Seafood is no stranger to everyday German food. But nobody knows exactly how much of it we consume. The statistics do not show how much of the almost 14 kilograms of "fish and seafood" consumed per capita and year in Germany belongs to the latter type. Numbers are only available for domestic ships and catches - and they are not particularly up to date either.
According to the Hamburg fish information center operated by the companies and associations of the marine industry, in 2013, for example, only 46 boats from the coastal fishing fleet comprising more than 1,500 vessels were specially equipped for mussel fishing. This means that 4781 tons were fished - less than was produced in aquaculture (5036 tons). In 2011, 16,000 tons were fished from the sea. Everything else is hardly recorded statistically, but a tiny amount compared to the 220,000 tons of catch fish per year.
There is no official definition of what "seafood" is. In common parlance, crustaceans such as lobsters and crabs are referred to in addition to shellfish (mussels, snails, but also squid), but often also edible marine plants (algae, swellers). Even freshwater shrimp and crayfish are mostly included. They appear on the menus as pasta "Frutti di mare" (Italy), in France as "fruits de mer", or in Portugal as "frutos do mar". They eat their "marisco".
But no matter how you call this pasta dish, the taste depends on two criteria: the freshness of the seafood and the quality of the crustacean base used. There are also funds in the jar to buy in well-stocked supermarkets, but they stink so well against knowledgeable home-made extracts that you should really do the work.
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Main course for 4 people: recipe for spaghetti mariscoThe meat yield is disastrous with a net meat content of around 25 percent measured on the total weight of the crustaceans. Fortunately, you can extract all these delicious funds from the shells and tanks. There are two different versions: An elegant, light broth without roasted aromas is created by gently boiling the carcasses. For the stronger dark crustacean jus, the shells are grilled in the oven, flambéed with cognac or aniseed schnapps and then cooked with white wine and fish stock.
Because of the carcasses alone, today's hobby kitchen recipe "Spaghetti Marisco" requires complete, not too small prawns with skin and head - also from the freezer. These sea animals are roughly divided into cold and warm water shrimp. From a culinary point of view, the colder the water in the natural habitat, the higher the quality of the crustacean meat. Warm water animals must not be consumed raw. If the shrimps are from South America, they are usually called "Gamba", and if they are large and red, they are called "Camarones".
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The sizes on packs of frozen shrimps are also complicated. They follow the system of how many shrimp (tails without head, with shell, raw) together weigh one British pound, i.e. 453.59 grams. The lower this "caliber number", the larger the individual shrimp. Caliber 16-20, for example, corresponds to 35-44 pieces per kilogram with an average weight of 25 grams. The smallest frozen worms weigh 5.5 grams (caliber 71-90), the largest (caliber U7 - less than seven) an impressive 65 grams.
For our "Marisco", the typical fruits of the sea are added to the noodles as an inlay in addition to the tail meat of the shrimp: mussels, sepia in rings plus their small tentacles, anglerfish and some diced white fish fillet, for example from hake. If you like, the recipe can be supplemented with clams, garnet, water snails, crabs or pieces of pulpo. It is common to all these inserts that they have to be cooked before the noodles are cooked and in the end they only have to be folded in.