What are healthy fish to eat for the planet and your body? How can you make sense out of all the labels related to fish? Is farm or wild better? What about frozen versus fresh? What are some buying tips to ensure your fish is fresh and of high quality? The answers may surprise you. Chef Becky Selengut, a graduate of the internationally renowned Herbfarm restaurant, offers home chefs everything they need to know about preparing meals that satisfy their stomach as well as their peace of mind.
Show Highlights:
- How did a girl from Jersey fall in love with seafood? Her her first experience with a Little Neck clam.
- Hear Becky demystify fish fallacies. Myth 1: All fish is expensive. Tune in to find out some yummy and super healthy low cost fish. Myth 2: we shouldn’t eat any farmed seafood at all. Find out what you can eat and why. Myth #3 – We should stop eating all wild fish to give them a break.
- Do you know where your fish has been? Or where it’s from? Why does it matter? Is frozen fish better than fresh? Not in all cases, listen to find out when frozen is better. What fish should you eat if you are in a land locked state?
About our guest:
When she’s not cavorting around the woods picking wild things or combing the beaches for her next meal, Becky Selengut works as a private chef and cooking teacher. Selengut graduated from the Seattle Culinary Academy at the top of her class and then cut her teeth working the line at several Seattle-area restaurants. An alumna of the internationally renowned Herbfarm Restaurant, Selengut set out on her own in 2004 to start Cornucopia, her private chef and cooking instruction company, followed quickly by the founding of the seasonal, local foods database SeasonalCornucopia.com.
Once a year, Selengut teaches at the famous Rancho La Puerta cooking school in Baja, Mexico. She also holds year-round classes in Seattle, both privately and for PCC Natural Markets. Selengut is a member of Chefs Collaborative, and donates books, classes, and dinners each year to numerous charitable organizations. In between gigs, Selengut carries on a lively, award-winning presence online as Chef Reinvented (www.chefreinvented.com); she is also a freelance writer for Edible Seattle (where she was once asked to go catch crabs and write about it) and Seattle Homes and Lifestyles magazines. She is a coauthor of the Washington Local and Seasonal Cookbook (Lone Pine 2008) and the author of Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast (Sasquatch 2011). Selengut lives in Seattle with her sommelier wife, April Pogue, and their two sweet, senile dogs.
Resources
- Check out “How-to-Videos” from Becky on how to select quality seafood, how to devein a shrimp at www.goodfishbook.com
- Check out which fish to buy or not at Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program- http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_aboutsfw.aspx
- Entertained by Becky. Hear more hilarious interviewsat : http://www.kuow.org/mp3high/mp3/KUOWPresents/20110521BeckySelengut.mp3, http://www.spilledmilkpodcast.com/2010/03/25/episode-8-unpopular-fish/
- Other tips on buying fish: http://fishcooking.about.com/od/howtochoosefreshfish/bb/buyingfish.htm
- Tips for buying seafood at a market: http://fishcooking.about.com/od/howtochoosefreshfish/bb/supermarket_buy.htm
- Downloadable cheat sheet on rules of thumb for buying fish: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/content/media/MBA_SeafoodWatch_ActionCards.pdf