"monkfish" news and stories

At least, not unless you're absolutely 100% positively certain that it's actually not a puffer fish that was mislabeled as monkfish.

Two people in the Chicago area became seriously ill after eating homemade soup containing the mislabeled monkfish. The FDA analyzed the fish and confirmed that the fish, which was actually puffer fish, contained tetrodotoxin, a poison. If you have monkfish in your refrigerator or freezer, the FDA says to throw it out. In the meantime, the FDA is examining all imports from the Chinese company that supplied the mislabeled fish, and will take additional action, if needed.

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Up and coming chef Ben Sargent had just been given his very own half hour Food Network TV show--all about him and chowder, his specialty. With the sun barely up one morning in May, cameras followed him around the Fulton Fish Market. He stocked up on monkfish, live eels, and giant clams that looked like tubular aliens. The work was scrutinizing, but the last day on camera promised to be easy: a Brooklyn waterfront party where he cooked and his friends gnoshed. Like the cameras weren't even there.

The day arrived. Sargent happily and somewhat drunkenly prepared his chowder. He looked up, and Bobby Flay stood in the audience--the fiery haired Iron Chef, no less. Suddenly, Flay was on him, shaking his hand and challenging him to a chowder cook-off, right then and there.

This wasn't Sargent's show at all. This was Food Network's Throwdown with Bobby Flay and he'd just been had.

For the third installment of their hit series, Top Chef, Bravo wanted to take the competition up a notch by bringing in some very discerning judges: a group of forty 10-year olds. The theme of the whole episode seemed to be to make unappealing food appealing, both visually and taste-wise, to a group of picky eaters, hence the name of the episode: Nasty Delights.

The quickfire challenge, which awards immunity from elimination, at the beginning of the show dealt with octopus. Given a whole octopus, the chefs had 60-minutes to make it look and taste good - a difficult feat on any day, but compounded by the fact that some people had never really dealt with the ingredient before.  Braising seemed to be the cooking method of choice and the guest judge, Laurent Manrique of San Francisco's Aqua restaurant, had a difficult time judging. In fact, there were four dishes that he liked, but Tiffani's traditionally prepared octopus dish, brimming with Mediterranean flavors, was what won her the challenge.