Friday, July 10, 2009

Caviar

The history of caviar production is not quite clear. Exactly when and who came up with the idea to extract roe from fish, certain fish at that, and to eat that is not possible to verify. It is believed that in ancient Persia certain references which were obtained referred to caviar ingestion, where this practice was correlated as imbibing of some sort of an elixir. The word caviar seems to be derived from the original Persian name for a sturgeon and its roe. Sturgeon is a sweet water fish, the family of sturgeon encompasses 26 species, whereby not all of them have been and still are harvested for their roe. It is the most precious caviar variant of all, whereby harvesting of sturgeons in their natural habitats is currently forbidden, because the sturgeon became an endangered species due to uncontrolled harvesting.The most popular sturgeon variant harvested for caviar is the beluga, although other relatives are being used as well. The roe from the sturgeon is of black color. The red colored roe which is also quite popular, but is more affordable, is won out of salmon. Salmon are anadromous fish, which means they exist in salt and fresh water. They are born in fresh water, but they tend to migrate out into the ocean, whereby they are native to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Interestingly enough, salmon can also be found in the North American Great Lakes. It is believed that the salmon return to their originating place to hatch.The production of caviar is generally a very nasty business. The fish is clubbed with something over the head and then the ovaries are being extracted. Some more sophisticated farmers remove the roe from sturgeon fish surgically and allow the sturgeon to survive in order to harvest the roe again at a later time. Since Russia followed the rest of the world and stopped the illegal harvesting of sturgeons and allows only professional farming of sturgeons to produce caviar, the Iranian sturgeon caviar became the most imported Beluga caviar in Europe. The United States have imposed an import ban on any Beluga caviar, in order to help avoiding the endangered species to survive.Beluga caviar is the most expensive caviar in the world, where one kilogram of this roe costs somewhere between two and seven thousand Euros. Lesser quality sturgeon, like Sterlet or Kaluga, cost approximately the half that amount, whereby salmon caviar is deemed cheap, with the price per kilo ranging anywhere between one hundred to five hundred Euros, depending on the quality and the percentage of salt.

Linus Orakles
http://www.authorclub.info/

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