[Free stuff by Wilfrid: December 14, 2009]
Why traipse up to Eli Zabar's E.A.T. on the Upper East Side to taste smoked whitefish? Even free smoked whitefish?
But an invitation is an invitation and I'm glad I accepted it. Partly because Mr Zabar (present) pours a good champagne, and partly because the story of the Bering Cisco turned out to be uncommonly interesting. Also, if it's good enough a party to attract David Rosengarten...
The occasion turned out to be a presentation of a relative newcomer to the city's battery of smoked fish appetizers, the cisco from the Bering Sea (a salmonid it says here, i.e. related to the salmon, trout and char). It was a joint effort by Acme, the veteran Brooklyn smoked fish supplier, and Kwik' Pak fisheries, a company concerning which you should draw no conclusions from the name.
I am not especially an icthyophile, but the saga of the Yup'ik fishermen would make a good book. Here's the short version. The Yup'ik form an eskimo community in settlements around the delta of the Yukon River in a remote part of remote Alaska. The fish of the river, eaten fresh or more often dried into a sort of jerky, had - along with moose - always formed the highlight of their spartan diet. Fishing became a commercial operation, however, some time toward the end of the '90s. The "lower 48" had developed an interest in wild salmon, especially from the Copper River, but theYup'ik had something even choicer to offer: the Yukon king. This salmon leaves the Bering seasonally and embarks on an absurd, against-the-tide journey, up two thousand miles of the Yukon River to its spawning ground (the Copper River salmon, in contrast, saunters a mere three hundred miles or so). At the outset of its journey, the fish is layered with rich, delicious fat - and that's precisely where it runs into the Yup'ik.
Realising the profit to be made from this catch, the Yup'ik formed a co-operative fishery, Kwik' Pak, to market it - the name means something like "great river," and has nothing to do with convenient packaging. Prosperity followed - for a while. The Yukon king turned out to be an unreliable beast. Some seasons it didn't show up at all, other seasons so scarcely that commercial fishing was not permitted. Some speculated that it was being trapped inadvertently in the vast nets which trawled the Bering Sea for pollock; others have claimed that global warming has reduced reserves of all marine life in the Bering, pollock and salmon included.
Meanwhile, in the midwest, the lake chub, the most popular creature from which that smoked appetizer known as "whitefish" is formed, was becoming scarce itself. Suppliers like Acme were concerned about continuing to fill orders. And then it was noticed that another fish hauled in by the Yup'ik, formerly the poor relation of the Yukon king, could substitute for the chub when smoked, and perhaps even surpass it. This is the Bering cisco, and is where we came in. Pass the canapés.
Fishing of the cisco is strictly regulated by the Alaskan government, and Acme is taking all that Kwik' Pak can supply.
