The King is Back

December 15, 2019 in Products, Seasonal Wild Catch

The best ingredients require only the simplest recipes

King Salmon $35.99/lb

Harvested in from the waters of Petersburg and surrounds in Southeast Alaska, Otolith’s King Salmon is as delicious as its name suggests.  Coming Soon! Wild Alaskan King salmon is available from Otolith at Headhouse Farm Market from September 13-May 31 and year round for Home Delivery.

Because of its savory flavor and moist texture, King salmon is a perfect ingredient to compliment fall’s leafy greens and savory root vegetables.
Serving Suggestions:
  • Simple dressed salad greens and sauteed thicker seasonal greens compliment this rich and savory fish abundant with omega-3 fatty acids.  It is best to roast, grill or sear king salmon at 400 degrees.  Allow 10 minutes per inch of thickness to cook king salmon.  Once the king salmon is cooked, rest the salmon for 2-3 minutes before serving.  Serving suggestion: drizzle pomegranate syrup lightly over the king salmon or greens.
  • Cleaned, peeled and cut to 1 inch cubes, root vegetables coated lightly with oil will take approximately 45 minutes to roast in a 400 degree oven.  While vegetables are roasting, there is time to thaw the season’s best king salmon and wash and sautee any leafy greens with garlic and olive oil.  Swiss chard is done when the stalks are tender and easy to chew, but some greens such as collard require the addition of a little water from time to time to prevent scorching while cooking to a tender doneness in a stove-top deep dish skillet.  The portions of thawed king salmon can be added directly to the roasting root vegetables after the vegetables have been cooking at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  Recommended root vegetables include butternut squash, turnips, beets, or potatoes with an optional  quartered small onion or fennel bulb for contrast and additional flavor.

Wild Alaskan Fish at Mariposa Coop Market

October 16, 2012 in Seafood For Thought

Now selling Otolith's Sustainable Seafood

Otolith appreciates the Mariposa Coop for their diverse selection of highest quality food available.  More than occasionally at Otolith we need a snack bar to keep us nourished on a busy day.  Not all snack bars are created equal.  Too much sugar is not our thing.  And too much oats and puffed rice are just another way filling our stomach without nourishing our mind and body.  The bars we like are available at Mariposa.  It is a terrific market for buying the most healthful convenient snack bars made from responsible ingredients that taste delicious.  Mariposa also sells a large variety of ethnic and local nutritious ingredients to satisfy any hungry dinner appetite.

Imagine our surprise when Otolith Sustainable Seafood started to distribute our wild additive free sushi-grade fish products at Mariposa Market Coop in West Philly and we saw salted cod for sale at Mariposa too!  This is a very big deal Philadelphia.  It might not be Otolith’s cod, and Otolith, does have many great fish now available at Mariposa however, it is an adventure to find your own recipe for bacalao [salt cod] or any fish that matches your taste and give it a whirl.  All romesco ingredients can be purchased at Mariposa too!  The Salvador Dali exhibit may be over but it is never too late to look his work up online and create an inspired authentic  meal at home in West Philly.

Now you can buy Otolith’s Coho and Sockeye Salmon, Halibut, Flounder, Rockfish and Sablefish at MariposaOtolith Sustainable Seafood has online recipes for all of our wild seafood.  Isn’t it nice to have access to so many excellent healthful ingredients.  We think it is too!

Mariposa Food Coop; West Philly’s Neighborhood Grocery Store, 4824 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA ; 215-729-2121.  Mon-Friday 10am-9pm; Sat-Sunday 10am-8pm.

2012 Summer Sockeye is in Philly

August 2, 2012 in Seasonal Wild Catch

Redoubt Bay: A Link between the Beginning and the End of Life for Sockeye. In Southeast Alaska, the Redoubt Bay sockeye return this season has exceeded recent years. This is good news for the wild sockeye and for those of us looking forward to a small taste of this magnificent renewable resource. On July 12th the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced modest increased limits for harvesters of Redoubt Bay sockeye. Otolith's 2012 sockeye were harvested during that same week and the freshest tasting portion fillets of sockeye are on their way to Philadelphia. Once harvested the sockeye are dressed or in other words headed and gutted with bellies packed on ice.

After a few days of harvesting dressed fish are either delivered or transported by way of another vessel called a tender back to landing port.Otolith’s sockeye were landed in Petersburg, AK and all cutting, sealing and freezing was performed by a small local processor.The following pictures were taked during processing:With skill and attention to detail each fillet must be carefully handled to assure the quality of the sockeye is protected.

The Most Beautiful of all Wild Salmon

Lastly, Otolith’s wild sockeye delicacy is frozen at temperatures down to -40.  This ultra-cold process takes only minutes to acheive the sushi-grade results that Otolith’s owners and clients have come to appreciate.

Just Before the Blast-freeze

The coho harvest is underway.  We look forward to sourcing all your wild and and sustainable salmon this year!  Cheers from Alaska.

What Constitutes a Sustainable Wild Fishery?

June 1, 2012 in Seafood For Thought

Not All Fishing Gear is Sustainable

The following opinion is in response to the recent New York Times article, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/eat-your-hake-and-have-it-too.html.

Sustainable wild fisheries are the result of healthful fish, responsible exploitation, self-sustaining cycles of new harvesters replacing the oldest harvesters,  and a consistent range of abundant biomass within the fishery food-chain.  In the minds of wild seafood aficionados like myself, sustainable fisheries are the dream that contrasts our present reality.  Fisheries continue to buckle under the consolidation of more efficient gear and larger scale harvesters, the average age of fisherman continues to rise as less men and women find economic security in serving their fellow fish consumers by catching wild fish, governments continue to subsidize factory fishing operations inspite of its consequences, fishery managers remain unable to effectively protect the biomass of fish on the lowest rungs of our fishery food-chain assuring the inevitable collapse of more valuable species that exist higher up the food-chain, and  many people remain uncertain about the healthfulness and presence of heavy metals in their wild fish and shellfish.

Now that there is no misunderstanding about what constitutes a sustainable fishery, we can discuss how to encourage behaviors that will take us closer to our goal, if in fact sustainability is the goal.  To that point, all states that have a commercially exploited fishery within their jurisdiction either have a constitutional amendment that includes the protection of its fisheries for the benefit of long term sustainable yield or not.  Therefore, the most “apparent conservation benefits from the refusal of consumers to buy [those] over-fished species” is the continued focus on wild fisheries, furthermore perhaps opportunities may increase for new educated minds to become involved in the ongoing effort to make the dream of sustainable fisheries come true.

Additionally, otter trawl fishing gear produces the majority of haddock [in Maine], while the remainder of the catch is taken with [less efficient] longlines or gillnets.  Assuming that since fisheries had never before experienced the current threat of overfishing until the use of trawl fishing gear became widespread, it could be that consumers refusal to to buy fish that is almost exclusively harvested by trawlers or that is not traceable to its harvesters is an act of protest against trawling.

To conclude, a better goal for NOAA might be to rebuild over-fished species back to levels that had existed prior to overfishing.  Using inconcise language such as ‘healthy’ to describe populations of over-fished species is no less useful than labeling an entire species as “Red Listed”.   Otolith applauds the state of Alaska for constitutionally protecting its fisheries.  After establishing a brand that identifies fish harvested against all odds and in consideration of the greatest efforts to date toward the goal of achieving sustainable fisheries, I would welcome the opportunity to do more for our fisheries.    Someday there can be far fewer trawlers and more skilled fishermen, much less plastic in our oceans and more fish surviving to maturity, more laws to protect our renewable fishery resources and the healthfulness of our fish, and less regulations that serve only to increase the challenges to sustainable harvesters.

“I have a Dream”, Dr. Martin Luther King; me too.