Striped Bass - Cleaning the Fish

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He is 28, but his culinary resume reads like a seasoned 40-something. Washington, D.C. native Executive Chef Barton Seaver, a StarChefs.com Rising Star of 2006 and recently nominated as a Rising Star Chef by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, of Hook was taught at an early age about the importance of food.

Dinner in the Seaver home was a seven nights a week family affair. Eating dinner with his family was a communal celebration and involved shopping for the freshest ingredients at local markets, instilling this value in him at a young age. Mac and Cheese was never just out of the box, but prepared with a homemade bamel cheese sauce and pasta made from scratch. Summers spent at a family friends hog farm on the Chesapeake Bay, along with crabbing and going with his father to buy fresh seafood from local fisherman, taught Seaver the importance of supporting local purveyors and using quality and fresh ingredients.

According to Seaver, "Seasonality and locality made sense to me early on." Seaver began his professional career working for popular D.C. restaurants such as Ardeo, Felix, and Greenwood. After years of invaluable kitchen experience, Seaver made his way to Hyde Park, New York, where he trained at the renowned Culinary Institute of America. During his schooling, he spent time in the kitchens of Tru restaurant and The Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton under Sarah Stegner in Chicago.

Upon graduating with honors, he immediately took a fellowship position at C.I.A. as a graduate teacher in both the meat and fish classes. Working in this hands-on environment taught Seaver the importance of proper handling and techniques of exceptionally fresh products, all the while giving him direct access to sources of fish through the eastern seaboard ports. Under the guidance of Chef Corky Clark, he learned to appreciate underutilized species of fish and became a proponent of sustainable ocean products.

Seaver is a certified sommelier through the Sommelier Society of America and is continuing his studies with Wine and Spirits Educational Trust in London. Recently, he was asked to join the Board of Directors of DC Central Kitchen as the culinary force behind the non-profits educational programs. Additionally, he is also active in the Slow Food movement, and recently cooked at the bi-annual Slow Food Terra Madre conference in October 2006 in Italy. Other organization involvements include the Chefs Collaborative, the James Beard Foundation, the National Restaurant Association, the International Seafood Conference, Chefs Congress, a culinary resource to the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Seafood Alliance. As a firm believer in the idea that chefs are the keepers of food culture, he is publishing a monthly article for the online newsletter for StarChefs.com.

In an effort to educate fellow industry members, Chef Seaver will address the issue of sustainability from the perspective of a chef offering solutions to common problems they face in their profession such as buying decisions and their responsibility as the definers of what is fashionable eating. Monthly columns are archived on the StarChefs.com website with new articles posting on the 15th of each month.

Striped Bass - Cleaning the Fish

This video will show how to cook striped bass including how to clean the fish.

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Striped Bass - Cleaning the Fish

Ingredients

 

1 large head broccoli

1T butter

1 ½ c diced onion

¼ c currants

Pinch espelette chili

1 ½ c olive oil, plus some to finish dish

8 cloves garlic

¾ c pecans

Juice of 1 lemon

1 T molasses

1 T cooking oil

4 5-oz. wild striped bass, skin on

Water

Kosher salt

Instructions

To serve:

Evenly divide broccoli between 4 plates, and top each with onion and currant mixture from pan.  Place a spoonful of pecan sauce, and spread out using back of spoon in front of broccoli.  Place bass filet so that it rests on broccoli.  Drizzle a little olive oil over the plate.

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Transcripts

Barton Seaver: Hi, I am Barton Seaver and in this segment what we are going to be doing is showing you how to fillet a wild striped bass. Its one of my favorite fish. The Blue Ocean Institute in their Seafood Choices Guide list this as one of the their 'Green List' species meaning its a very sustainable catch. Its coming out of Rhode Island, the fish that we have today but it comes all the way up and down the east coast. Its really a great story of sustainability. In the 1980s and early 1990s the fish had really almost disappeared but through a great cooperative interstate agreement, the entire east coast really made it so that -- the fish had a marvelous come back and right now its doing very, very well and its somewhat considered the king of the fish, so moist, rich and succulent. They have got a great flavor. Its a great angling fish. A lot of sportsman really love catching it. So we have got a nice specimen here. One of the great things about wild striped bass is you can always tell its legal because a whole fish will always have a tag saying where its caught. This one here is from Rhode Islands, absolutely beautiful, beautiful fish. So what we are going to do is start off by showing how to fillet it. This is how you fillet almost every fish. You just cut just above that fin right there, come out down through the stomach. Now again I would like to use a small knife because you have a lot of control over it. What we are going to do is then come right down the backbone of the fish and what that does is it's beginning to separate your fillet and it gets a little bit tricky in here as we come in over the spine, so you can see just in there, when you reach the spine, you want to come just over that and down the other side. Come out the tails, so you separate completely and then you begin to just whittle the fillet away. Now once you get to the rib bones, its where it gets a little bit complicated. The rib bones protect the belly and are just right up in here. So if you just go right over those and then you come straight down those rib bones and then you end up with the whole fillet coming right off, end up with this beautiful, beautiful slightly translucent pinkish flesh, gorgeous, gorgeous fish. So in the next segment I am going to be showing you how to take the fillet and then brine it. Thats one of my favorite techniques.

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