Escolar aka Walu can have this effect too. It’s actually illegal in Japan for that reason. Often it will be passed off as white tuna.
1 Like
As I mentioned to @MadLibrarian Escolar is often sold in the US as Hawaiian Butterfish. But I’ve seen Hawaiian White Tuna as well. I think the FDA specifically “recommends” it not be sold or marketed as food. But since it doesn’t actually kill you, they haven’t banned it. It crops up from time to time and there are a bunch of news stories and warnings about it.
Calico crabs on the other hand I dunno if they actually make you poop. But they’re small, having barely any meat, and most people don’t bother to eat them. So I’m willing to bet the scattered stories of sickness or foul taste I hear have more to do with sourcing issues than anything else. Green crabs on the other hand are also pretty small, but invasive and purportedly tasty. Mostly used as bait for blackfish (tautog) though.
Euell Gibbons had a whole chapter on catching and cleaning carp in “Stalking the Wild Asparagus.” He said fairly boneless chucks of flesh could be obtained by ripping it away from the backbone.
IIRC he described catching vast quantities of carp in the southwest by herding them up irrigation ditches using horses and into a dead end where the ranch hands were harpooning them with pitchforks.
2 Likes
It’s good to hear a “local’s” perspective, but prices at the pier are not retail prices, so getting it off the boat for $20-$30 for five lobsters isn’t really a fair comparison to steak unless you’re comparing it to getting it from a friend who works at a slaughterhouse. Also, there’s a big difference between lobster weight and lobster meat weight - typically only about 20% of the gross weight is meat. So your average lobster that retails for $15 only gives up about 5 ounces of meat - a pretty small portion. A good 2.5-pounder will go for $30 or more, and will give about 8 oz of meat. Compare that to a price of a bone-in ribeye which I just got last night for $7 a pound ($15 for two big portions) and you can see its a pretty big difference for those who don’t have watermen for neighbors…
Well if you read what I was saying, the $3/lb and other numbers I give are for retail. At the fish market or supermarket. Certainly not in a restaurant, your talking 20+/lb unless some ones running a special (2 for 20 is common). Even at the 5 for 30 deal you’re talking around $4/lb. Its just as cheap at retail when the season is heaviest. That 20% yield also only holds for the smallest lobsters (1-1.5lbs) when their freshly molted, which also happens to be the cheapest size, and lobsters are cheapest and and most plentiful just after they molt (summer, cheap lobster season). The bigger lobsters and hard shell lobsters have a yield up to 30%, and I’ve heard claims up to 40% (though I doubt that).
Beyond that lobster is not portioned like steak (and neither to all cuts of beef have the same yield of meat). A 1.25-1.5lb lobster is considered the standard serving size per person, though 2 of those is also common enough (so we’re talking $6-$12 per head in summer, and maybe double that the rest of the year). Its almost always served with another protein (and clams and mussels are cheap as balls). With steak specifically its fairly common to serve a full pound of steak (or near enough), and its mostly meat.
Even picking apart the comparison, what I’m arguing holds. The image of lobster is as a rare luxury. Tuxedoed plutocrats gorging themselves. Something only for the rare special occasions, vacations, and only by those who are conspicuously moneyed. The base fact that price comparisons to supermarket beef. Choice. The normal stuff we all eat regularly in America can be made kind of indicates that the image doesn’t hold. My contention is just that that’s been the case in the coastal North East all along. In fact the last few years the glut of cheap lobster out of Maine in the summer has been driving prices down to an incredible extent, nation wide. That’s why you see lobster mac and cheese, and lobster pasta dishes pushed by national chains at reasonable prices. Some nice fishery management on Maine’s part, and some better distribution have brought all the coastal fun to a broader market.
1 Like
by the way? I am now hungry as heck for sushi, and will be going this weekend.
I wasn’t intending to insult you, just pointing out that the “local” price and the avg retail price are very different especially for lobster. I live in the coastal northeast and vacation in “lobster country” often enough, but I’ve never seen prices like what you’re suggesting. $7 a pound for chicken lobster is as good as I’ve seen, and at that price I’m definitely eating two. Including mussels, clams and other “fillers” isn’t really fair either, anymore than saying that most folks don’t eat a 16 oz steak because they usually fill up in breadsticks. Anyway, my point is that it may not be tuxedo-wearing highfalutin types exclusively, but lobster is still on the “splurge” end of the spectrum for most people.
Also, tangent; I actually think that lobster mac n cheese and other similar dishes are really about stretching the lobster more than anything.
Sorry if I came off as rowdy. I’m an insomniac on a not enough sleep kick. Those low prices aren’t the year round norm, they’re seasonal, and the really cheap stuff is driven by large bulk buys by regional concerns. Lobsters molt and breed in the spring and summer, leading to large numbers of soft shell lobsters that have just hit the minimum sizes for commercial catch at that time of year. Global warming, good fisheries management and a couple other factors have lead to enormous amounts of Canadian and Maine lobsters hitting the market every summer. Plunging prices down across the board. Its been a big news story. Outside of pre-shucked meat (usually ~$17 per pound, sometimes much higher) I’ve never seen lobster prices go too much higher than the ~12 bucks a pound that’s the high end of normal year round. 8-ish is kind of the baseline, but it fluxuates day to day. Today it might be $8, tomorrow there it might drop down to $5. Local lobster is cheaper than Maine, until the summer catches come in. Then Maine and Canadian lobster can be dirt cheap, even after its trucked down to NY.
How about we just agree that wherever you are, when lobster hits $3 a lb (even $5!) you buy a dozen and invite me over. Mkay? 
When my wife was a kid in Hawaii, sushi hadn’t turned into fancy food yet; it was a burrito-equivalent wrapped in seaweed instead of tortillas, usually had canned tuna and some kinds of vegetables with the rice, and you picked it up at the Woolworth lunch counter to take for lunch. If you got there too late in the morning, it’d be gone.
1 Like
I recall someone writing about growing up in Maine and taking lobster sandwiches to school and envying the kids who got Oscar Meyer bologna.
I don’t think what you’re describing is sushi - more of a musubi or onigiri, aka stuffed rice balls. These are popular in Hawaii (just as they are in Japan) as an inexpensive snack or lunch item. Hawaiians make 'em with grilled spam, among other ingrediants indigenous to the islands.
Hawaiians have something similar to sushi which is called poke. Nowadays it is heavily influenced by Japanese and Korean flavors (soy, wasabi, kimchi) but traditionally was just raw fish, salt and seaweed. Even with those influences, Hawaiian poke is quite different from something like chirashizushi.
1 Like
No, these were maki. (They also had inari.) Musubi and onigiri are different shapes. Mostly this was on Maui; different versions might have been common on the other islands.
Interesting. I guess at some point it’s semantic (though I’m sure some Japanese would disagree) - it’s all nori, rice and filling of some sort. Whether it’s in a roll or a triangle or a cone it’s pretty much the same. Apparently even in Japan they eat maki like burritos, without slicing them up. Wikipedia says the main difference is how the rice is prepared - sushi rice usually having vinegar and sometimes sugar added, though at least in my extended Japanese family onigiri is made with whatever rice is left over from the previous night’s meal, so sometimes that is sushi rice.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
