Some find it simply disgusting with its large glabrous scales, its small eyes apart, its large gaping mouth surmounted by barbels. Others have tasted his flesh, once a long time ago, and held for life an unpleasant taste of vase. One in the other, that it is hard to (make) eat catfish!
The biggest freshwater fish in Western Europe is dragging a very bad reputation in its wake. In Switzerland, where he is endemic in certain lakes like those of Neuchâtel and Morat, she is inherited from the not so distant time when professional fishermen were capturing in their nets only a few specimens of Silurus glanis By year, fortuitously, while they were targeting the poles and Corégones which traditionally have the favors of gastronomes. They had neither the specific technique to catch them, nor the experience to prepare them, nor the critical mass of sockets to improve. We ate the default beast, and even those who love it today often hated it.
Obviously
But times change, and with them, the fauna of our lakes. The stars fish from our plates are becoming increasingly rare, while catfish proliferates. The trend will not be reversed soon: the “big mustachioed” is the great beneficiary of global warming, he has no other predator than man, and he can live several decades. In food terms: this is a wild animal protein available locally in abundance, at an incomparable ecological cost with that of poles raised in Eastern Europe, and at reasonable price – in a country that lines its lake shores of terraces specializing in fish kitchen.
In other words, and even if small to medium specimens must be preferred to large who will have had time to accumulate undesirable substances, its consumption should be obvious.
There remains the problem of taste … but it is no longer one. Over the past ten years, young professional fishermen, determined to break with the crisis that affects their sector, have been closely interested in catfish. Carried by a spirit of innovation, they learned to fish it, to prepare it, to prepare it, in short, to correct the errors which previously made its unpleasant flesh. Their fresh and smoked nets are attracting more and more award -winning restaurateurs, but still struggle to find thanks to “pole fillet factories” which can be understood, fear that their customers are not ready to change their paradigm. However, there are every reason to do so.