Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/10/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]So where does the smoked sturgeon at Zabars or Barney Greengrass come from? On 10/11/06, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin@optonline.net> wrote: > > > > I'm not much of a kipper fan but I love all forms of smoked salmon, > gravlax and whitefish. Some of the best smoked fish in the world is > made by the Hansen smokehouse on the Hudson River a few miles north > of my house. Hansen (http://www.hansencaviar.com/) has been in > business for over a century and a half and got its start smoking > sturgeon. Sturgeon was once so plentiful in the Hudson estuary that > it was called "Albany Beef" and served as a cheap staple food for > Irish laborers who were building New York City. The Hansen site is > interesting because it has century old pictures of the sturgeon > fishery with 200 lb. fish stacked up like cordwood on the docks. > Hudson River sturgeon caviar was said to rival the best Beluga > caviar. I can't say for sure if this is correct but the few times > I've sampled it, it was excellent. Barrels of caviar were exported to > fish egg lovers in Europe. In the 1890s you could get a big plate of > caviar in Luchow's restaurant for five cents. Naturally the sturgeon > were fished almost to extinction. All sturgeon fishing is now > prohibited in the USA and the Hudson estuary fish are making a slow > comeback - probably about 50 years before former levels are restored. > > A couple of years ago a former local commercial fisherman who does > occasional maintenance jobs for us caught a pregnant sturgeon > (illegally) in a snare. His father, one of the last caviar processing > plant workers, declined to process the eggs into caviar saying "It's > not worth the effort to treat only 30 lb.. of roe." The caviar lovers > in the community were heartbroken. To keep on topic, I took some > pictures of the dead sturgeon with a Leica IIIc with a 50 mm f3.5 > Elmar, a camera produced while the sturgeon fishery was active. > > Larry Z > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >