[Sca-cooks] Sharks

[Philippa Alderton]

--- "Pixel, Queen of Cats"
<pixel at hundred-acre-wood.com> wrote:
> So what exactly happens, chemically, when you
> marinate such fish in
> acids? I don't cook fish often, since Mom is highly
> allergic she never
> made anything besides the occasional fish stick for
> the kids, and thus I
> didn't grow up with it as part of my cooking
> repertoire.
>
> Margaret FitzWilliam

Well, any time you mix an acid and a base, you make a
salt. Some salts are healthy and tasty- some are nasty
and/or poisonous. Ammonia is a base, and a very strong
one, and it will dominate unless it encounters either
a strong acid, or a lot of a weak acid.

Milk works because the lactic acid counters the
ammonia, and because it is very digestible and tasty
for most folks of Northern European descent- Asians,
and certain other ethnic groupings might have a
problem (has to do with a genetic trait which
regulates the production of lactase, the enzyme in our
bodies which allows us to digest lactose, an essential
component of milk- don't you wish you never asked?)

This does not apply to most fishes- the ones with bony
skeletons, not the cartiliginous ones I was describing
in this posting.

When you marinate a bony fish in an acid, it
decomposes it chemically, not bacteriologically, in
essence, cooking it, or partially cooking it because
the chemical breakdown is very similar to what occurs
when heat is applied. There are certain absolutely
wonderful Mexican recipes (and no doubt others from
other cultures, of which I am unaware) which use lime
juice as the acid with the fish, producing a product
which tastes "cooked" even though no heat is applied.
I'm not talking here about the Japanese sushi or
sashimi, which is frequently, "just" raw fish....

Phlip

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/