Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program has been the most trusted source of information for consumers on sustainable seafood options for the past ten years.

Seafood Watch is now offering delicious, environmentally-friendly seafood recipes by some of the nation’s leading chefs, including Rick Moonen (celebrity chef, restaurateur, and author) and Alex Guarnaschelli (chef of Butter Restaurant in New York City and host of the new Food Network show “Alex’s Day Off”). A new recipe is offered each month.                                                                                                                                                                                   

This month’s recipe made available today is Grilled Oysters with Wasabi and Miso from David Anderson, executive chef of the Portola Restaurant at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who originally started out as a student guide at the Aquarium as a teenager. Farmed oysters are on Seafood Watch’s “Super Green” list because they are not only one of the most sustainable types of seafood but are also one of the healthiest, packed with Omega-3s. Individuals can sign up to receive the new recipes each month.

 Seventy percent of the world’s fisheries are either in decline or are already fished at their capacity. Many fish species contain high amounts of toxins like mercury and PCBs. Seafood Watch makes choosing seafood a lot easier through its sustainable recipes and pocket guides.

We hope you’ll help us spread the word about MBA’s exclusive sustainable seafood recipe available at http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/recipes/.

Other recipes on the Web site include Chef Rick Moonen’s chicken-fried catfish with green tartar Sauce and Asian Slaw and Chef Alex Guarnaschelli’s baked clams with bacon.  

Over two dozen top chefs recently signed Seafood Watch’s pledge to only serve sustainable seafood items and to recruit industry peers and their customers to join the cause. Some of the signers are Rick Bayless, Susan Spicier, Alton Brown, Suzanne Goin and Rick Moonen. From the pledge:

Ocean wildlife is threatened today as never before by human activities. And nothing exacts a greater price than the scope and scale of global fishing to feed our growing global appetite for seafood…Through our menu choices, our purchasing decisions and the platform we enjoy to reach the public, we are in a unique position to help turn the tide.

Sustainable Seafood Recipes

Grilled Oysters with Miso and Wasabi

In this elegant, but easy-to-prepare dish, grilled oysters are paired with melt-in-your-mouth crystals of miso gel and spicy wasabi-flavored crème fraÎche. David Anderson, Executive Chef of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Portola Restaurants, recommends serving the oysters in their shells for a beautiful, natural presentation, or in shooter glasses for an edgier look.

Farmed oysters are available year-round and can be served raw, smoked, canned or frozen. Most oyster farming operations are very well managed and produce a sustainable product. Farmed oysters are on the Seafood Watch green Seafood Watch green “Best Choices” list.

Ingredients

• (Serves 4)
• 24 farm-raised oysters
• 2 cups prepared miso soup
• 1 package powdered gelatin
• 1 cup crème fraÎche (sour cream can be substituted)
• 2 tablespoons wasabi paste

Directions

Scrub each oyster under cold water with a brush.*

Place the oysters on a hot grill for 5-10 minutes or until you see steam or bubbles coming from the oysters. (This step can also be done in a 500-degree oven.)

Remove oysters from the grill and allow to cool in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

Pour the miso soup through a strainer.

Sprinkle the gelatin over ¼ cup of the cold miso soup and allow to set for 5-10 minutes.

Bring the remaining miso soup to a slow simmer and add the gelatin mixture, stirring to dissolve. Pour into a shallow bowl and chill in the refrigerator until set (about 30 minutes).

Whip the crème fraÎche until it’s thick like whipped cream, then add the wasabi to taste, stirring to combine.

Open the chilled oysters with an oyster shucker or a blunt table knife by prying them at the hinge. Discard the top shell.

Roughly chop the miso gel with the tines of a fork to forms “crystals” (or chop into small pieces) and divide among the oysters. Top with a small amount of the wasabi crème fraîche and serve immediately.

* For safety reasons, discard any raw oysters that are open.

About Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program

Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program is the most trusted and recognized resource for sustainable seafood recommendations. Seafood Watch recommendations are science-based, peer reviewed, and use ecosystem-based criteria. Since 1999, we’ve distributed tens of millions of pocket guides with environmentally-friendly seafood choices, our iPhone application has been downloaded nearly 175,000 times, and we have close to 200 partners across North America to build awareness to ocean-friendly seafood choices, include leading chefs, zoos, aquariums, restaurants, retailers, universities, food co-ops, seafood suppliers, and more. For more information, please visit http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx.

For most Hispanics in the United States, food has an emotional and cultural significance that reaches far beyond eating. Home cooked meals and celebrations centered on food and family are an extremely important part of Hispanic life and a source of pride for immigrant mothers and grandmothers.

Latin American cooking is as diverse as its people and has been perfected over hundreds of years by fusing the foods and culinary styles of the Spaniards, Indigenous Indians and African slaves and has been passed down in the oral tradition.

The majority of Latin American women learned to cook through observation and repetition, developing advanced culinary skills and recipes that exist only in their memories. Without documenting these authentic recipes, American-born Hispanics will lose our most important cultural legacy: our cuisine.

Mothers of Latin America: Recipes from the Generations features recipes passed down from generation to generation by the matriarchs of different Hispanic families in the United States. Each story, or anecdote, will be told through the woman’s recipes and through her family’s collective food memories, revealing old-world beliefs that often contrast with the modern perspective of the American-born generation.

Danielle’s Story & Abuela Eva’s Picadillo Recipe

My grandmother (abuela) immigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1957. She slept on the floor of a friend’s apartment on 134th Street in New York City while she set out to find an apartment and jobs for herself and my grandfather (abuelo), who was still in Cuba. Mom arrived in 1958, at the age of fourteen with two new gold capped front teeth and pneumonia she caught on the boat from Cuba. Abuelo arrived with her and was informed that he had a new career as a butcher.

Within six years of arriving in the United States, my mother learned fluent English, got rid of the gold caps, and married “un Americano”. A few years later, she and my father started a family and moved to Norwood, a suburb in Northern New Jersey. My grandparents followed my mother to New Jersey and moved to West New York, a small city with a thriving Hispanic community.

When my older brother and I were sent to live with abuela and abuelo for a year we arrived as skinny, all-American suburban kids who ate peanut butter and drank Hawaiian punch. After a year of hearty Hispanic fare, we returned to Norwood as well-fed, hip swaying, Spanish-speaking Latino kids.

This exposure to a purely Hispanic environment was a one-time experience for me. However, my mother is Cuban and her culture courses through my life and is part of who I am. I am intensely proud of what my grandparents and mother achieved. If I could bottle their vitality, their courage, their passion, and their ability to laugh in the face of adversity, I would save it and pass it onto my sons as their legacy.

Picadillo (serves four)

1 – 1¼ lb chopped meat
1 diced tomato
4 garlic cloves
1 med size onion
1 half green
1 half red pepper
1 scallion diced
2- 4 caps of vinegar
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon ground pepper
3 tablespoons of olive oil
½ cup of tomato puree
5-6 green olives with pimentos
1 tablespoon olive juice, from the jar

Preparation:

• Put in mince in a medium sized pot or saute pan.
• Mix all the ingredients together except or puree.
• Cook over low heat for 20 minutes.
• Mix in tomato puree with a bit of water to make a thick sauce and add to the mince mixture.
• Cook a further half-hour or until mince is cooked through and most of the liquid is absorbed.
• Serve with white rice.