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Faux "mojarra"?
Has anybody ever eaten mojarra? Or tilapia? Would tilapia be considered an
ethical substitute for mojarra? My continuing search for culinary adventure led me to one of many small Mexican restaurants in the San Fernando Valley, where I was intrigued by the offering of "mojarra frita" on the menu on the wall... It has been said that crispy fried mojarra is a Mexican "favorite"... One can't expect fine dining in a storefront diner where the customer walks up to the counter and orders from a menu on the wall behind the counter, but, I would at least expect that what I ordered was what I would get... The "mojarra" was nearly incinerated, and lay upon the plate amongst the rice and beans, glaring at me with its withered eye, and was served with head and tail... The "mojarra" looked vaguely familiar, I had eaten something like it in China, but it looked like something else I'd been familiar with in the past, I couldn't put my finger on it. I went ahead and ate it. A tiny bit of fish bone stuck in my throat and irritated it for hours... The incinerated "mojarra" had its revenge upon me... I asked my amigo Jaime, who is from Arizona, what a "mojarra" was, anyway... Jaime replied, "Don't talk to me about 'mojados', it's not polite"... Jaime is partially deaf, so I explained to him that a "mojarra" was a kind of fish, not an illegal alien. Being from Arizona, Jaime had little experience with sea food, and didn't know what a mojarra was... I researched "mojarra" on the web, and found that a mojarra is a food fish that lives in the ocean, but sometimes swims up rivers, it's related to a perch and has a rather disk-shaped body with a tail fin that splits in two lobes like a goldfish's tail... I saw pictures of Yellow-fin Mojarra and Silver Jenny that didn't look at all like what I had eaten.. My web research also found references to "tilapia" being substitued for "mojarra"... I remember reading about tilapia many years ago. Tilapia were being considered for commercial use as a food fish about 50 years ago, and are finally being sold in supermarkets in the last few years... Tilapia are a fresh water fish from the alkaline lakes of eastern Africa, where the natives are starving and would rather die of starvation than eat a tilapia. They were said to have more repugnance for eating fish than Europeans would have for eating a worm... And I finally recognized what the "mojarra" I'd been served really was, from the pictures on the web. A squarish, lantern jawed fish with a flaglike tail that didn't resemble the real mojarra, it turned out to be a tilapia, an African mouth-brooding cichlid which I had once kept for a pet in my aquarium! The mouth brooding tilapia that I used to own would carry their eggs around in their mouths until they hatched and would provide refuge for their fry after they hatched... That's why tilapia are more successful in overpopulating whatever body of water they inhabit or are introduced to. They protect their young. There is a pond in Balboa Park in the San Fernando Valley. The pond is filled with partially-treated sewage from the local water treatment plant. The pond is swarming with tilapia, and people fish for the tilapia. I suppose they ignorantly take them home and eat them... Recebtly, I have been seeing tilapia in the sea food section of my local supermarket. I suppose that's where the restaurant that sold me my "mojarra" got their fish from... The tilapia is related to the mojarra though. They are both members of the perch family... # * 0 * # ^ |
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