Sunday, September 7, 2014

Whitefish livers

Whitefish livers!
Cruise Caption Sherman of Apostle Island National Lakeshore informed me about whitefish livers. One can only find them in Wisconsin's Bayfield, USA. A small sleepy fishing town of the Great Lakes' Lake Superior.
Legend is that it all started in 1940, by a local restaurateur Greunke who learned this culinary art from visiting Scandinavian fishermen.
Whitefish is a silver-colored fish averaging about a half kilogram of weight.
Its meat is white and delicate in taste, not strong or fishy.The livers, which are about the size of a chicken's, are also delicate but hard to freeze and perishes easily. Locals consider it as an aphrodisiac.These fish are netted in open waters in the summer and through the ice-fish in the winter.
Why this delicacy is rare?
because, it takes about 70 fish to produce a kilo of livers. Also the fish is going extinct and this makes it 'too much time for too little money.'
Mary Rice, owner of most popular restaurant- Maggie's, a spot with pink famingo's includes Whitefish Livers in her menu.
As we went inside this small pink den, first thing we did was to order this rare and unique dish.
They look like pale pink chicken livers dusted with cornmeal and flour, served batter-dipped and lightly fried with salt, peppers and mushrooms on toast with lemon wedges and tartar sauce. They were indeed delicious.