River Cobbler

[crisper]

Hiya.. whaen I was in Asda today.. looking for inspiration for tea... I was looking along the fresh fish counter..and saw River Cobbler... never seen or heard of it before.. can anyone tell me what its like...and how to cook it!..Be nice to try something new! Thanks everso.. x

[DTCwordfan]

havent seen this before - could taste like freshwater leather though........

[Mick-Talbot]

http://www.theanswerb...k/Question925310.html

[crisper]

Lol DT..I'm not trying it til I find someone who has.. mind you..alot of my cooking has a leathery texture! lol

[DTCwordfan]

you may or may not not want to try it - look what I have just found

Watchdog has had several emails about a fish called river cobbler which is on sale at Asda and Tesco. It's also on sale at Sainsbury's where it's called basa. It comes from Vietnam and its proper name is pangasius.

Some of you looked it up on the internet because you'd never heard of it before, and came across all sorts of horror stories claiming it's fill of toxins, such as arsenic, toxic metals and harmful pesticides.

Lauren Antony from Lanarkshire emailed us to see if we could investigate this further and enlighten the nation, so we had a go.

Five tests
We sent a fish we bought in Asda to a lab, where the scientists did five tests to see if they could find some of the things the internet reports suggested they would.

The lab told us they couldn't find detectable levels of any of those substances - which to all intent and purposes mean they weren't there.

Now, as we only tested one fish, we can't say the scare stories are a load of cobblers - but we found no reason why anyone should worry.

The supermarkets say they've done plenty of their own research too, and maintain that they wouldn't sell any product that they weren't confident in anyway.

[crisper]

Thanks mick.. hmm.. sounds a bit iffy... pollouted rivers and all that!!

[DTCwordfan]

This part is true as to the pollution of the Mekong as I had comparative results alongside thePearl River that flows down from Guanzhou to H-Kong

Pangas are teeming with high levels of poisons and bacteria. (industrial effluents, arsenic, and toxic and hazardous by-products of the growing industrial sector, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and its metabolites (DDTs), metal contaminants, chlordane-related compounds (CHLs), hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (HCHs), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB)). The reasons are that the Mekong River is one of the most polluted rivers on the planet and this is where pangas are farmed and industries along the river dump chemicals and industrial waste directly into it

[DTCwordfan]

you cook it like sole apparently - a neutral taste so would need a sauce - possibly enriched by the pollutants?

[TonyV]

name rang a bell with me and a quick google gives you variation from this
http://www.jamieolive...iewtopic.php?id=26991
to this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...ed_river_cobbler.html
Might have remembered name from channel 4 fish week they did recently. Realise links ar'nt recent but they at top of page. You decide!!!

[DTCwordfan]

Tony - my view exactly - some mackerel here, fresh out of the sea today, as I am on the Carrick Straits near Falmouth today... grilled, some black ground pepper and a smidge of butter.....

[jackthehat]

It's delicious..............ignore the scare stories.

[Mick-Talbot]

I still buy it for my fish chowder.

[tiggerblue10]

I've eaten Pangasius at work. They served it up as fish and chips in our canteen. It was quite nice and I though it was tastier than cod.

[TonyV]

Jack .. All the toxins mentioned by DT will not kill / make you ill immediately necessarly, but some will have a cummulative effect. It's all depends on an individuals assessment of the risks. Only slightly off subject, but why don't we use lead in paint, water pipes or petrol anymore?

[jackthehat]

TonyV - I take it you have read and digested the scare stories surrounding Pangasian ?
I have, and the counter arguments against.

I stand by what I said.

[TonyV]

Jackthehat - yes have read both sides of the debate, understood and digested (no pun intended). I was just giving what is obviously my decision and you yours lol

[bimbo123456]

I have been buying battered basa fillets from Morrisons for some time. They are ridiculously cheap but taste just fine. Still got all my hair and no side effects so far. Don't understand Brit fascination with cod. It is white and tastes of fish...so what???

[jack daniels]

I've answered on the link Mick has posted and I had some river cobbler
aka catfish
aka basa
aka vietnamese river cobbler fish
the whole of my family like it - even the teens who aren't keen on fish

Anna x

[scotman]

Rick Stein, on his latest trip around the Far East(on TV some time ago) spoke quite well of it but the pictures of the river it came from did not give me confidence.