Hey Roy!

I enjoyed your post on the social stuff.

Roy:
>Is it the case that fish is marinated in vinegar
>(ex: Japanese saba/mackrel) or in lemon juice
>(ex: spanish chervice (sp?)) is intended to
>eliminate parasites?
>
>If so, how long does it take to work?
>I'm not really that hung up on parasites,
>but I wouldn't preclude trying this out if
>the RAF was suspect.

I don't know of any research that has been done on marination, but some
gossip...

In Peru, ceviche (marniated/spiced raw fish) is something of a national
dish, yet a cholera outbreak was blamed on its consumption--while at the
same time marination was held up by many as a anti-parasite method. :/
Coastal cultures as reported by Weston Price and others sometimes consumed
varying amounts of their seafood raw, but also some (most?) cooked. Yet
they maintained a very high state of health. Simply cooked seafood, in my
guesstimation, is more good than bad.

I recommend ceviche to everyone who I end up talking to about it. Clearly,
even a lemon-only marination "cooks" it to a degree. Most fish flesh
becomes whitened away from its more transluscent-ish native state. The
taste is altered significantly. Yet, except for the rawist, who cares?
Marinated is less denatured, one supposes, than cooked. And anything that
gets a SAD eater to consume more simply prepared seafood is probably a good
thing...

>On the negative side, I guess one would totally
>subvert the taste change. For instance, I really
>like saba, and don't appear to get a stop.

I have inadvertantly eaten saba in my early days at sushi bars, before I
experienced undenatured mackerel. Very different, and I'm not surprised you
didn't get a stop. Even frozen/thawed mackeral has no clear stop and tastes
different.

>On an unrelated note, I thought that carpaccio
>would be an easy way to explore yet another
>dimension in RAF. But I was told that it is
>actually (proscutti?) rather than raw
>as advertised. I would be interested in
>finding out if anybody can authoritatively
>rule either way

I have read a bit about the various curing methods. They all, more or less,
destroy the taste change otherwise who would eat it? Most low temp curing
relies on lots of salt. I don't think there is any easy way around it: real
aged RAF is not terribly convenient, and is a do-it-yourself project for
the most part...

The "solution", however, is quite easy: just don't eat your animal foods
instincto ;) but once you do...you're hooked. :)

Cheers,
Kirt