Excerpt of article in EUROMAN(*) January 2005

Canned food for millionaires

Caviare is for the few, actually fewer and fewer, but there is hope for those who love egg sandwiches de luxe............

Jesper Uhrup Jensen went to Bordeaux and experienced that farming of sturgeon in France is so advanced that Russian Mafia bosses may really begin to feel intimidated by their trade.

The article taking up five pages is very well illustrated starting with a full page photograph of an open tin of caviare and a spoon ready to carry the roe to the expectant mouth; 6 other photos provide an insight into the various steps of the process.

The writer finds that the Gironde landscape is somewhat uninteresting, underscoring the bleakness of the terrain and the business-facilities, which are certainly not enhanced by the environment of the company STURGEON.

The different types of caviare are explicitly described, i.e. beluga, sevruga, oscietra, baerii.

Prices are - of course - mentioned!! ::
Iranian Sevruga (30 grammes) Dkr. 775
Iranian Oscietra (30 grammes) Dkr. 825
Iranian Beluga (30 grammes) Dkr. 1710

compared to French Baerii "Caviare de France" (30 grammes) Dkr. 349.
Rosssini Caviar is importer and has sole rights for Scandinavia -

tel.: 3313 5333, www. RossiniCaviar.com.
Because of doubtfulness about quality and origin, Rossini Caviar does
not trade in Russian caviare.

The serving of caviare
Caviar fundamentalists eat the gray/black gold on its own, cooled on ice and with a small spoon made from bone - or of gold, if it is to be so depraved. One must never use silver spoons, which oxidize and give the caviare a fishy taste, nor is steel optimal, the alternative is actually a plastic spoon. Two may well share a tin of 30 grammes, but it is more fun to have it by oneself. Take the tin out of the fridge about ten minutes prior to serving, but do not open it until a second before eating.

Caviare is a delicate food, which is not part of the making of a meal, but is added at the end - as a sprinkling, or carefully made part of a sauce or some such. The Russian classic is to serve caviare with blinis, sour cream and vodka in quantity.
Jacob de Neergaard at Søllerød Kro (renowned top end restaurant) is probably the Danish cook playing most and best with caviare. De Neergaard even has a dessert, where caviare join ice cream and chocolate.
It sounds odd, but it is really simple chemistry, which make it melt tastefully and perfectly together. The inspiration comes from Heston Blumenthal, whom, at the English cult restaurant "The Fat Duck", devised the combination caviare/white chocolate."

Caviare is a rather fatty food, and the cholesterol contents is high, so a healthy eat in bigger quantities it is not. On the other hand you might say that if one's health is threatened by too much caviare, it is deserved.

Observers of the caviare market, a.o. Jacob Marsing-Rossini, who has sole rights for French caviare in Scandinavia, is in no doubt that a total
ban on fishing sturgeon in the Caspian Sea will become a reality within two to five years.

"The massive illegal fishing, still going on in the former Soviet republics, and Russia's total lack of respect for the natural breading places of the sturgeon means that the stock of sturgeons in the Caspian Sea never has been more threatened. For the same reason I believe that the Scandinavian caviare market in a few years will consist of 90% farmed caviare", says Jacob Rossini.

He adds that it speaks for the farmed caviare (Caviar de France) that quality is high, production not only stable, but rising, and last but not least: the price is attractive compared to Caspian caviare, actually more than half.

In so far as taste goes, many blind tests among cooks and caviare knowledgeable has shown that even experts find it difficult to define differences. As with so very many other farmed food, captivity does not taste, so long as the bird, who hatch the golden eggs, has lived in a golden prison. And that is precisely, what the toothless shark, a.k.a. the second-generation Acipenser Baerii is doing in its Southern France exile.

(*) EUROMAN is a monthly magazine published by Egmont Mags. (3rd
largest mag. publ. in Scandinavia)