Raw Fish Quotes

“Why's the pavement on this chard tart all green?" my mother asks. She's never trusted me and probably thinks I've let it go moldy. "Because I've put chopped dill and chives in it. It looks better and it makes it lighter too." My father spits it out. He doesn't like herbs. He thinks they're for girls and for cattle. My mother's the only person I know who calls a pie crust a pavement. I think it's sweet and can pardon her the offense. Has she forgiven me mine? The raw tuna marinated in cébette onions is a success I regret. It cost a fortune and it's so easy to do it's soulless. It's the sea they should be thanking, not me. My own vanity is intoxicating. I've made the decision: no more raw fish.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“The plate the waiter now set before her looked like an abstract painting: vivid green shot through with bright-coral slashes.
"Taste!" he urged.
It was clearly a fish but so sweet she did not recognize it. Looking at the color, she hazarded a guess. "Salmon? Or maybe not. It doesn't taste like salmon."
Troisgros looked very pleased. "That is because it was caught just this morning in the Allier, our local river. But also because we preserve the color by slicing the fish very thinly and searing it for just a few seconds."
"So it's almost raw?" She wasn't sure about this.
"In Japan they eat their fish raw."
She took another bite; the herbal sauce flirted with bitterness. "The flavor is so green I feel I'm eating color."
"Sorrel." He gestured to the waiter, who removed the plates and then set a single small bird surrounded by sliced fruit in front of each of them. "Sarcelle aux abricots," he announced.
"Sarcelle?" Stella did not recognize the word.
"It's a freshwater duck," said Jules. "I can't remember the word in English."
"Teal," Troisgros supplied.
Stella closed her eyes and tried describing the flavor. "It tastes wild." She began to dream herself into the dish as if it were a painting, imagining a golden field in the sunshine, feeling the air rush past, hearing the sound of her own wings. Circling in a great joyous arc, she spotted a tree covered in tawny fruits, breathed their perfume in the air.
"I wanted---" the chef was watching her--- "to give you the essence of the animal. To let you taste what the duck ate on her flight through life.”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel