Having fun is an important element of cooking and consuming different seafood products for important cuisine professionals like Ismael Prados, as he explained to SeafoodSource after a culinary demonstration that he made at Seafood Expo Southern Europe in Barcelona yesterday.
After his demonstration, “Having fun cooking fish and seafood,” where he used clams, monkfish and “cocochas” — the fleshy part of the jaw of cod and hake and considered a delicacy — he said of the title, “It is an allegory to say that it isn’t difficult cooking fish, basically.”
He also said “it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that when you disseminate for the general public the ‘markers’ of a process they are not the same that you have when you are in a professional kitchen, so, you have to find markers that people clearly see to raise awareness.”
Prados has written several cookbooks and recorded more than 900 cooking programs, and he is sure of the necessity for a commitment of everyone to spread and communicate the message that seafood can be fun.
“(Seafood) is a product that is considered basically as an enemy of the child nutrition,” he said, and added that only a "few cultures have done of the fish a central element." This, he said, is despite seafood being a food of protein richness as well as healthy fats and concentration of minerals.
He thinks there is a "certain ignorance" about how to prepare seafood products, and it is a responsibility of the industry and fishmongers to bring the products of the sea to the consumption of the population. It is there precisely where the spreading and communication comes into play to ensure the people test these processes and learn how to prepare the fish.
"Eating fresh fish is so important or it should be so easy for children as to lose the fear of the darkness or brush their teeth,” he said.
