'Dirty Waters, Dangerous Fish'

Farmed salmon is steamed in a clay pot with bok choy, and topped with fried, crispy onions at Simply Vietnamese in Tenafly. Brown rice is available.

Here is an eye-opening video about how basa fish are farm-raised in Vietnam:

'Dirty Waters, Dangerous Fish' 

Judging from the comments, the video was made public about two years ago.

Why a two-year-old video is circulating now is unclear.

But K.T. Tran, chef-owner of Simply Vietnamese in Tenafly, said she recalls a customer brought up a concern with basa fillets from Vietnam a year to a year and a half ago.

Since then, Tran said, she believes the United States has taken steps to ensure that frozen basa fillets sent here are from certified fish farms free of pollution.

Tran also said she is considering switching to U.S.-farmed catfish.   

On Saturday night, we had dinner at Simply Vietnamese, where I have enjoyed basa fillets a number of times.

Basa is a type of catfish that is also called swai or Pangasius.

On Saturday night and on a previous visit to Simply Vietnamese, I chose another seafood dish instead of having my usual basa fillets in a coconut curry sauce with bok choy and brown rice.

Food safety experts generally recommend buying seafood farmed in the United States, if you can't find wild-caught fish.

Simply Vietnamese doesn't serve any wild fish, so I ordered farmed Salmon in a Black Pepper Sauce on Saturday night as an alternative to basa.

The controversy over basa fish isn't going to keep me from enjoying one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the metropolitan area.

At Simply Vietnamese, two other alternatives to basa are shrimp in a coconut curry sauce, above, and greenshell mussles in a ginger-wasabi sauce, below.

A green papaya salad with mango, above, and pho with pork, below.

Simply Vietnamese, 1 Highwood Ave., Tenafly;
201-568-7770. BYO, free street parking. Seafood entrees are $18.50 and $19.50.
   

Where to find food-safety horror stories

The safety of basa fillets from fish farms in Vietnam is under scrutiny.

Today, I'm providing a link to U.S. Food Safety, which calls itself an "award-winning food safety blog."

I don't think this is a government agency (it's a .com, not a .gov), but the site carries announcements from U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

I'm also going to list U.S. Safety in My Blog Roll, which you can find on the right side of this page.

Here is the link: http://blog.usfoodsafety.com/

Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the farming of a Vietnamese catfish called basa.

The fillets are frozen before they are exported to the United States, where they appear on menus at Simply Vietnamese in Tenafly and other restaurants.

This appeared on a site called Vietnam Talking Points in 2010:  

http://talk.onevietnam.org/cause-of-death-consumption-of-basa-fish/  

Food safety experts have said repeatedly that if you are going to buy farmed fish, including tilapia, salmon and catfish, make sure they were raised in the United States. 

Even better, buy your farmed fish at Whole Food Market, the only retailer I know that pledges the farmed seafood it sells is free of antibiotics, preservatives and other harmful additives. 
 

Tough talk on farmed seafood

Image by Corscri Daje Tutti! [Cristiano Corsini] via Flickr

A farm in Iceland. Whole Foods Market buys salmon from  a fish farm in that country.

Whole Foods Market sells a lot of farmed seafood -- usually not my first choice when I'm looking for a non-meat meal -- but its standards are high, as the store's blog explains:

High standards for farmed seafood

One issue the Whole Story blog doesn't discuss is whether the farmed salmon it sells is artificially colored. That's necessary because farmed salmon are not fed wild salmon's natural diet -- shrimp and krill -- which give them their color.

Costco is catering to Korean customers

Image by The Toad via Flickr

Costco has always been popular with the growing population of Korean-Americans in North Jersey (the discount merchant has warehouses in their native country). But now, the store in Hackensack is starting to stock kimchi and ramyun -- two staples of the Korean diet.

For a couple of years now, I've watched Korean customers load their carts with enormous packages of beef and farmed salmon (they don't seem to appreciate the benefits of wild fish and naturally raised beef and pork). 

But several weeks ago, there were samples of a new item -- cabbage kimchi -- being given out. I looked at the label and MSG was among the ingredients, so I continue to get my kimchi at Gaboh Inc. in Englewood, where the Arirang kimchi is made without that artificial flavor enhancer. And last week, I saw a woman with a big package of  instant ramyun bowls. I asked her if she thought the noodle soup was cheaper at Costco than at H Mart, the chain of Korean supermarkets in Bergen County, and she said yes.


This afternoon, my wife returned from Costco with 20 packages of Nong Shim-brand spicy instant ramyun that my son has been eating for a couple of years, because of the relatively low sodium content (photo). At $12.99, it works out to about 65 cents per serving, compared with $1 at H Mart for a package of five.

Fairway Market's latest sales circular

Fairway Market in Paramus, grand opening (Wikipedia)

There isn't much of interest to me in the Fairway Market sales circular I got with today's Record. Prices are good from today through Sept. 11 in Paramus.

USDA Choice beef brisket is selling for $2.99 a pound -- no extra charge for the antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products that were probably used to raise the animal. Yummy. 

If you want kosher brisket, the price is $9.99 a pound, but there is no mention of whether the animal is raised the same way as for the cheap stuff..

Want some kosher, artificially colored farmed salmon? Only $6.99 a pound, compared with $8.99 for fresh wild sockeye salmon at Costco. Artificially colored, smoked farmed salmon is selling for $16.99 a pound, compared with $13.99 for a pound of Costco's smoked wild salmon.

Refrigerated Sabra hummus is $1.99 for 7 ounces and $3.99 for 17 ounces. I'll stick with the canned Libano Verde brand hummus I get at Fattal's in Paterson, $1.09 for 15 ounces. (You add olive oil, powdered garlic and lemon juice.)

Fairway does have good prices for organic milk: $2.99 for a half-gallon of kosher, grass-fed milk and $5.99 for a gallon of Organic Valley milk.

You'll also get a deal on a Murray's rotisserie chicken for $5.99 (weight not specified). Whole Foods Market in Paramus charges $7.49 for a similar rotisserie chicken, though it is probably larger.

Murray's poultry is hormone- and antibiotic-free and is raised on a vegetarian diet, and takes less time to cook than ordinary chicken. Let's hope the Paramus store doesn't overcook them, as the Harlem store did when I first tried a Murray's rotisserie chicken years ago.

Copper River salmon and Costco: Perfect together

On my weekly visit to Costco in Hackensack today, I found fresh wild sockeye salmon from the Copper River in Alaska for an unbeatable price, $9.99 a pound. I read that a seafood restaurant in Bergen County is charging $36 for a portion of this glorious fish.

My wife was wowed by the color -- a deep pink-orange that makes artificially colored farmed salmon seem even paler than it is. And all of us were bowled over by the taste. I cooked mine for barely nine minutes in a 350-degree oven and the rare fish just melted in my mouth. The portions for my wife and son were baked for about 12-13 minutes and they were moist and delicious.

I bought a 2.3 pound fillet and cut it into eight portions. I did three with a herbed seafood  rub (Costco) and the rest with salt, Aleppo red pepper and chopped parsley from the garden. The five portions left will go into my daily breakfast fish sandwich -- with homemade low-fat yogurt cheese, organic spring mix, tomato with za'atar and a slice or two of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Now that's good eating.

Last year, Costco kept the fresh wild salmon coming right into September, so I plan to prepare it through the summer. 

What you should know about farmed catfish

I try to avoid farmed fish altogether. For example, farmed salmon is artificially colored, but many people buy it because of the low price. Now, I've read something about farmed catfish that has really opened my eyes.

In the April issue of the whole deal, a monthly publication from Whole Foods Market, the supermarket chain said: "Despite its popularity, typical catfish farming practices across the U.S. don't measure up to our standards. Fortunately, we found a farm that does! Our supplier partner in North Carolina raises catfish the natural way without antibiotics, hormones, algicides or land animal by-products in the feed."

What are animal by-products? They are bits of dead animals such as chickens, cows and pigs, and waste from catering businesses, restaurants and so forth that find their way into fish and animal feed. That's why it's so important to buy poultry and meat raised on a vegetarian diet.

I just Googled farmed tilapia and came across a number of entries reporting unhealthy fats in that popular fish. So stick with wild salmon (fresh or frozen), trout, sardines, anchovies and other fish.They are easy to find because markets are now required to label fresh seafood by country of origin and whether it is wild or farmed.