All about Caviar
Caviar, or fish roe, is the ultimate luxury food, and in increasingly short supply. By Andrea Burgener.
My first encounter with the little grey eggs of the family Acipenser, the Caspian Sea sturgeon, was in the fridge of my best friend’s stepfather, when we were heartily uncouth 16-year-olds. Scouring about for an afternoon snack, we happened upon three tins of trueblue Beluga caviar, nestling innocently in a brown paper bag.
The combined thrill and shock elicited by the figures on the price stickers translated into a perverse craving to pillage the stuff. The purchase of something this costly seemed so offensive, so outlandish, that it simply had to be followed with more barbarous behaviour. There was a mad rush up to her bedroom with one just-opened tin as we heard tyres on gravel in the driveway, and we ended up positively stuffing the eggs back in order to get all evidence hidden in time. We never knew whether or not he missed that little tin, but I always feel a pang of guilt and shame when I think about the mindlessly rapid scoffing of something so precious.
But that’s the thing about caviar: even grown men and women react to the stuff with both irrational (and illegal) behaviour, and increasingly so as rarity and price climb. Caviar holds a mystique that is pretty much unrivalled, even making other symbols of bling dining – lobster, truffles, foie gras and the like – look somewhat pedestrian in comparison. Little wonder that James Bond – arguably the most urbane and thrilling fictional man of modern times – is inextricably linked to the stuff in the minds of both 007 fans and caviar lovers.
There aren’t that many instances of caviar consumption in the books, with Bond himself claiming to be more the sort of fellow who favours “the ordinary plain food of the country” (in fact he eats eggs and bacon in the original Bond books more than anything else!). But the fact that we remember the caviar meals more than the others is testimony both to Bond’s reputation as epicure and master of seduction, and to the roe’s mystique.
Of course, when Fleming was writing, caviar might have been a luxe item, but it definitely wasn’t as stratospherically pricey or rare as it is now. In fact, when Bond offers his Russian adversary Koskov caviar in the ’87 movie The Living Daylights, Koskov replies: “That’s peasant food for us, but with Champagne it’s okay.” Seems a facetious comment but, surprisingly, until the ’70s in Russia, this wasn’t far from the truth. It was viewed as the humblest of edibles. Legend even has it that the 19th-century Russian tsars’ children, poor dears, were regularly fed the rather disgusting meal of mashed bananas and caviar as fortifying nursery food.
And you thought tapioca pudding was dodgy! Outside of Russia, too, the stuff was abundant until the local sturgeon populations were wiped out. In early 20th century America there are accounts of it being served as a free bar-snack (an upmarket bar to be sure, but gratis nonetheless…).
The Caviar Stock Exchange
The price is now in a quite bizarre league of its own, and a tiny 50g tin at a good couple of grand is currently the usual restaurant serving. The caviar price per kilo (though always shifting, like a commodity on the stock exchange, and determined by the last auction price) is around 10 times that of white truffles or abalone.
Nowadays, sturgeon sustainability is the issue usually raised after any mention of caviar, but even as late as the 1970s there was little mainstream recognition of the problem. It’s incredible how quick the demise has been, considering the sturgeon has been hunted for its eggs since around 1100BCE. Estimates are that numbers for most Acipenser species are 96% down from just two decades ago (not forgetting that many of the world’s more regular table-fish are in the same boat, so to speak).
The biggest challenge to the sturgeon’s survival is its unusually long life cycle. Acipenser huso huso (beluga) takes anything from 18 to 25 years to reach sexual maturity; the sturgeons supplying osietra and sevruya caviar anything from seven to 12, and some females only spawn once in four years or less often. Mere decades back, the average size of a beluga female would be around six metres or larger (weighing thousands of kilos), but those creatures are now rarities. The fish are as remarkable as the eggs they produce: beluga has the longest natural lifespan of any fish – around 100 years – and is the largest freshwater fish ever to have existed on earth. All sturgeons share a lineage dating back to the Jurassic period, and have hardly changed since then. It’s clear why saving these creatures is of such importance.
What’s alarming is how much caviar available worldwide is still contraband – about 10 times more than the legal, sustainably fished stuff. Five countries currently share the depleted booty from the Caspian Sea: Russia, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Anyone who gives a damn about the sustainability issue should steer clear of all Russian caviar – since the USSR disbanded, Russia has shunned all conservation measures and sells no caviar internally or internationally that has been registered with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Iran is at the other end, with all its caviar being CITES approved. CITES guidelines are strict and pretty much the wild sturgeon’s last hope: if you buy this caviar you know that the harvester is committed to – among other things – replenishing stocks through intensive management of fingerlings, sustaining existing stocks through protection, and only harvesting at all after evaluation of stock levels every season.
In fact, CITES caviar might just be a better option than many of the other “wild” foods we’re currently buying with hidden sustainability and environmental issues attached. And much sustainability work is achieved as a result of the funds gathered from above-board caviar sales.
Still, Di Botha of Black Book Caviar – South Africa’s only CITES-compliant caviar supplier – reckons that farmed roe is the best choice now, in terms of giving wild sturgeon stocks the time they need to become sustainable. The eggs from these relatively hardy, farmed sturgeon, Acipenser baerii, aka Siberian sturgeon, are said to compare extremely favourably with the best Caspian caviar. Major producers currently are France, Italy and California.
If you really want to do the wild thing, be thorough in checking that your black gold is above-board: all suppliers, from wholesalers to restaurants, should be stocking tins which display the CITES logo indicating compliancy. If not, assume that the stuff’s contraband and/or past its sell-by-date, and give it a miss.
As for etiquette, many caviar junkies reckon that at their current rarity and price, eating them any other way but on ice and “nude” (the official term for caviar sans frills) is plain barmy. But if you like a little something to offset the intensity, pick a subtle item that won’t overshadow, such as quail’s eggs, baby potatoes or real blinis and a little sour cream. The aggression of capers, raw onion and lemon are seen as vulgar profanities by most. But whatever you marry your sturgeon eggs to, the numero uno rule is never to let the stuff touch silver. As with hens’ eggs, silver creates a weird reaction which negatively affects the taste, so mother of pearl (the most traditional and push-the-boat-out option) or glass or porcelain spoons are de rigeur.
And as anyone who’s nibbled upon the real thing knows, the uniformly ink-black eggs so often featured in sexy food shots are decidedly not real sturgeon caviar; these are (unsubtly) dyed lumpfish eggs. Sturgeon caviar, though its look varies, is never jet black. Beluga is anything from silver to dark grey, with the “eye” or nucleus of the egg visible, and has the creamiest flavour and mouthfeel. Osietra or osetra has a slightly golden-grey to brown hue and is prized for its nutty flavour, while sevruga sturgeon produce the smallest eggs – gunmetal grey and markedly more intense in taste than beluga. The farmed Siberian sturgeon is said to share the prized nuttiness of the osetra (it’s of the osetra species). True caviar must be labelled “malossol”, meaning that it’s very lightly salted (5% salt maximum); lesser eggs will be highly salted and pasteurised, which compromises both flavour and texture. And never, never freeze the stuff, just refrigerate. The shelf-life is long if the tin is closed, but once opened, devour the lot in a single sitting. No hardship surely.
WHERE TO GET CAVIAR
Locally, CITES-registered caviar – both farmed and wild are available – will be packaged under the label Black Book (meaning anything else you purloin is very much contraband and totally uncool to buy, sell or eat).
In the Cape
Direct from Di Botha at Black Book Caviar:
Tel 021 794 1052 or 083 300 4242,
email di@blackbookcaviar.co.za.
Restaurants
Balducci’s: Tel 021 421 6002/3
Belthazar: Tel 021 421 3753
In Gauteng:
Direct from La Marina wholesalers:
Tel 011 997 0500
Restaurants
The Saxon Hotel: Tel 011 292 6000 The Butcher Shop and Grill: Tel 011 784 8676
