Taras Grescoe has toured the globe in search of the perfect seafood meal. His conclusion? Grilled sardines.
The Montreal-based author fell in love with the humble sardine after a round-the-world trip sampling everything from whale sashimi in Tokyo to fried oysters from Chesapeake Bay in an effort to learn about the ethics and sustainability of the seafood industry.
The results, chronicled in his book Bottomfeeder, to be released Saturday, will make many fish lovers think twice before ordering favourites such as ahi rolls, popcorn shrimp or salmon teriyaki.
Which is why he is sitting at a Portuguese grillerie on Boulevard St-Laurent staring at plates of barbecued sardines and calamari with the dreamy look of a food lover who knows he is about to tango with his current crush.
"Beautiful," he says. "Don't you think?"
Lunching on sardines and calamari is the way we ought to be eating, says Mr. Grescoe. At the core of his book is the notion that humans would be healthier and fish stocks in better shape if we ate more oceanic bottom-feeders - small fish and crustaceans such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, squid and octopus - whose stocks are thriving in the absence of their overfished predators, big fish such as tuna, cod and sharks.
"I'm not a food fascist," he says. "I'm not trying to ruin someone's meal."
Instead, Mr. Grescoe hopes his book will open people's minds to the sort of eats usually dismissed because they arrive on dinner plates with heads and tentacles.
When his sardines arrive, Mr. Grescoe easily removes the heads and tails by notching into the fish with his knife, splitting and folding over the top of the filet to lift out the feathery backbone.
The flesh, mixed with bit of charred skin, tastes pleasantly smoky and salty. He uses the Japanese word umami, said to describe the fifth taste, associated with mushrooms and nuts.
"Small fish are actually quite tasty," says Mr. Grescoe, who recently whipped up a dinner of poached Spanish mackerel with a sauce of clarified butter and sherry vinegar.
Koreans eat salted jellyfish in mustard and garlic sauce; Northern Europeans adore herring in cream; and the Portuguese can make just about anything little taste good by dousing it in olive oil and grilling.
North Americans, by contrast, "like big pieces of easily eaten protein at the centre of the plate."
Mr. Grescoe is also a big fan of canned fish, which he buys imported from Europe at specialty grocery stores. The cans identify the boat that caught the fish so consumers can look up the vessel's record, and the fish is labelled sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, an independent fishery certifier.
And though Mr. Grescoe's usual weeknight dinners - anchovies on buttered toast with scrambled eggs - might elicit a smirk from harried North American mothers attempting to plan kid-friendly suppers, he insists that anchovy filets canned in olive oil are plain enough for even the fussiest eaters. (The oily fish are also high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are said to promote brain development, especially among children.)
Bottomfeeder details how humans have overfished and overeaten at the top of the oceanic food chain, reducing predator species such as tuna, grouper, cod, shark and swordfish to 10 per cent of their historic levels throughout most of the world. In some cases entire species have been wiped out.
The big fish are often taken at the peak of their sexual maturity, eliminating generations in a single meal.
Big fish also tend to be bad for our health, explains Mr. Grescoe, because dioxins and mercury leached from pollutants in the water are more concentrated in the flesh of fish that eat smaller fish.
Smaller sea-dwellers, by comparison, reproduce quickly and tend to feed at the middle and lower rungs of the food chain, on plankton, krill and algae.
