April fools | The Press

What fish can you eat with (almost) peace of mind? The investigation of The Press on Chilean salmon, published in the fall of 2022, had cut the appetite of many consumers. But—hooray! — there are a few eco-responsible choices, including Opercule’s Arctic char. And this is not a joke.

Eve Dumas

The Press

urban fish

Raised right here in Montreal, Opercule’s Arctic Char is a sustainable and delicious alternative.

A salmonid native to Quebec, the char is rich in a host of vitamins and minerals, D, A, omega-3, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, etc. Its genetics are close to those of trout. At Opercule, which buys certified disease-free eggs, the fish is raised without antibiotics, pesticides or growth hormones.

Certainly, it is not tomorrow that urban fish farming will feed Quebec, or even the metropolis. But if the model proves to be as effective in the long term as it seems promising today, it will undoubtedly have small ones.

The Opercule fish farm is located in the basement of the Agricultural Center, rue Legendre, in the Central District. She started marketing her beautiful specimens about two months ago. “In July, some will have reached 1.5 kg,” co-founder Nicolas Paquin proudly announces, while we observe the char in one of the five large basins where they stand in a tight school.

This is not the case for all species, but the Arctic char likes to live close to its fellows. So that makes it a good farmed fish. Casually, there are around 25,000 fish from the 2021 generation and 50,000 toddlers from the 2022 generation, at Opercule.

The good tables

Several excellent Montreal restaurants have them (or had them) on the menu, such as Foxy, Knuckles, Montreal Plaza, Lawrence and Ratafia, among others. Candide’s chef, John Winter Russell, was an early tester and customer. He admits to being a “huge fan” of the product.

At Knuckles, chef Vincent Lévesque Lepage is preparing one of the finest fish dishes we’ve seen recently. He gently confits the char in camelina oil — another of our Quebec gourmet treasures — then serves it with a smoked mussel sabayon and sorrel jus. The whole is punctuated with small marinated chanterelles whose vinegar contrasts with the richness of the sauce. An adapted version of the recipe can be found below.

“It’s impossible to have fresher fish in Montreal,” exults the chef, who produces very gourmet cuisine using ingredients almost exclusively from here. The sorrel in his recipe comes from the Tulsi urban farm, close to Opercule at the Centrale agricole. Both products are delivered by bicycle by the company Roue libre.

In the grocery store

But it’s not just professional chefs who have access to exceptional char. Opercule’s “peaches” have made their debut in a few grocery stores: IGA Duchemin, Metro Ville Mont-Royal, Metro Westmount and the Conserva grocery store on Plaza St-Hubert. So it is possible to cook this beautiful fish at home.

The fishmongers receive the whole char and can fillet them. The cost is between $22 and $27 per pound for fillets and $16 for whole fish. It can be candied, steamed, roasted in the oven, grilled on the barbecue, etc.

The particularity of char is the delicacy of its flesh, both in taste and in texture. The slaughter method has something to do with it. The fish are first ‘stunned’ and then bled. At Kenauk Pisciculture, director Cédric Philibert, who studied aquaculture in France for four years, even pours a few drops of clove essential oil into the water of fish before slaughter, which puts them to sleep. downright.

David Gauthier, chef at Bar St-Denis, is one of Kenauk’s very few customers, due to his privileged relationship with Denis Ferrer, restaurant sales manager. The former director of the late Cerfs de Boileau is an employee of the company located in Montebello. The latter has brought its fish farm up to standard in recent years, after a few decades of dormancy.

Fish farming on the shores of Lac du Poisson Blanc is primarily intended to produce trout for stocking. Her fish is in such demand in the lakes of Quebec that she does not supply. But Denis Ferrer loves working with the restaurant industry too much not to keep a few good catches for him. This is why there are also char ponds.

Around Christmas, the fish even arrive with their bellies full of eggs that chefs like David Gauthier hasten to collect, brine and keep in the freezer. “It’s really an exceptional product,” confirms the man who worked at Pied de Cochon before opening his own restaurant with Emily Homsy. On the menu until recently, its fish with white butter, leeks and blood sorrel was punctuated with beautiful orange eggs.

Other beautiful addresses with higher volume such as the Montreal Plaza have decided to work with the two fish farms. Closer to Quebec, restaurants work with char from Pisciculture de Charlevoix. One thing is certain, there is room for quality farmed fish on our tables!

A brief history of fish farming

Fish farming has been around for thousands of years. In China, for example, we have always put fish in the rice fields to fertilize.

But fish farming has had a very bad press in recent decades due to its intensive use of water, antibiotics and pesticides, as well as the lack of filtration of wastewater that was discharged into lakes and rivers. . Fortunately, filtration systems have improved a lot in recent years and ecological awareness has awakened.

“Today, the production capacity of a fish farm in nature corresponds to the capacity of the adjacent watercourse to receive a certain amount of nutrients. The water may be filtered through many stages, but there is always a small amount of nutrients that are soluble in water,” explains Cédric Philibert, from Kenauk.

At Opercule, capacity is mainly dictated by the size of the facilities and market demand, since the water (from the City of Montreal) is 99.8% recirculated in the system.

Arctic char, brook trout or arctic char?

Arctic char and arctic char are the same fish (salvelinus alpinus), which can live only in fresh water or be anadromous (stays at sea, then spawns and winters in fresh water). Brook trout (salvelinus fontinalis), is a speckled trout. Opercule and Pisciculture de Charlevoix raise pure Arctic char, while Kenauk raises brook trout.

Candied Arctic char

A recipe by Vincent Lévesque Lepage, chef at the Knuckles restaurant

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

• 2 Arctic char fillets, about 150-200 g each, with or without skin
• 150 ml camelina oil*

Ingredients for the sabayon sauce

• 3 egg yolks
• 50ml water
• A handful of green sorrel (replace with parsley if you don’t have sorrel, but in this case add 10 ml of lemon juice)
• 1 C. salt
• 3 drops of liquid smoke

Toppings

• Marinated chanterelles (or other marinated mushrooms)
• Blood sorrel (can be replaced with dill)

Preparation

1. Heat the camelina oil in a frying pan at minimum until it reaches 55 ^ohC. Place the fish fillets in the oil at 55 ^ohC and let confit for 13 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, pour some water into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Place a cul-de-poule on top to make a bain-marie for the sabayon sauce.
3. Put all the ingredients for the sabayon in the blender and blend for a maximum of 45 seconds. Pour this mixture into the bowl of the bain-marie and whisk vigorously. The liquid will foam and cook at the same time. When he reaches 65 ^ohC (be careful not to burn your hand while holding the cul-de-poule), remove from the heat and set the sabayon aside with a lid.
4. Once the fish is confit, gently remove it with a spatula and place on absorbent paper to remove excess oil.

Assembly

1. Place the fish fillet in the center of the plate.
2. Pour the sabayon sauce with a spoon to cover and coat the fish.
3. Add pieces of marinated mushrooms everywhere and finish with blood sorrel or dill.

* Camelina oil is marketed by the Quebec brand Signé Caméline. Its products are available at many points of sale across the province.