The State of Salmon

Here’s a stumper for you: Which state produces more troll-caught king salmon: (a) Alaska (b) Washington (c) Oregon (d) California?

The answer: California. In fact, with the exception of Alaska, it’s California by a landslide. California trollers, operating mostly from Monterey north, took about 5.2 million pounds of king salmon last year. That compares with 4.6 million pounds from Alaska, 1.8 million pounds from Oregon and about 93,000 pounds from Washington.

Still, finding California fish in your grocery store can be tough. It’s not labeled as such, so the best thing to do is ask the butcher.

The vast majority of salmon sold in this country is farm-raised (the U.S. produced more than 30 million pounds of salmon last year, Canada more than 90 million), so you’re better off looking at small, independently operated fish markets.

“There are roughly 30 million people in this state, and the national per-capita consumption of salmon is about 1 pound per year,” says David Goldenberg, manager of the California Salmon Council. “With only 5 million pounds of fish, you can see we don’t have nearly enough to go around.”

King salmon aren’t your everyday salmon. In the first place, they’re wild. Farmed salmon, while cheap and reliable, don’t have the depth of flavor that wild salmon do.

Also, these are Pacific king salmon. Most of the farmed stuff, even on the West Coast, is Atlantic salmon. Even aside from the issues of food and exercise, these are a different species.

Finally, and perhaps most important, these fish are caught the old-fashioned way. Rather than being raked aboard by giant purse seines or gill nets, they’re caught one at a time by individual fishermen.

“One line, one hook, one fish,” Goldenberg says. “That’s almost a half-million fish landed one at a time.”

Apparently it pays off. In a recent tasting in the Bay Area, when compared to farmed and Alaskan wild salmon, California came in first.

Farmers’ Market Report

Things are a little shook up at the Norwalk Tuesday market. Because of construction at its normal site across the street, it is being held in the parking lot behind Excelsior High School for the next couple of weeks. That certainly doesn’t affect the produce, which reflects the area’s rich blend of ethnic influences.

Perhaps the most amazing stand is run by Fresno’s Lao Xiong, who sells an incredible variety of Southeast Asian specialties, including the shoots of such plants as bitter melon, Thai chile, long bean and squash. The farm also supplies gai lan (Chinese broccoli), bok choy and long beans. There are also si gua (silk gourd), opo and bitter melon. Eggplants include light purple Thai and black Japanese.

Andre’s Farm in Orosi also has a wide variety of Asian ingredients, including long lavender and green Filipino, round black Indian and Thai eggplants, bitter melon, silk gourd, daikon and kabocha squash.

As if that’s not enough of a draw, Valdivia Farms from northern San Diego county is at the market with its usual assortment of squash, including lots of babies, yellow and red currant and Roma tomatoes, and speckled dragon’s tongue, haricots verts and Romano beans.