Adventures in Experimental Cooking: Vobla Soup
Vobla, originally uploaded by zak_greant.
Early last week, I ventured out to our local German and Eastern European deli. While picking up the regular assortment of cured meats, good sandwich cheese and temptingly-packaged chocolate goodies, I noticed a slightly terrifying-looking salt-cured fish.
The young woman working at the store couldn't remember what it was called, but explained that many Russians enjoyed eating the very salty fish while drinking strong beer. A bit of online research leads me to believe that this is salt-cured vobla — Caspian Roach. Another website that sells vobla asserts, "We don't know any Russians who do not like vobla!" Frankly, the fish — as hard as a chunk of wood, pungently aromatic and still shedding scales — seemed like more of a thing to be consumed on a bet only after drinking large quantities of vodka.
My own biases aside, the fish presented an opportunity for both culinary experimentation and a bit good-natured revenge.
The experiment was to see if other dried fishes might have the same sorts of culinary uses as Bonito — that is, being a great source of Umami for other dishes. Upon smelling the fish, I was quite sure that this would be the case, as the fish had rich and pungent odor, almost eye-wateringly so.
When I got the fish home, I scraped off a bit of the salt was crusted on the outside and tasted it. The flavor was wonderful — amusingly enough, like the flavor pack that comes with good Ramen noodles. With this in mind, I'm turning my Caspian Roach into soup stock.
As for the revenge, my friends LJ and Raistlin showed up on Mandy's birthday with a very pretty live shark (a spiny dogfish to be precise) that they'd picked up at a local fish market. Shark — live or dead — is not a gift to be given lightly. First, the poor things are overfished and second, I am that weaselly kind of carnivore that prefers to not have to look its food in the eye. Still, said shark could not go to waste — it became, in order, mild trauma, tasty breaded and fried shark, a good story and a vague urge to find something similarly frightening to inflict on LJ and Raist. It did also give Mandy and I a chance to see and touch a shark. We were both amazed at how beautiful, simple and elegant its was.
So, I've assembled a little gift package for LJ — one that includes a bag of dried grapefruit zest, some lovely organic Earl Grey tea (aka dried leaves) and one stinky dried fish.
Link Summary
Related posts
Posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 16:54
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:36
Great. And should Raistlin and Lj inflict said stinky dried fish upon *me*, I shall exact my revenge upon *you*.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:59
Geez Jen,
Where is your sense of adventure? :)
April 1st, 2008 at 16:38
If I had received the shark it would have become a pet…LOL! I am "weaselly" as well when it comes to live food. I am yet to pick a live lobster from a fish tank at a restaurant…just can't bring myself to do it.