B (3:39)

How do we start out? Well, probably about 10 years old and people said, oh, that's slave labor, whatever. Well, my father worked long hours and if we were going to see him, we really had to see him at the fish market. And how many 10 or 11 year old kids, you know, get to wait on people? Not we had to stand up on a milk crate in order to do it. And then we learned how to fry and batter fish. And so we learned about fish really from the ground up. And we got an opportunity to see our father at the same time.

A (4:12)

Did you get to know Julia Child when you started out there?

B (4:15)

Absolutely. I got to meet Julia, I think I was 15 or 16 years old. And she would come and she lived up the street, she lived on Irving street in Cambridge. And you know, it's funny, one of the things you've heard of monkfish, of course, right?

A (4:32)

Yes.

B (4:32)

All right, so I gotta tell you a quick monkfish story.

A (4:36)

Before you tell the monkfish story, let me tell you. I've. After working on this series, I kind of got interested in the so called underutilized species or the species of fish out there that we don't think of right away, like the cod and the flounder and the haddock and what are those species? I should get out there and try and monkfish was one of the ones that I started trying to cook without knowing and then looked into it and realized that you had this whole story. That is probably the reason I can buy monkfish at my local supermarket to begin with. So, yeah, tell that story.

B (5:08)

So I kind of stumbled over it by mistake. I was down the fish pier buying fish for the fish case and I was walking past one of the stalls and I see a box, a wooden crate with a grease pen marked monkey tails. I go, monkey tails? That doesn't sound appetizing. So I asked one of the dock guys, I go, what's this? And he Said, you can bleep this out. He goes, you don't want any of this shit, but we send it to France for big money. I go, really? I go, give me ten pounds.

A (5:43)

And did they have the whole fish there? It was just the tail.

B (5:45)

Okay, so this is where the story gets into. It was just the tale. And I put it in the case. And as luck would have it, Julia was by that day. So I said, julia, do you know what this is? She looks at it and she goes, lant. Lant, which is French for monkfish. And so she took it home and then she called and she said, can you get me a whole one? Well, I didn't know what a whole one looked like. I said, sure, I'm sure, it won't be a problem. So I call up the fisherman. I said, you know, I need a whole monkfish. Took me two weeks because a monkfish looks like a prehistoric creature that's 70% head, teeth and cartilage. And you cut it off and just use the tail section. Long story short, we finally got it in. Woo, look at that. This is a monkfish or anglerfish. And it's. Look at that, look at that great big mouth. Look at those teeth.

A (6:42)

It's sometimes called goose fish. Yes, because if you've seen the inside of a goose's mouth, it's like teeth behind teeth behind teeth. It looks like the alien from the horror sci fi movie Alien. It's really a crazy looking creature.

B (6:57)

And he's even got some teeth on under the eyes, if you can believe that.

A (7:01)

But you never see that at the Griffin.

B (7:03)

You never see it. And you know, it's funny, I was on a friend's fishing boat once and he knocked me away because I wasn't watching myself. And I almost stepped on a monkfish that was about to bite me. What's interesting about it is it looks so big. This weighs about 20 pounds, but all you eat is the tail. She put it on her show. Time magazine did a photo shoot of it and she put it in her book. But the power of Julia at that particular time is that when she said, this is what you should be eating, it just took off overnight. And so that's what the fish industry needed. It needed someone who could champion the non traditional underutilized. Sometimes they call it trash fish, not trash fish, but it was really the underutilized. And, and so she would popularize them. And so if you happen to run into a monkfish one day, don't scream, invite him home for dinner. This is Julia Child. Bon appetit.

A (8:07)

Yeah, it's weird. Monkfish doesn't have the, like, that really flaky quality that I think a lot of us prize, but it has this chewy ness that I love, like in a chowder or something. The density of it, it doesn't break down, it doesn't fall apart.

B (8:24)

People use as a poor man's lobster. I mean, you can almost season it as such, but it's really good in fish stews. I mean, that's really where it holds up and really shines.

A (8:37)

One of the things that struck me in just reading up on the way we eat seafood is that Americans are pretty unadventurous in our taste in seafood. I think the figure I found was 86% of all our seafood is accounted for by just 10 species. So it's shrimp, tuna, salmon, cod. Why do you think that is?

B (8:59)

One word. Bones. Bones, yes.

A (9:02)

You can't get past the bones thing.

B (9:04)

Well, so in many countries and cultures, they're used to picking around bones, and they're very adept at it. Not so much in the United States. You get a bone, it was a major issue. So you really needed products. And the species you just mentioned with swordfish, tuna fish, really didn't have bones. It was a large bone, but you're not going to get a bone stuck in your throat. And that really was how I believe, you know, Americans really thought about seafood. Now, you came from an ethnic background, whether it was Indian, Asian, whatever. You were already adept at maneuvering around bones, but not so much if you were. You grew up in America in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Yeah.

A (9:51)

I talked to the marine biologist who used to work with Julia to kind of help promote some of these other species. And she'd say, you know, in Europe, you know, they'll eat mackerel and they'll eat the fish right off the bone. And she was talking with Julia and, you know, she figured, you know, people always ask you what your favorite meal is. What's your least favorite meal? What is it you don't want to eat? And Julia said, if I ever get chicken that's not on a bone, I send it back. It should always taste better. The protein always tastes better when it's on. You do a much better Julia job than I do. The protein always tastes better on the bone. Right. And that. It is a bit of a mental block.

B (10:33)

Yeah. You know, and if it's a, you know, certainly, like. So one of the popular things, you don't see it all that often is a swordfish chop. There's only two. You know, it sort of comes off the shoulder of us, and there's only two, obviously, in a swordfish, but to that point, it is always much more succulent coming off a bone. And, you know, the flavor profile is great. The fats and the oils are great off of that. So, yeah, she was right. Yeah.

A (11:06)

Something I've been thinking about in working on this series and this story is that I think we all consciously know that fish are wild animals, that the, that we get this from the ocean. But I don't think we truly internalize the fact that this is our last wild, truly wild food, that these animals live in an ecosystem that they're all mixed together out there, large and small. This is not a factory farm. This is not a monoculture that we can just order up however much salmon we want. We catch these things all together. And so we should probably eat them altogether or eat a bigger variety of them.

B (11:47)

Yes.

A (11:49)

Are there fish. You mentioned the monkfish, Dory. Are there other species of fish that you've kind of championed or tried to raise awareness?

B (11:57)

You know, it's kind of interesting now. I was just reading an article and one of the things my father used to eat a lot of, and I remember through the years I've started and I've got my grandkids eating sardines.

A (12:09)

Oh, yeah.

B (12:10)

I mean, they're so nutritious. And I just read an article where the next couple of generations are really focusing more on sardines. Whereas, you know, most boomers, as an example, would not want to eat sardines and it was their parents food.

A (12:28)

We had a Yankee swap among our team here at gbh. And I'm looking over here, one of my colleagues, she's smiling and, you know, you never know going into a Yankee swap, what's going to be the thing that everybody fights over and what's going to be the dud? Right, right. And let me tell you, the tinned sardines where, you know, we. We nearly came to blows. So we're. We're on the same.

B (12:53)

Okay. So. So that. The other thing that I think is going to get popular and for the right reasons is seaweed or sea vegetables. I think it's better to call them sea vegetables. When we think of wheat, it's not necessarily a positive, but there is a lot of kelp farming now taking place up in Maine. You see it more in salads and whatnot. And the Japanese are so sophisticated in terms of understanding and appreciating the minerality of what's coming out of the water. So I think as time goes on, we should be shifting more and more towards that because they do eat more of a rounded diet coming out of the ocean, not just a fillet of cod or haddock.

A (13:49)

While we're on the topic of rebranding, maybe you could help us out with this. So, you know there's been all this agonizing over cod in New England, right? Yes, the iconic fish. And as you know, the stocks have been up and down. We tell this story in the. In the series. One of the things I learned that I didn't really know going in is that one of the fish that has come in to fill that void in the ecosystem off New England is dogfish. And there's a lot of dogfish out there, but you don't see a lot of dogfish on menus.

B (14:22)

No.

A (14:23)

And I think the name might have something to do with it. So why don't we eat spiny dogfish?

B (14:30)

It doesn't taste good.

A (14:31)

Oh, you think it. You think the name is not the problem?

B (14:35)

No, no, I think, yes. No, to your point, yes. I mean, the name is off putting. There's no question. Shark in general is an acquired taste. And you really almost have to purge it and soak it because the way it excretes waste through its flesh, that's not appetizing. It's not appetizing. And I don't think it tastes good. I mean, that's me personally. I'm sure others will disagree, but, yes, there is a lot. And you see more and more as the waters heat up a little bit more. Yeah.

A (15:15)

So I want to turn now and run down kind of like a diner's guide glossary of terms for the average person out buying fish in the supermarket and wondering what all this means. Fresh versus frozen. What should we know?

B (15:34)

Yeah. So very, very interesting. So fresh is. When you think of fresh, you think of something that's never been frozen, you think of right off the boat. And then when it is frozen, oftentimes it's frozen mechanically, which means it takes several hours to freeze through. And in the process of freezing it through, it damages the cell structure.

A (16:01)

When you say, sorry, frozen mechanically, you mean put in a freezer?

B (16:05)

In a regular freezer, where it takes a period of hours to freeze the flesh, and then in that process, the cell structure breaks down and the flesh absorbs all the moisture. So when you get a pie that's been frozen mechanically and then thaw it out and go to cook it, you go, it tastes watery, it's devoid of flavor. So traditionally, a fish that has been mechanically frozen is not good. You should really want last one or two days catch. Now, here's the thing. A fishing boat goes out for five days and starts catching fish from day one. Well, if you're in the fish business, as we were, and are, you want the last one or two days for catch, because that's impeccably fresh. But, you know, you've got to know exactly who you're dealing from, because, you know, sometimes down at the auction, someone will say, oh, you know what? I want a thousand pounds of xyz. And you're getting a mixture of what that fish is, and then that fish could theoretically sit in someone's warehouse or wholesale operation for two or three days. And by the time it gets to you, whether it's in a fish market or a restaurant, you add all of that up, and it can be five, six, seven days once that fish was caught. Yeah, yeah. And so one of the things that has really intrigued me over time is just take one of the last two days catch. Let's say Grey Soul has come in. You don't know when the next Gray Soul boat is coming in. So taking it and putting that under nitrogen, this is really a Japanese technique, and if you've ever been to the tsiki market in Tokyo, you'll see how they handle it. But if you get something that's impeccably fresh and put it under nitrogen, which freezes the flesh in a matter of minutes, not hours, plus, it also actually kills a lot of the bacteria that is naturally occurring. So you end up really with a better fish. So there's gotta be an evolution in terms. But until that evolution is more prevalent, you're best off the last one or two days catch.

A (18:16)

Got it. So that term, when you see that it's been frozen, that could mean more than it could mean it was mechanically frozen.

B (18:24)

99% of the time it's been mechanically frozen because there's a cost to putting it under nitrogen because it's a more expensive natural way of preservation.

A (18:34)

So if they're doing that, they're gonna advertise that they're doing that.

B (18:36)

Yes, yes, yes.

A (18:37)

And can you tell, just looking at the fish at the fish counter, if it has been previously frozen?

B (18:43)

Pretty much, yeah. What do you look at? There is sort of there's a dryness to the flesh. There's not a sheen to it. You know, something that's very fresh has almost a glossy sheen. When you look at fish that's been previously frozen, almost Has a matted look to it.

A (19:01)

And why do they thaw it out at all? You know what I mean? If it's been frozen, why not sell it?

B (19:07)

Because they have learned that fresh sells better than frozen. It's more efficient for them, they have less waste. So they can take it out theoretically, let people know, well, it's kind of fresh and they can control it a little bit better.

A (19:22)

Yeah. And how do you know if you're getting the catch from the last two days of the trip versus the catch from the first day of the trip that was sitting around in the hold of the boat?

B (19:33)

So the average person doesn't know. Yeah. If you're used to eating a lot of fish or you're going to a particular fish market or restaurant that's known for their fish, then you know that the, the turnover rate is pretty quick. Yep. And your chances of getting that impeccably fresh fish, particularly if you've experienced in one of those settings, you will keep going back to it because you have trust in what they're.

A (20:06)

Coming up. The Diner's Guide continues with Roger's blind taste test of farm raised versus wild salmon and his secret for making the perfect fish and chips. Next term on our list, farm raised versus wild. What should we know?

B (20:41)

So it's interesting, farm raised has a bad rep and maybe because early on as farming started to take off, there weren't the guardrails on that could really, whether it was in terms of feed, whether it was in terms of how the volume of the stock was in a particular pen or pond. And so, and then there was, you know, there was disease early on that caused some fish to die off. And so antibiotics were used in it. But that was early on. I mean, and so as the aquaculture industry has sort of evolved over time, there are people that do it poorly and there are people that do it really well. And so obviously you want to migrate to the really. Well, now I'll give you a perfect scenario. So farmed salmon was really one of the things. And I actually have to credit Julia because back in the 70s she was a big proponent of farm raised salmon, of Norwegian salmon. Yeah, she really got behind it for

A (21:53)

sustainability purposes or for the flavor.

B (21:57)

I don't think we were talking sustainability at that point, but I think just about availability. I mean, going back in like the 60s, there was still, believe it or not, some wild North Atlantic salmon. Yeah, you know, it was few and far between, but it was really, you know, the amounts were, were really way down. And so you then could only get product out of Alaska, which was being shipped a long way, and they weren't necessarily holding it well.

A (22:31)

So for folks on the east coast, farmed Norwegian salmon.

B (22:34)

Yes.

A (22:35)

Was a better option for her.

B (22:36)

Yeah. And the other thing is. So you have farm Norwegian salmon, you have Scottish salmon, you have Irish salmon, you have Faroe island salmon. And they really started to perfect the feed and the growth cycles of them, and you got some pretty good fish and then the flavor profiles because it was a very consistent fat content to those. So little by little, it started making inroads on the wild salmon. And if you. I would say 8 out of 10 people today in a panel, if you had farm versus wild and has people

A (23:15)

to take their choice, the blind taste

B (23:17)

test, blind tasting, they would migrate at least 80 to 90% on the farm. Now, I'll give you a.

A (23:24)

Because it's fattier.

B (23:25)

It is fattier, it's more consistent. So I'll give you a. So I'll show you how far it's evolved. There is salmon now coming out of New Zealand, the south tip of the south islands. They are raising salmon there on algae. They are not using other wild fish to feed the farm fish. They're feeding it algae. So the omega 3 content is off the charts. They have taken the Alaskan king salmon, which is different than the east coast North Atlantic salmon because of the fat content that it naturally acquires, and they are growing that. And that fish is just off the charts. It's some of the best fish I've ever eaten. And I think others will find that

A (24:13)

it's interesting because on menus, I feel like all these words carry an overtone. Like you advertise wild caught, just like you advertise never frozen. Those things are implicitly good, farm raised, frozen, implicitly bad. But actually, you're saying one is not inherently better than the other. You can have excellent farm raised, you can have very poor farm raised, you can have excellent wild catch. So those terms on their own do not tell you everything you need to know.

B (24:45)

Exactly. And see, I think the difference is because when you look at meats, they have different. Whether it's choice or whether it's prime or whatever, you don't have that in fish. So people just sort of take fish as a whole and generalize at that point without appreciating the fact that it has many nuances.

A (25:09)

Next, local versus imported. How do you think about that when you're buying fish?

B (25:15)

Hmm. You know, I don't look at it as a commodity. I don't look at fish As a commodity, I look at it as a specialty item. And if someone in some country is doing a better job with certain species, you have to look at them. I mean, you know, I mean, that's how I look at salmon.

A (25:35)

Yeah. There's another one of those things where I just have this knee jerk instinct when I go to a fish market that, you know, if I see the haddock is from Iceland, this part of me is like, oh, I'd rather find the fish that was landed here.

B (25:50)

Yes.

A (25:51)

But I don't know if that's just a sentimental thing or that fish is actually fresher, if it's actually higher quality or if it's actually more sustainable even.

B (26:01)

So, again, it's very nuanced. But to your point, when you see that, I think going back 20 years ago, if you saw Icelandic cod or haddock, you think, oh, it's important, it's not going to be as good. I mean, that's the knee jerk on it. The reality is a lot of the haddock and cod they believe have actually from New England have migrated over. So it's kind of like the same species. Now, what I will say about Iceland, it is probably the most sophisticated country in the world for fish handling. I mean, they really, they know how

A (26:41)

to handle fish like the shore side processing.

B (26:44)

Yes, yes. And they have a lot of. So they have, at this point, the waters are cold enough that they have a lot of the species and it's certainly more abundant than what we have now in New England.

A (26:58)

Are you of the view that as our oceans continue to warm that the cod may just not be a fish that we can catch here in large numbers anymore? They're never coming back.

B (27:08)

I am concerned about it, certainly. I think that there might be opportunities. They haven't perfected it yet. They've done it with some species. But I think at a certain point you could farm those fish and I think that would be one way of bringing it back.

A (27:27)

Why don't we have farmed cod?

B (27:28)

Well, you know, it's funny, I do remember someone trying to farm cod. It almost worked. You would expect as you were farming the fish for it to get larger and larger. And this particular farm, which ended up closing down, the cod stayed maybe 9 inches or 10 inches, but the belly got really big.

A (27:50)

Interesting. Because of the diet.

B (27:53)

It was the. Yeah, it was the diet closed area. Yeah, it was sort of done in sort of pens and it was a great idea. They just hadn't perfected it at that point. So I suspect, you know, American ingenuity Being what it is, and the fact that we have so much shoreline, I think that someone will crack the code on the specie.

A (28:15)

Yeah. So the last item on my glossary, and maybe the thorniest, which we've touched on already, is sustainability or sustainable.

B (28:25)

Yes.

A (28:26)

There's all these color gradings, rating systems, labels that we see around seafood. What is. Maybe just start with the term itself. What does it mean to say a fish is sustainable?

B (28:42)

It means that it's going to be there as long as we manage the stock appropriately. And it means also we touched on a little bit where a lot of farm fish were fed wild fish. Well, that really isn't sustainable. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul at that point. So with new innovations such as algae as an example, it becomes a little bit easier to do. But I think, again, I keep hearkening back to the Asian diet, where it's smaller portions in balance is a healthier diet. And I think going back, I mean, I remember years ago when we were, you know, just had the fish market and our early restaurant, it was like 12 to 16 ounces of fish on a plate.

A (29:41)

Yeah.

B (29:42)

I mean, when you think, you know, it's like a giant, you know, giant steakhouse, it's just like we eat differently, and we thought that that was better, but it's not. You know, if you're eating four or five ounces of fish at a time in proportion to carbs and vegetables and whatnot, that's really a healthier diet. So I think we can be more sustainable if we change how we eat and how we look at fish.

A (30:09)

Yeah, it's one thing I was in working on this series, I focus a lot on the fishermen and the regulators and trying to kind of untangle that knot of how we arrive at a sustainable fishery. But I think it's easy to forget that the other really important player in the equation is the consumer. And ultimately, if what we want is a big honkin fillet of cod and salmon and that's all we want, then, yeah, that's what the industry is going to try and serve.

B (30:41)

Yeah. But that's when it's really not sustainable, because that big piece of had a cod is going to be so phenomenally expensive that it's only going to be affordable by a certain percentage of the population. So I think people are going to continue to want fish because of the health benefits and how it makes them feel and the minerality of it. But I think that we are sort of entering a period where we're adjusting portion sizes in A way that's healthier.

A (31:18)

Yeah. It's interesting how all these fish have gone through cycles. Like there were times decades ago when the haddock was really, really scarce. And then when the haddock was abundant, there were times when the yellowtail flounder was really scarce. So, I mean, on one level, it's a lot to ask of a consumer to track the NOAA survey and stock assessments for all these fish. But it is sort of between the industry, the consumer, the fishermen. Ideally, there is some kind of circuit of communication about what we should be eating more of and what we should be laying off of a given time.

B (31:57)

We need more Julia Childs.

A (31:59)

Yeah.

B (32:00)

You know, she could push us in a good direction.

A (32:08)

What is the secret of perfectly fried fish and chips that you Learned at age 10?

B (32:14)

So it is, it is about. Well, obviously the quality of the product has to be there, but it's about the batter and you want to coat the fish. I'm going to give away a secret here. A little bit of buttermilk.

A (32:27)

All right, all right.

B (32:28)

And then I like a dry battery. I don't like.

A (32:33)

So it's not like pancake batter. We're talking buttermilk and then, and then

B (32:37)

a dried flour batter that you put together and so it doesn't puff up. There are a lot of, you know, sort of, you know, these.

A (32:50)

You can name James. It's okay.

B (32:51)

No, no. Well, the. So rather than taking a, you know, a sort of a piece of fish and, and putting in a beer batter where it blows up, I know you're

A (33:02)

talking about, it's like balloons out and like you bite into it and there's half an inch.

B (33:05)

Right, exactly. And the batter tastes perfectly fine and you get a little piece of fish that's. It's okay. I, I like it just a, just a thin, you know, coating of breading on it because I want to taste the fish.

A (33:21)

I think that's a good place to leave it. Roger, thanks for doing this.

B (33:24)

Thank you, Ian. My pleasure.

A (33:31)

Roger Berkowitz is the owner of Rogers Fish Co. And of course, if you want to try that flash frozen algae fed New Zealand salmon, you can find it@rogersfishco.com Next week we've got one more fishtail for you before we call it a wrap on the season. This one about the search for the perfect lobster roll catching the Godfather is produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Ian Coss. The executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. Video for this episode was shot by Howard G. Powell and Lance Douglas and edited by Annie Gerzen. And remember, if you are new to the show and you want more, check out our first two seasons which are out now. Wherever you are listening to this, just search for the Big Dig. You can also sign up for our mailing list where I share behind the scenes photos and stories from my reporting. That's@wgbh.org TheBigDig the Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx. Hey, I want to make sure that you know this series you're listening to right now is part of an ongoing feed telling stories from the past to help us understand our present. Our first season is all about infrastructure. The second season is about gambling and we've got more seasons planned. So if you want to stay on top of what the team and I are doing, go ahead and follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. We've got some really exciting stories coming up and I hope you'll stay with us. Thanks

B (35:43)

from PRX.