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Hi, welcome to Local Flavor my name is Oystein Solberg, at the Institute for Culinary Arts,
so today we got a good old treat for you. We're going to show you guys something you
guys can, with a little bit of work, do at home and create your own little ecosystem,
which is pretty sweet. We are going to hear from a fairly new member here at the College,
he's been here a little over a year, his name is Mike Kaminski, and he's been building a
program for us, which basically means that it's a kind of aquarium that we grow stuff
on, it's very sweet. We're going to be cooking with some fish later today, so we're going
to go to Mike now, and then we'll be back later to show you how to break down his little
puppies.
Thanks, Oystein. Well we're here in our solar lab, which is adjacent to our greenhouses,
and today I'd like to show you our aquaponics systems. What we have here is basically a
150 gallon fish tank and the way this operates is that we have tilapia in here currently,
and we raise our tilapia in warm water approximately 80 degrees, and the water is then pumped up
this PVC pipe up into the grow bed, where the bed will fill with that warm water and
we actually have a colony of nitrifying bacteria, beneficial bactera, that is really the key
ingredient to aquaponics. What the bacteria does is convert the toxic ammonia that the
fish produce into nitrite, which is then converted to nitrate, which is the preferred form of
nitrogen that is used for plant fertilizer. So we have an organic source of fertilizer
for our plants that is produced naturally by the fish. The substrate that we use, this
media, is called expanded clay. It is very lightweight, very porous, it's an excellent
surface area for bacteria to colonize. The more bacteria you have present in your grow
bed, the better it is for your system. Again, their job is to convert ammonia that the fish
produce to a less-toxic form, then what happens is that less-toxic form, which is nitrate,
is taken up by the plants. The plants have a constant source of fertilizer, 24/7, that's
replenishing their nutrient needs. Then what happens is the water will drain, through the
plumbing back into the fish tank, and the nitrate has been removed, purifying the water
for the fish. It's a continuous cycle, ammonia is produced, it's converted, it's depleted
by the plants, and then returned to the fish tank. It's one organic cycle and it's really
what makes aquaponics work.
Hi, then we're back here again, thank you Mike for some of your wonderful insight into
your world of the fish. So in front of me here we have tilapia. So I'm going to show
you guys how to fabricate these, but they're a little bit tricky, they have an odd bone
structure, but I'm going to break one down and show you guys a couple of tricks that
makes life a little bit easier. So the tilapia have very thick scales, they're very tough
and if you serve them with the skin on, it's actually very delicious, you want to remove
those. This fish I have already done it on, I did it using a little tool like this, it
looks like an awkward hairbrush, you should never use it for that, of course, but basically
you just start from the tail and use this piece to scrape the scales off. This one is
already clean, so it's pretty easy, but be sure you clear a good area when you start
doing it, because scales will be flying everywhere, it will be a big ol' mess. You can try and
do it outside, but then all the birds will come and eat the scales, then it's all gone,
which saves a lot of time for you. This one I already scaled, so it's very easy. What
I'm going to do is I will use a flexible boning knife like this, and I will start going down
the spine, on that back fin right there, starting just on a back of the forehead of the tilapia.
And I'm just going to follow it all the way down. Stay as close to that back fin as you
possibly can. Then, when you get about halfway down into the filet, you will hit a bone,
you don't have to try and get through that bone right now, once you got a little bit
over halfway, that bone ends. What I do then is I go straight through the belly cavity,
and then cut back towards the tail fin. Lift that up, and you will run into those bones
that I did earlier, and then I'm going to cut straight through it all the way to the
head. Going onto the backside of that fin right there, and just follow the curve of
the gill, we can just cut the filet out of there. And that's the whole filet right there.
You'll do the same on both sides, like you just lay it on this side, and just follow
the back there as well, and you take it off just the same. So it's pretty straightforward.
Tilapia, compared to trout and salmon, the bones that we cut through earlier, they're
very thick and they're very rooted deep into the filet, so with trout and salmon, you would
just use tweezers to pull those bones out. You can't really do that with tilapia, because
you will mess up your filet. And that's not good. So, the billet piece is not very much
meat there, I find it's just easier to cut on the upper side of those bones, and just
cut it straight out. The bones end right there, a little bit over halfway. Then we'll just
cut that piece right out of there, because that's kinda gnarly stuff, so just set that
aside. Then we'll just trim the filet a little bit, it's just a little bit of fat that sits
over on
the
back of
the filet
and a little bit towards the belly, too.