-lice-infested salmon, can we really continue to order the catch of the day in good conscience?"

I'm looking forward to reading a Canadian's (Montreal even!) perspective on the state of the world's fish and seafood. The last really good, and accessible, read I saw on this topic was The End of the Line (2006) by Charles Clover, the environment editor at The Daily Telegraph in the UK. In it, he examines fisheries industries worldwide, and how fish get from the ocean to our plates. It was an eye-opener, even for me who has covered scientific sessions on this topic. The book is now also available in french.

During my last trip to the UK in December 2008, I noticed a dramatic change in how fish was sold and marketed, compared to my previous visit only 18 months earlier. Information on sustainable seafood was everywhere: magazines, newspapers, and even featured on food reality shows. The fresh fish at the local supermarket, as well as a lot of the frozen choices, were clearly labelled with where and how the fish was caught. Even the UK Times' annual round-up of the top 10 fish and chip shops included consideration of the establishments' "committment to building a sustainable future for the industry by sourcing their fish from well-managed stocks" when producing their chippie ranking.

It's at time like these I feel that Canada is really quite backwards... or at least severely lagging behind the curve. So far as far as I can tell, President's Choice is the only big Canadian company to get into the sustainable seafood game. They have about half a dozen frozen products certified by the Marine Stewardship Council: tuna loins, black cod, salmon filets, smoked salmon, scallops. The much, much smaller Rainforest Trading also does sustainable canned tuna and salmon. It's also availble at some Loblaws.

To help Canadians make informed seafood choices, Seachoice has created a Canadian Seafood Guide. Monterey Bay Aquarium in the USA also produces information and guides through their Seafood Watch program. There guides are regional and there is one for the northeast USA that is especially pertinent to seafood in our area.