Walkin' the Walk (Swimmin' the Swim???)

In a previous post about salmon, I quoted an expert on sustainable fishing and the health benefits of eating lower on the aquatic food chain. That is to say, if we don't always go for the big pelagics and instead eat the more populous little fishies, we will increase our consumption of good fish oils and decrease our exposure to PCBs and big-fish diseases. In that post, I said I was willing to try herring, shad, sardines, anchovies, and the like.

These are UNPOPULAR fish varieties and they are generally found only in canned varieties (at least around here). But some of the large and most popular varieties of fish out-price beef tenderloin per pound, so if you are trying to keep a disciplined grocery budget, fish in a tin certainly helps towards that goal while still lending you all of the health benefits associated with eating fresh fish.

During my lost weekend with Jacques Pepin, I watched him make a first course salad that incorporated creamed herring. I figure, if it's good enough for Jacques, then it's good enough for me. Now was the time for me to make good on my indication that I was going to start eating this stuff. Secretly, though, I was expecting to be grossed out.

I didn't do Jacques's salad, but instead made a herring sandwich of sorts. I started with bread (homemade but roughly equivalent to a quality rustic, crusty French or Italian) coated the bread with some dijon mustard, put an avocado half on top, and then several kippered herring fillets that I salted liberally and accented with a squeeze of lemon.

It was...GOOD.

I don't think I'm going to convert anyone to kippered herring sandwiches, nor do I think I'll have people clamoring for Jacques's creamed herring salad were I to make it, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I am sure that these more assertive fish flavors done up in a terrine would be a totally elegant appetizer at a cocktail party and would garner just as many fans as, say, salmon mousse.

So, purveyors of little fishies, you have a new customer. Let's review why:
-Little fish carry a lower risk of disease, PCBs, and other chemicals in the fillets
-Little fish are more populous and therefore more sustainable.
-Little fish have a relatively high "good oil" content...(the stuff that protects your heart and makes your skin flawless).
-Little fish go for about 2.50 a tin (versus 17.99 a pound for some of their seaborne predators at the fish counter).

All this eating of uber-healthy fish is bringing back a memory of some old 1950's musical I watched on TV as a child... I'll never remember the name of the movie, but there was a great song and the lyrics were very funny to me, even then. It went something like this:

"You eat the blackstrap molasses
and the wheat-germ bread...
You'll live so long
you'll wish you were dead"

Can't wait!