1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 437: Taste
"Isn't grouper very difficult to catch? Now you can catch so many at once?"

Du Ziteng was very surprised. If groupers were as easy to catch as they were now, and he could catch a lot of them at once, he wouldn't have to worry about not being able to get good groupers.

"Take a closer look first." Liang Ziqiang brought a bucket to him.

"What's different this time?" Du Ziteng squatted down and scooped up several fish in a row, including blue spots, tiger spots, brown stripes, and honeycombs.

Liang Ziqiang noticed his expression.

At first, Du Ziteng didn't notice much. After reading a few messages, he looked up and asked:

"This fish of yours is quite interesting. Compared to the wild groupers that we usually catch, the spots on its body seem to be a little darker, but if I don't look closely, to be honest, I can't really notice it. But if you say that this is a farmed grouper, it doesn't look like it..."

"why?"

"I have seen farmed grouper. It seems that someone in your Peng'ao County also raises them. The color of those spots is even darker and grayer than this one. They are completely different. So I said it was strange. Yours is slightly different from the wild ones, but the difference with the farmed ones is even greater! What's going on?"

"Brother Teng is indeed very careful in his identification! How should I describe this fish? It can be considered semi-farmed. It is mostly wild, but also has some farmed elements!"

"Half-farmed? How can that be possible?"

Seeing that Du Ziteng was puzzled, Liang Ziqiang told him about his experience of raising groupers near deep-sea reefs. He also told him that there were plenty of natural fish, shrimps and plankton nearby, and basically there was no need for too much artificial feeding.

"No wonder, it's hard to tell whether it's wild or farmed. But Aqiang, since there's a farming process involved, I can't say for sure what it tastes like. To be honest, someone came here to sell farmed grouper before..." Du Ziteng pondered.

"What's the matter?" Liang Ziqiang asked anxiously.

"Not very good. The appearance of his grouper is different from yours, it's a little darker, as I said before. But this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that when the chef cooked the fish, the customers felt something was wrong as soon as they tasted it. They said the grouper in our store was inferior, as if they had eaten fake grouper. The meat is not as firm, it's soft, and not very fragrant. Even the color of the meat is white with a hint of gray, not the snow-white color of the wild one!" Du Ziteng explained the difference in detail.

Generally speaking, the taste of farmed grouper is definitely different from that of wild grouper, and in the mouths of experts and foodies, the difference can be so great that it can make a world of difference. Liang Ziqiang is certainly aware of this.

In terms of nutrition, wild grouper absorbs relatively rich natural marine minerals, which is different from farmed grouper.

In fact, what Liang Ziqiang fears most is that the grouper he raises is not wild enough, and the meat ends up being soft and lacks sweetness.

So before coming here, he had already killed a grouper and tasted it. At least one thing was certain, it was definitely not the soft, bland and tasteless fish that Du Ziteng described.

He thought there must be a reason why others developed such meat quality.

"How does he raise the fish? I guess he definitely doesn't raise them on a deep-sea reef island. Does he raise them in a village pond?" Liang Ziqiang guessed.

"That's right. To be honest, it's a smart idea for you to think of farming grouper. But who is as bold as you to farm it in the deep sea? He is from Jinhao Town, so he rented a lot of ponds in the village, and then used water pumps to pump seawater into the ponds for seawater farming. It's said to be pure seawater grouper, but the taste is not good, far worse than wild one!" Du Ziteng revealed.

Speaking of this, Liang Ziqiang remembered it.

In April last year, Director Qi of the County Fishery Station and his team visited several individual breeders to encourage the development of aquaculture.

One is the oyster and abalone farm of Lao Qiu on Piaomu Island, which is the oldest one; one is the shrimp and crab farm in Hongqiao Town, which is not large in scale; and there is another one which is farther away, in Jinhao Town, which raises grouper.

Stationmaster Qi and his team first visited the three companies mentioned above, and then came to Changwang Village the next day to learn about Liang Ziqiang's shrimp farming situation.

Now Du Ziteng mentioned the grouper farming in Jinhao Town, which should be the same one that Stationmaster Qi visited at that time.

It turns out that the grouper farm in Jinhao Town pumps seawater into ponds, and then raises grouper in the village ponds. This saves trouble, but the meat quality and taste are of course far inferior to that of wild grouper.

Liang Ziqiang also used the village pond to raise prawns. The reason why he could guarantee that the taste was comparable to wild prawns was because he had the means of "artemia" in later generations. Otherwise, the taste would be impossible to talk about. Having said so much, back to the grouper in front of him, Liang Ziqiang could not force a price, so he decided immediately:
"Brother Teng, how about this? You pick two or three fish from any bucket and ask the chef to prepare two or three dishes according to their usual recipes. The hotel staff can try them themselves or send them to customers as extra dishes. I don't want any money anyway. After you try these fish, we can talk about the price later!"

"I think it works!"

Du Ziteng did not just take from one bucket, but took from three buckets, three different groupers.

A blue stripe, a brown stripe, and a tiger stripe.

I went to the kitchen and immediately told the situation to several chefs and asked them to cook a few more groupers.

Hearing that the idea was to taste the texture of the grouper, several chefs almost unanimously recommended steaming it.

Because steaming can undoubtedly bring out the texture of the grouper meat.

But Du Ziteng thought about it and thought that he couldn't steam all three, so he decided to steam one blue stone grouper and one tiger grouper.

As for the brown-banded grouper, it is made into black bean and pepper grouper. In this method, the grouper needs to be cleaned and cut into sections, and then stir-fried with shallots, ginger, garlic, black beans, and chili peppers.

Although the method of cooking black beans and peppers will affect the taste of the original flavor of the meat, it also allows you to try the flavor of Liang Ziqiang's grouper when it is cooked into different dishes.

The three chefs were busy at the same time, and soon all three dishes came out.

Du Ziteng asked the waiter to bring one of the steamed grouper dishes to the private room, as a free gift to the regular customers of the room. Of course, after eating it, he had to ask them to talk about the taste and their experience.

There was one plate of steamed blue grouper and one plate of brown grouper with black bean and pepper left, so I called the chef and Liang Ziqiang to come over in the kitchen to taste them.

As soon as the chopsticks were put down, one of the fatter chefs spoke first:

"This isn't a grouper caught in a normal place, is it? I remember it was two years ago. Our restaurant received this kind of blue grouper, the meat was firm, tender, and sweet. The groupers we received in the past two years were all wild fish caught from the sea by different fishermen, but they were just a little bit worse than the batches two years ago!"

"Two years ago?"

Du Ziteng also took a bite of the steamed food, savored it, and then seemed to be thinking about something.

"Those batches two years ago, weren't they the grouper goods you sent to me, Aqiang?!"

Two years ago, in the second half of 1983, Liang Ziqiang and Lin Baixian repeatedly caught various groupers on Wuming Island and sent them to Yuehai Restaurant. Later, due to the destruction of cat sharks, the groupers on Wuming Island almost disappeared, and naturally the supply of groupers was cut off, and Yuehai was no longer supplied with groupers.

It's just that the fat chef only knew that there were a few batches of good goods at the time, but he didn't notice that they were sent by Liang Ziqiang and Lin Baixian, so he said the above words.

But after Du Ziteng thought about it for a moment, he remembered.

Liang Ziqiang chose Wuming Island to breed grouper recently because of its unique environment. It is not surprising that the taste is similar!

"Indeed, I also remember that there were several batches of wild grouper that were very good two years ago. The fish on the plate, although not exactly the same, is the closest to those batches of grouper!"

Another chef tasted the dish with two chopsticks and nodded in agreement.

Hearing the chefs' comments that the farmed grouper was better than the wild grouper from ordinary waters, Liang Ziqiang immediately understood that the price was a foregone conclusion...

(End of this chapter)