What’s for Dinner: Fresh Halibut
June 9th, 2011 · No Comments · Posted in dinner, Sustainability
Exceptionally clean and tender
We had the best halibut ever for dinner recently. It had been flown into Washington from Alaska as part of the buyers club organized by friend Sam Fromartz, shipped directly by the family fishing operation that caught it.
This was our first halibut. Last year we took possession of some terrific salmon that arrived whole and fresh. We filleted one and served it with Bearnaise sauce while on vacation in Maine. Another we roasted over an open fire at our friend Bob’s cabin in Virginia.
I have to say I prefer receiving the fish fresh. The halibut arrived frozen and sealed in individual, eight-ounce packages. I’d ordered five pounds, so what I got were 10 of these little packages. Too much plastic, in my view, spoils the idea of choosing fish sustainably harvested by a fisherman we know. Add to that the carbon involved in flying the fish from Alaska and I begin to wonder how “sustainable” this venture really is.
You can’t argue with this halibut as a dinner choice, though. My wife and I agreed it was one of the most tender, delectable pieces of fish we’d ever eat. We’d intended to dress it with a beurre blanc sauce, but discovered–too late–that we didn’t have any white wine for the sauce. We didn’t even have any lemons in fridge. In the end, we just seasoned it with salt and pepper and seared it in an iron skillet, then gave it a spritz of lime juice. With a salad fresh from the garden, we were perfectly satisfied.
Halibut is one of the few fish in the world that seems to be holding its own. Did you see this map that appeared in the press recently? It shows the stark decline in Atlantic Ocean biomass from 1900 to 2000. Essentially, there are no fish left to be caught. The waters around Alaska are different. They’ve been managed much more strictly. The halibut fishery had been in decline, but was sharply curtailed in the early ’70s and has since rebounded magnificently.
Pacific halibut fisheries are managed through a treaty between the United States and Canada per recommendations of the International Pacific Halibut Commission. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, halibut biomass ” remains in a healthy state in the central Gulf of Alaska and will likely continue to support harvests of the size seen over the past two to three decades.”
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program rates Pacific Halibut a “best choice.” So if you’re looking for a fish you can feel good about eating, try halibut.
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