Life of fish

How did we end up here?

We are farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), born to be baked in the oven. We are from the salmon family, an oily fish with pink flesh. Our ancestors were first identified in the Kamchatka peninsula in Siberia. The name ‘mykiss’ has nothing to do with my kiss. I don’t have a kiss and even if I had one, it wouldn’t be fatal.

We live in fresh water and are extremely adaptable, therefore widely farmed around the world. We are probably the most common species of trout around, spawning wilfully and leading other species to extinction. But our natural habitat is still the Pacific Ocean, and our wild cousins only swim into freshwater to breed.

But the real magic of our existence lies on the dinner plate. We have a tender flesh and a mild, nutty flavour. Our wild cousins taste better because of their varied diet and plentiful exercise, but we are high in vitamin B and our flavours are appealing enough for anyone to salivate when cooked with our skin on. Guess what, we can be cooked as soon as we are cleaned, no scaling, skinning or filleting required. In fact our tender meat holds better when cooked with our skin on. Skin is also good for our image. Photographers are more interested in clicking us with our skin on than our disintegrated fillets. Personally we prefer skin on too, because sans our skin we could be any fish, and then people won’t know that we are trout.

We have had uneventful lives, feeding on worms, leeches, flies, mosquitoes and beetles. But that doesn’t mean we have not grown up to be healthy, virile adults. That’s how we have earned our orange stripe.

We don’t know a world outside the well aerated pond we grew up in, but our instincts tell us that there was a bigger, saltier world outside with such broad spectrum of food that one cannot even begin to imagine. Plus there was the opportunity of seeing the whole world. But we don’t regret that in our pond. Our wild cousins can have all the fun for us. All we need to worry about is how quickly we can propagate another generation of trout, then reach the dinner table.

‘Trout’ is a proper English name. But its origins are more embarrassing. It probably originates from Greek troktes – a kind of sea fish that nibbles. We ain’t no nibbler for sure, except when we are eating stuff from the side of the pond. Otherwise we generally prefer swallowing our food whole. Thankfully our name was given such a long time ago that people nowadays don’t know the origins and think of ‘Trout’ as a proper English name for a fish.

But how did we end up here? After centuries of consumption, man was convinced that we were delicious in any form, so they started farming us, for food and also to protect our population which was declining in the wild because we were being eaten by humans so much.

Anyway, nowadays we are a very popular feature at supermarkets. This is great for our species, but for some reason not entirely satisfying because we have lost our exotic nature. We are reaching kitchens worldwide at a very fast rate and this is putting immense pressure on us to perform, to shine and to differentiate ourselves from other species and from our cousins in the wild. Generations of breeding has made us the strongest species of trout in the world, and this is affecting trout diversity.

Other species of trout from different parts of the world are not being able to cohabitate with us. We are reproducing at a high rate and driving them to extinction. Our superior virility also means we love to reproduce with other species, such as the cutthroat trout, giving birth to ‘cutbows’. We don’t especially like the name either. Why on earth those trout are called cutthroat trout we will never know. Someone needs to sack the humans responsible for naming trout.

So this is how we ended up on this tray, by sheer numbers and adaptability. And flavour too. Here we are seasoned with a coriander marinade and they have also stuck lemon slices where our guts were supposed to be. Hope they enjoyed the meal. Otherwise our existence would be futile!