Perhaps, but the bread dipped into the garlic broth is the best part!
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I can get behind this statement with some minor modification.
Size matters. Good sized Gulf oysters are necessary for this procedure. If the oysters are small, they overcook. You can get around this by saving large shells and using pre-shucked. In this instance youāre poaching in butter and garlic and picking up some some smoke. Wedding caterers around here do this to great success. Can churn out 500 grilled oysters in 30 minutes.
Grilling dramatically improves the texture of summertime oysters. They start out flabby from the spawn and can be a little less salty due to rain. The grill helps both.
But hey I like em fried, stewed, grilled and nude.
āDragoāsā- the former Yugoslavian restaurant that built its āempireā with char-broiled oysters.
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I do like escolar. But we do about 1 oz portions as a rich appetizer.
Since we now have a very good sustainable swordfish fishery here in the Gulf weāre eating it a lot more. But texturally it has to be cooked to medium. No less no more. Never seen a worm and based on a quick google trichenella isnāt in swordfish. The anisakids mimic the symptoms.
Once we got the long liners banned in the Gulf our Marlin (and other billfishes), tuna and swordfish populations have exploded. Unfortunately so have the sharks. We are developing a better shark fishery that is sustainable and monitored.
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I love raw oysters but rarely are they very tasty. Except recently when a friend invited me down to her house boat in Snow Hill next to an oyster and scallop farm on the Chincoteague Bay. These were so fresh and a very unique flavor. Lots of salinity and very plump. The best Iāve ever had and Iām an old dude! I save the mediocre oysters for grilled.
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Hereās a pickle from this AM. Iāve cleaned and pressure cooked these, and also fried like calamari which had similar texture but not much flavor aside from the breading.
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I feel the opposite; black PEI oysters over the big NZ green lipped.
Surprised to see all the dislike of monkfish. Weāre big fans (cooking some tonight), although it is tougher to time cooking-wise than the flaky white fish. And obviously inferior specimens can be chewy, but inferior specimens of anything are not good.
In general, I only eat fish/seafood when it is pristine, and usually very local. When we lived in NC, we only bought fish/seafood that came from that part of the Atlantic, so ate lots of gorgeous shrimp and crab, but never ate lobster. Now that Iām back in Nyc, I will not buy shrimp or crab (not even for sale at the market).
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I usually wrap the monkfish filet in caul fat, sear then baste with butter and serve with coconut rice and green lemongrass curry. Pair with dry gewurztraminer.
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I like almost all seafood when properly prepared.
But not a fan of crawfish. People in Texas get excited for Crawfish season. I emphatically do not. (But I will still eat them at a crawfish boil because I eat essentially everything.)
I always get Buddha Jumps Over The Wall when Iām sick as a kid, and I love sea cucumber because it tastes like wood ear mushroom and according to my parents, they are ānutritiousā. Thereās usually abalone, dry scallops, crab, shrimp, sea cucumber and usually have shark fin as an add-on. I personally think shark fin has more interesting texture than sea cucumber but havenāt eaten them since I learned about shark cruelty at 12.
Not really a big fan of snow neither. Much prefer mud crab because I grow up catching them every summer in the Mekong Delta mangrove, and nostalgia is a powerful seasoning.
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Well Iām pescetarian, so definitely not going for the caul fat approach. But Iām sure itās good!
I use the same standard approach to most fish. Cook in oven with various fats, acids and salt/savory flavorings depending on the meal Iām preparing. This weekend, the main flavoring agent for the monkfish was a basil, sauteed tomato and corn puree that was good for cooking and serving alongside the monkfish as a sauce. Screamed late summer!
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My favorite lobster prep was Ensenada style in Puerto Nuevo. Grilled spiny lobster with rice, beans, clarified butter, salsa, tortillas, chips, guac. It was about $10-12 in the 90s but the price slowly ramped up. It was a ghost town last time I visited but appears to have rebounded.
(not my pic)
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Iām not sure food gets better than that.
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Unpopular opinion: salmon.
I probably over-indulged on it growing up in Sweden, and in an era without farming - but it gives me the ick today unless itās warm smoked, gravad or on nigiris.
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Above you mentioned farmed Atlantic salmon, and Iād agree with that. But have you tried fresh Pacific salmon? When I lived in Seattle, ate a lot of it and loved it. Since then, even frozen wild Pacific, just isnāt the same.
I should try some fresh Pacific.
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tuna ā look, I enjoy tuna quite a lot, but the amount of attention it receives far exceeds how good it actually is, particularly in raw preparations.
uni ā this maybe be more a case of āI just donāt get itā ā the flavor is so delicate itās largely boring. And the texture ā¦ ummm, not ideal.
caviar ā good caviar is great, but thereās soooooo much bad stuff out there.
I am tempted to include lobster, too, but I think thatās more a matter of āI donāt like itā than it is a matter of being overrated.
Iāll close with a bit of a cheat/stretch: dashi. Itās usually fishy as all hell. I never love it, and usually find it disgusting.