I recently impulse bought some scarlet snapper at a grocery store where I normally don’t buy fish. It looked and smelled fresh, The flesh looked firm, the eyes were clear, (startlingly clear, actually) etc.
I was going to cook it the next day for a weekly get-together, but things came up and I tossed it in the freezer (yeah, so sue me) and let it defrost in the fridge a week later. It still seemed fresh when I stuffed the spices in this morning, but the flesh/skin wasn’t as firm (probably due to the freezing I thought)
I grilled them, and removed the flesh from one for a friend who’s squeamish about bones. When I first broke the toasted skin I got a whiff of something unpleasant -a cross between ammonia and saffron- which dissipated immediately, but seemed to cling to my cooks apron for hours. The fish seemed fine after that, with no residual scent or detectable problem. A small cautious sample tasted normal to me. I set it aside, not wanting to risk serving it and went to change my shirt.
I should mention that my spice mix included a commercial frozen sofrito that I’d never used before {I usually make it fresh, but I was in a rush, and I’d been curious about the frozen stuff anyway), and a tragi-comedic paella accident several years ago left me hypersensitive to the scent of saffron. I can smell it cooking from down the street, or tell if a cabinet has been used to store the threads in a sealed container. It’s really quite freakish. If saffron smuggling ever becomes a major problem, I’ll give sniffer hounds a run for their money.
My friends, knowing they were expected, let themselves in while I was upstairs, and began to lay waste to the fish and everything else I’d already set out. By the time I realized they’d arrived it was too late. [Barbarians!] Anyway, all of them said they didn’t detect anything untoward.
It’s been six hours, and if any of them died since, it was too quick for them to reach a phone (I’m their first call on medical stuff in general, and if they associated it withthe fish, I’m sure they’d want to curse me out)
Still, I’m curious about that smell, which was quite annoying and persistent on my clothing, if not the food. It’s possible that there was saffron in the sofrito, and I overloaded my oversensitive schnozz, triggering ammonia overtones - but I didn’t detect any hint of saffron taste in the fish.
Then I remembered the praeternaturally clear eyes on the snappers. Is there some new fishmonger trick, like daubing with a weak ammonia solution, to keep a fish’s eyes clear and bright?
Like many guys my age, I consider myself something of a gourmet cook, but I’ve never experienced something like this. I’m also far from squeamish: I’ve travelled widely, and am known for being willing to try any food once (and usually enjoying it). In fact, my biggest complaint back in Gross Anatomy was that the appearance of many tissues in the cadavers made me hungry.
Have I been lucky enough to avoid some hidden pitfall of suboptimal fish? Does commercial sofrito contain things normally reserved for those weird bottles of fluorescent fish-labelled liquid in the back of the oriental market? (No, not the Thai fish sauce, kêchap or that stuff that preceded Worcestershire sauce - I consider those normal)
Any other hypotheses I’ve overlooked??