Fish Cuisine: Fish From Alien Waters

Thursday, July 28, 2011, 16:50

Exotic fish cuisine is something is gentle on your tongue and harsh on your purse. Fish has always been what be describe as gourmet cuisine. Expensive menus are bound to carry dish delicacies. However, in this global village of a world, our thirst for exotic food has changed the trends of fish eating in our country. As our tastes become more exotic by the day new names start popping up in the menus of upmarket restaurants.

Unique Fish Facts:

Have you ever wondered why fish cuisine is always priced higher that meat? It not that raw fish is always more expensive than meet. Fish has earned its position as gourmet cuisine due to its precarious nature with regard to cooking! It is often under cooked and very easily over cooked. Thus it requires a lot of skill to cook fish.
Fish cuisine as such has always been local centric in nature. Fish in India up till now has been locally caught and consumes. Which is why the gourmet fish cuisines of different areas are widely varies. For example, Elish, Rohu, Chitol and Bhetki are delicacies of the East while Bombil, Surmai, Pomphet and Bombay Duck hail from the West coast of India. The Konkan belt has its own fish cuisine. These different kind of fish have never mingles or encroached upon each others cuisine.

Fish From Alien Waters:
If you frequent some of the restaurants in metro cities that have expensive menus then you mush have noticed the new members of the fish community who have replaced their poor Indian cousins. Did a certain Chilean Sea Bass or a Smoked Salmon strike you as odd? Where did our dear old fellows like Bhetki and King Fish disappear? Be it Indigo, which is a small joint or the Tunga chain of hotels that is famous for their fish specialties, the new fish from alien waters have not let any menus untouched.

Well the answer to that question lies in our inexhaustible exotic tastes that prefers artificially farmed Tilapia to the local Bombil. This new generation of well-traveled professionals who constitute a major proportion of the crowds at fancy restaurants wants these exotic fish. They have influence our fish eating behavior in a major way bringing in the food and fishing industries. Some of the of these fish like Tuna and Salmon are not fished locally and difficult to import due to their delicate nature. They are being artificially farmed to meet their growing demand.

So fancy fish now is also a by-product of globalization. Imagine the sad plight of our indigenous fish whose hay days are over!