It's Ben from Foodists here and we're in Gastown, again, for Butchers of Gastown 3,
Seafood Edition.
You might recall the first two, pig and lamb.
What's Butchers of Gastown?
Well, it's all about learning where your food comes from, taking that whole beast and taking
it right from the beginning to the end, where we learn what do you do with a whole lamb
or a whole pig or seafood in this case?
You might order a stable fish in the restaurant, but have you ever pulled one apart before?
We're going to do that today.
We're going to make some fabulous stuff with things.
We're going to do a whole octopus.
We're going to shuck and fillet our way into a feast from our friends at Daily Catch.
Check it out, Butchers of Gastown, Seafood Edition.
This is my very first Butchers of Gastown that I've actually been a butcher.
I snuck in.
I was like the eighth spot, so I'm really excited about today, and I was raised by two
marine biologists, so I've eaten a lot of seafood, but I haven't done a lot of prep,
so I'm kind of a hack, so I'm really looking forward to getting some instruction today and
figuring out how to do this right, so I'm excited.
My favorite seafood salmon, I don't know if we're doing salmon today.
Salmon from Vancouver, so I'm a big fan of salmon anyway, it's prepared.
Hands down, Dungeness Crab, and I like to dip it in balsamic vinegar.
Dungeness crab.
Oysters.
Gooey duck.
Scallops.
We're doing salmon today.
And what I'm looking forward to most, I think is some de-beaking and some octopus-ing.
Butchering a 12-pound octopus.
I'm shucking and filleting.
I think just the idea of taking a whole fish apart.
Having some fish and just getting my hands dirty, and what I'm looking forward to do,
the most today is learning about seafood and spending a really great day with my fellow
foodists friends.
Butchers of Gasttown, this is our third event now.
So basically, it's a group of friends and people who are members of foodists or contributor
and people who are into food, we're basically going to learn some butchering techniques
and then cook and eat together.
Let's go upstairs and get started.
Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish.
Food is the center of all our cultures and the more we understand about our food and
where it comes from, the better off our general ecosystem will be.
Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish,
fish, fish, fish, fish.
So tonight we're eating some Chinook salmon, which is the largest of the salmon species.
They can live anywhere from four to seven years, the largest of them will go to about
120 pounds, they're a great barbecue fish and they're really versatile, you can really
do anything depending on the size.
We've also had some sable fish, they're becoming more and more popular, especially with the
Asian market.
They're a very oily fish, they're very thick flakes, we also have halibut, which are probably
the strangest creature on the planet as far as they're concerned because they actually
are born like a regular fish, they're actually born with a face like this.
And the halibut puberty is the most uncomfortable thing on the planet because they actually
go this way and their eyes will rotate over on top of their head and then they become
flat fish.
They're some of the most violent things in the ocean, they'll, I've caught halibut that
have whole coho and they'll chase down anything.
We're also eating tuna, we've got lingkot, their weight is mostly made up of their head.
So about a 35 pound lingkot, 15 of it will be its head and the rest of it will just be
the sort of long snake-like body.
What else are we eating?
Squid?
We're two re-used large octopus.
We've got clams and mussels, those are all filter feeders, crab.
So Dungeon S are the best crab, so to speak, on the west coast.
I'm the name after the Dungeonist Bay Area in Washington State and the Dungeonist First
Nations.
There is one thing I know about lobster, they're more lobster now than arguably in history
because there are no cod left and cod eat larval lobster.
So if we have no cod, so lobster populace is picking straight up.
So this is a really good time to eat lobster because they're still kind of expensive.
Sardines?
I don't know much about sardines.
As far as I'm concerned sardines are kind of like closer to bait than they are food.
I think the sardines surprise people, so they were just simply wood-grilled, they're really
delicate and moist and probably where we should be eating on the food chain.
By the time we got to Halibut, everyone was really excited and confident and there was
a 300 pound halibut.
There's a dozen people in there that are really passionate about food and I think cooking
together is the glue that binds really, so it's been a really good day.
I think people really enjoyed seafood butchery and we'll go home feeling more confident about
buying whole fish and knowing what to do with them.
Until we see you next time at Pushers of Gastown, thanks for joining us.
