A recent visit to Nantucket Wild Gourmet...Print this Page
I recently visited Peter O'Donovan of Nantucket Wild Gourmet in Chatham, MA to learn a bit more about their amazing products. We've been carrying their cold-smoked wild salmon, hot-smoked bluefish, hot-smoked albacore tuna and cold smoked haddock since we first tasted them and our customers have become converts from the more common farmed fish that is more readily available.
The smoked fish from Nantucket Wild are perfect examples of the type of food we want to bring to our customers. All of the fish is line caught in the wild. The salmon are only king salmon from the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bluefish and haddock are locally caught off the coast of Massachusetts. Each fish is prepared by hand from filleting, boning, smoking to slicing. These are all important factors as we hope to support a more sustainable manner of fishing by way of supporting a local artisan.
Peter is a native of West Cork Ireland, where he trained at the prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School. He learned the art of cold-smoking salmon by working with Sally Barnes of Woodcock Smokery in Ireland, winner of many awards including two highly coveted Gold Medals in the 2006 Great Taste Awards given by the Guild of Fine Food Retailers in the United Kingdom. Peter has also trained at Peter Kump's Cooking School in New York City (now the Institute of Culinary Education), and Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco.
Nantucket wild is best known for their cold-smoked wild king salmon which is delivered to us every other week by Marco who, if we're lucky, will stay to do a tasting of the fish in our store. The king salmon is a massive fish - more than five feet in length and about 2 feet across. These wild fish are caught in the cold waters of the Pacific during the time when the fish are busy feeding which results in plenty of muscle and fat. Their color is natural of course (farmed fish are fed pellets of dye to give them their bright peach color) and it varies from fish to fish from an ivory white (just 5% of the catch) to a deep orange color.
The fish is flash-frozen on the ship and is delivered to Peter and Marco in Chatham MA. The first stage of preparation includes hand filleting, pin-boning and salting. The salting begins the process of curing the fish and removing moisture which results in a concentration of the delicious flavor. Each fillet is treated differently depending upon the size of the fish and on the fat content in the flesh. Once the salting is complete, the fillet is washed and dried and put into the smoker. The smoker burns a pesticide-free wood brought in from Canada and sends a cold smoke (about 65 degrees F) into the smoking chamber full of fillets. Each fillet is tested as it smokes and removed once Peter feels that it has the balance he is looking for.
Once sufficiently smoked, the fish is removed, sealed in a vacuum package and placed in the cooler for aging. After a week or two of aging, the fillets are removed and painstakingly hand-sliced into various size packages for retail sale.