Bottom Feeders - From Carp to Catfish

Scallops, prawns, oysters, red snapper, tuna, salmon... lately I have been craving fish. Not such a good thing to crave in the middle of a dusty desert. Here, most of the food is heavily meat-based (think kebab)... even other food like kefta, dolma and lahmajun are made with, filled with or covered with mutton or lamb. Sigh! I have even relented and taken to eating it when chicken or vegetarian dishes are not an option.

But occasionally, when eating out, I can order fish. However, this fish - a local river fish - is filled with little bones that seem to be entirely disconnected from the spine of the fish (hence impossible to easily remove). A little research would seem to indicate that this fish (which local people have as yet to confirm for me) is carp... a fish I never would have eaten even while living in North East Asia as it is a bottom-feeder.

Hence whenever I see something "exotic" in the supermarkets, I snap it up, even if I don't know what it is. Last week I saw frozen fillets in Aya supermarket and thinking that this might be bass, I bought it. I even cooked it as bass (which, although edible, wasn't so nice as the flesh wasn't as white or as nice a texture). As an afterthought I decided to check the wrapper and discovered that it was actually "Basa" not bass and that it was from Malaysia. I looked it up. Turns out that this is a kind of catfish originally from the Mekong Delta. Fishermen keep them in cages tied to the stilts keeping their houses above water. Great... ANOTHER BOTTOM FEEDER! (Just what Kurdistan needs)

This picture actually has nothing to do with the post. I post this picture for my mother's benefit since she might be amused to find that in the past 3 weeks, Canadian canned fish (tuna, oysters, mussels and herring) from her little Maritime province are suddenly available in every supermarket!