My Plight with Fish

I believe my fish allergy to be my one major impediment when it comes to food and my quest to become a Top Chef/Next Food Network Star/Iron Chef judge. And no, this isn’t one of those fake allergies that people claim to have (i.e. cilantro) when they really just don’t like it. My reaction can cause hives of face, mouth, and throat if ingested and tends to be very unpleasant. I can almost immediately tell if a dish contains an unwanted ingredient, even the likes of fish stock or even fish sauce. Now unlike most people with fish allergies, I am actually able to eat shellfish and other such creatures of the sea (i.e. shrimp, lobsters, scallops, mussels, octopi, etc.), but run into trouble with your more everyday sea creatures (i.e. salmon, trout, halibut, tilapia, catfish, etc.). I’ve been told I got the good end of the deal yet I feel like I am missing out on so much good food!

This proved to be a slight issue in culinary school when we were tasked with filleting and then preparing various underwater delectables. One of the mantras of culinary school is “taste everything,” and as you can see this may have been slightly difficult… Even when handling fish I would always need to use gloves or else my hands would start to itch. (Just the other day I was brazenly working with fish at the restaurant without gloves and ended up with hives all over my face—not fun.) I would taste all of the components on the plate that didn’t touch the fish, but I was never able to sample the complete and finished product to see—and taste—exactly how I had fared. By some miracle of God I was actually pretty good at the fish station. It all became  a science for me. I would watch the chef instructor intently to ingrain in my mind all of the cooking steps for each dish—like how much salt and pepper was used to season the fillet, and how long the sauce should cook to develop the right flavor. I can fairly confidently say that I can cook a piece of fish to perfection, but every now and then run into some trouble with the accompanying sauce and may have to outsource the taste-testing responsibilities to some gracious helper (they better have a good palette!). 

However, one thing that always intrigued me was my ability to safely eat tuna salad. My mom’s macaroni and tuna salad was one of my favorite meals/snacks as a child. I would devour the stuff any time it was made. It never really occurred to me that I was eating something that usually caused me pain until a couple of years ago, but then I thought it just may have had something to do with the fact it came from a can. One afternoon I decided to test this theory. While interning at Food Arts I went with the editor to a press event at Eataly where they where showing off their program highlighting various regions in Italy. They served us a three course meal complete with wine pairings, and the main course so happened to be tuna. Partly to test my tuna theory and partly to quell my hunger, I decided to put fork to mouth and see what happened… 

Nothing! I’ve been cured! Or rather, I think I may have found a fish I can eat. Some light research on the matter has taught me that it is often the case where there are certain species of fish that one with an allergy can safely consume, but there isn’t really a good way of discovering what they are other than trial and error. This new knowledge hasn’t led me to go out and buy up all the tuna I can find, but it has let me try a bite off another person’s plate here and there to expose myself to more flavor profiles. (Plus, the taste of fish sometimes makes my stomach a little queasy after 20+ years of my usual reaction to it…)