Friday, June 27, 2008

Pap snoek



For some reason, people have been hitting my blog after searching for "snoek worms" or "parasites in snoek" (finding this old entry).


I found this nice article on snoek by Hilary Prendini Toffoli, in which she looks at the history and culture around snoek, and gets some tips from the "top" Cape Town chefs. She also expains what a "pap snoek" is...



It looks like some of the more high-end restaurants may have snoek on the menu (at least when it's in season) - for some reason it is not very common to see it in regular seafood restaurants (maybe because of the bones that make it a bugger to eat, ot the work needed to get it off the bone once it's cooked). You can usually find some frozen, smoked snoek at Snoekies in Hout Bay (and most grocery stores stick it too - at least they did back when I lived in SA).

I wonder how many people come in wearing the "I Love snoek" cap? (The correct answer is "not many"...)

3 comments:

Peter F May said...

My English parents spoke with horror and disgust of tinned snoek which had been supplied during WWII. It was their abiding memory....

Mark said...

Yeah, this is not only the case with snoek. A lot of fish that is now considered a delicacy started out as cheap canned fish, and was pretty nasty. Take salmon and tuna for example.

There was no way to transport fresh fish to people before refrigeration/freezing, so everything was canned and usually lost flavour, texture, etc.

Jeanne said...

Love the hat!!