About Gourmet Fish & Seafood
_________________Our mail order seafood brings fresh, rarely available European seafood varieties right to your door. We offer fresh and frozen fish and shellfish, as well as marinated seafood filet varieties, caviars and smoked seafood.Italy’s thousands of miles of coast make fish and seafood a large part of the Italian diet.
Orata, or dorade (gilthead seabream), is a very popular fish in the Mediterranean world. The ancient Greeks considered it sacred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It is a white fleshed fish with a slightly sweet flavor. Its tender flesh is often used in stews, traditionally in bouillabaisse and Moroccan tagines, because it does not fall apart when cooked, despite its flaky texture. Orata is considered the best tasting of the breams. Its native range is the eastern Atlantic, on the European and north African coast and the Mediterranean, so it must be imported for the US market.
Another important Mediterranean fish is the branzino, or European sea bass. In Greece the branzino is considered a delicacy; in fact, journalists use the Greek word for branzino, lavraki, for a scoop, as getting a juicy exclusive news story is likened to an angler catching one of these delicious fish. In France, branzino is called loup de mer, wolf of the sea. Another white meat fish, branzino has a sweet, mild flavor with a velvety texture.
Turbot is another fish prized in the Mediterranean region. A flatfish, turbot has bright white lean flesh and a delicate flavor, often compared to sole. Red mullet has also been beloved in the region since ancient times, and was described by Pliny as having an oyster flavor. The ancient Romans paid extravagant prices for them. Its firm, lean flesh has a buttery texture and a unique, delicate taste. In Spain they like to charcoal grill them. Another popular element of the Mediterranean diet are sardines and anchovies. The ones we carry are beautifully packaged and winners of multiple Great Taste awards. Traditionally preserved, without additives, preservatives, or coloring agents, they are available in a variety of flavors –marinated in oil, with chilis, or garlic, salted, with basil, with olives, and more.
Dover sole is a mainstay of traditional European continental seafood cookery. It has a mild sweet, non-“fishy” flavor and glistening white flesh. It is caught off the coasts of Britain and France. Much of what is sold in the US as Dover sole is actually flounder, but the real thing is not to be missed. A simple preparation of Dover sole was the first dish Julia Child ate in France, which inspired her to become a chef.
Straying from the Mediterranean to Australia, another fish worth making the acquaintance of is the barramundi. A moist white-fleshed fish with good fat content that keeps it from drying out when cooked, barramundi’s mild flavor is described as buttery and sweet. Our barramundi is sustainably raised in the US on a large indoor environmentally friendly fish farm, without the use of antibiotics or hormones, in purified water. If you are concerned about mercury levels in your fish, or overfishing, barramundi is an excellent choice–with no sacrifice to your tastebuds! Our barramundi is also particularly rich in omega-3’s.
Of course, we also provide more familiar top of the line fish, with a variety of salmon, tuna, swordfish, halibut, striped bass, red snapper, tilapia, mahi mahi, cod, monkfish, Chilean seabass, haddock, john dory, and many others.
Along with fish, we provide a full complement of seafood, both fresh and frozen. Shrimp to scallops, regional oysters, clams and mussels, calamari and octopus, lobsters and langostino, crab, even squid ink and seaweed are all available.
Squid (calamari) and octopus are commonly eaten throughout the Mediterranean region (and in Asia as well). Battered and quick fried calamari rings are perhaps the most familiar preparation to North Americans, but in Europe squid or octopus is also simmered slowly in liquid until tender. In Spain, cooks sometimes stew squid in their own black ink. The ink is also used as an ingredient in other dishes such as pasta or risotto. Baby calamari or octopus are often used in seafood salad or battered and fried whole.
Our smoked and dried seafood range goes beyond just smoked salmon. One Italian (and Portuguese) favorite is baccalao, salted dried cod. It should be soaked before use, due to the salting, but when properly prepared, it is surprisingly unfishy tasting, firm and slightly chewy. A popular Catholic Friday and Lenten ingredient, in Portugal it is often sought after around Christmastime.
Another Mediterranean delicacy is bottarga, sometimes called “the poor person’s caviar”. This is cured fish roe, also known as poutargue or boutargue in French, botarga in Spanish, batarekh in Arabic or avgotaraho in Greek. In Italy bottarga is a specialty of Sardinia and Sicily. It can be made from a variety of fish. Bottarga di muggine is made from grey mullet; we also stock bottarga di tuna. The roe pouch is hand massaged to ensure there are no air pockets, then cured and dried in sea salt for a few weeks until it becomes a hard slab. This is typically preserved in beeswax and used thinly sliced. Preserving the roe through this process is an ancient regional technique. The flavor of bottarga is rich, with both sweet and briny tones. A little has a big flavor impact.
Much of our smoked seafood is sourced from a smoker in New England who begins with prime seafood in small batches, using small ovens and real woodsmoke under the seafood, not piped in smoke or liquid smoke. We stock smoked mussels, smoked trout, smoked tuna, smoked cod, and more.
Naturally, we also stock several varieties of caviar for the connoisseur, including osetra or ossetra caviar. This comes from the Ossetra sturgeon and has a buttery, nutty flavor which is highly valued – many feel it is the best tasting of all caviars. Osetra caviar is firmer in texture than beluga caviar and comes in a range of colors. We stock both black and golden, which is rare and extremely rich in flavor. We have osetra caviar from both Iran and Italy.
Another of our caviars is sevruga, sourced from both Russia and Iran. Sevruga is the most abundant of the sturgeon caviars, and also the one with the strongest flavor. It has small roe with an intense buttery salty flavor.
American golden whitefish caviar is, as the name suggests, a beautifully colored golden roe with small firm grains and a mild, subtle flavor. Our American hackleback caviar comes from another sturgeon species, the shovelnose or hackleback sturgeon, native to the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. It is a black caviar with firm eggs and a nutty flavor quite similar to sevruga caviar. American paddlefish caviar has glossy beads and a buttery flavor with a fresh sea taste. The paddlefish is a species closely related to sturgeon. Both the whitefish and paddlefish caviars make excellent American substitutes for Caspian Sea caviars.
We also stock non-sturgeon caviars from a variety of fish, which are well worth tasting in their variety. Alaskan salmon caviar, with its juicy bright orange roe that pop in your mouth, is a favorite sushi component. It carries an intense salmon flavor. American trout caviar also has the pop in your mouth characteristic, with large beads. Another favorite sushi caviar is tobiko caviar, made from flying fish roe caught in Icelandic waters. We have it available in red, black, green, and orange. The orange is natural while the others are flavored with chili pepper, squid ink, and wasabi respectively. It is a small, almost crunchy roe with a sweet taste with salty overtones.
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