Day eighty four

Today's victim - sturgeon

What is so special about sturgeon?

Today we had only one class - fish fabrication. We did stripped bass again and it was really easy to it second time. The other fish we had today was sturgeon.

Sturgeon is considered to be an expensive fish, however not everyone likes it. For example, my instructor said that for him, sturgeon has muggy  taste and he does not like it. I do like sturgeon. The smoked sturgeon is the best.

Fabricating sturgeon is not so easy. It has a lot of fat inside, the skin is slimy and it's difficult to hold it. What is aso interesting about this fish - it has no bones structure. Sturgeon is a cartilaginous fish and has no bones. Spinal cord is
easy to cut with knife. Today we filleted it, skinned and applied dry cure (salt, brown sugar, lemon and lime zest). Not sure how long it will be cured, later we are going to smoke it. On top of fillets we have belly from two fish and we are going to smoke them as well. It was my idea to smoke belly, my instructor said that he never heard of this and was willing to give a try.

I am not so sure about sturgeon belly, but I am positive about smoked salmon belly. So what is the difference? Will see and I promisse to publish about result.

What is also I have to add is that sturgeon produces black caviar, real delicacy. One time because of caviar sturgeon was close to extinction, especially in Caspian sea (Russia and Iran). Then it was prohibited to harvest sturgeon, especially because it was really cruel, sturgeon was caught, caviar taken away, the fish itself thrown away. Now, I believe, almost 100% of sturgeon is farm raised, so there is no impact on nature.