Lavrach - delicacy fish: description, lifestyle, cultivation and recipes

Many gourmets love fish that have almost no bones. In the menu of restaurants it is offered under the name of sea bass, sea wolf, sea bass, spigol, Lubin and so on. There are some names for some reason, but we are talking about the same fish - lauraka.

Description

Lavrakov is referred to ray-ray fish and is considered to be a family of craters.

Lavrack (sea wolf) - a fairly large fish. The body length of some individuals reaches 1 m. Weights of this fish can gain about 12 kg. And live in a natural environment laurel is capable of up to 15 years.

Laurac is a fish with an elongated body covered with small ctenoid scales. The body is silvery on the sides, and the back is of a greyish-olive shade. The upper edge of the gill cover is adorned with a dark patch whose edges are blurred. Young seabasses are often decorated with dark spots on the body, but with age they disappear.

Dorsal fins have division, but the gap is small. The first dorsal fin has 9-10 spiny rays, the second has 1 spiny ray and about 13 branched soft rays. Anal fin consists of 3 spiny and ten soft rays. Pectoral fins are pointed, and the caudal fin has a characteristic notch.

The teeth are located in a wide band in the central part, and closer to the edges of the band narrow.

Lifestyle

It can not be said that the life of a sea-wolf has been thoroughly studied. Some believe that the laurac is a single fish. But only adult large individuals behave this way. Lavrac feels calmly in the open sea. However, in the warmer months, it often enters cozy lagoons and visits estuarine river areas. In winter, the seabasses move away from the coast, moving to greater depths, into colder water.

But not everyone agrees with a single way of life. Sometimes the laurac is a schooling fish, but the flocks are small and consist mainly of young animals.

This species of fish multiplies in December-March. The spawning takes place once a year. It is pelagic near the bay. This means that in it a low protein content and small eggs rise to the surface of the water. The mass of eggs is not sticky, each smooth and colored in a bright color. The embryo develops on the order of 3 days, for this it needs a temperature of no higher than 14 ° C. Larval growth takes about 40 days. At first they are very small (3 mm).

To grow from the larvae, it takes more than three months. Almost 80% of the hatched larvae for this period are killed. Fertility of one female reaches 200 thousand eggs for each kilogram of its body weight. The sexual maturation of individuals depends on the habitat. In the Mediterranean, for example, it comes at the age of 3-4 years, and in the Atlantic - at 4-7 years.

Where does the fish live?

Populations of the laurac are common in many seas of the Atlantic Ocean. This fish is caught in the Atlantic - from the coast of Norway to the coast of Senegal. Minor catch of the laurac is on the coast of Morocco. In addition, this species enters the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

Why so many names?

It so happened that the laurac is a fish with many names. This is due to the fact that the species quickly gained popularity in the places where it began to catch. And the fish were given a name that became popular with the delicacy. So, the Spanish fishermen gave the name "Lubin" (which meant "sea pike-perch"). Italians called the laurac the sonorous word "brunzino", it can be translated as "sea bass". But the word "sea bass" appeared in Russian restaurants. The English name sea bass, which also meant sea bass, was simplified to sea bass. So it was easier to pronounce.

Economic importance

Laurac is a commercial fish, but it is not allowed to catch it in large quantities. In many countries this species is listed in the Red Book. However, the demand for fish without small pits is quite large, it is bought by restaurants and housewives.

It is especially convenient to prepare dishes from this fish for children, because the fish is very tasty and has a small chance of injuring the baby with a bone. The situation was controversial: demand is limited, but supply was found. Lavrak made an object of aquaculture.

In vitro cultivation

For those who like the laurac, the fish caught in the sea are much more valuable than the artificially hatched fish. But in any case, the popularity of the sea-wolf does not fall. On the shelves of our stores is most often fish, bred in captivity.

For breeding seabass, the pond method, the so-called basin cultivation and the cage method, is used. Pools for cultivation are filled with salt water. And with cage culture, cages can be placed in lagoons or estuaries. Most often, they build a crossing, along which there are cages with fish, which are equipped with pneumatic feeders.

Connoisseurs know how to distinguish a lauraka, grown up on the will and in an artificial pond:

1. With artificial cultivation, the carcass of the laurel is fleshier, thicker and shorter.
2. On artificial feeding, the fish grows fatter.
3. Each copy in the party weighs about 500 g.

Cooking a laurel: a recipe for fish

In restaurants, seabass dishes are cooked very tasty. But even housewives can create culinary masterpieces. Very often laurel are fried in portions or whole. To emphasize the taste and tenderness, you can do so. First, the marinade is prepared. To do this, squeezed 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, mixed with an incomplete teaspoon of evil mustard and paprika. The marinade is carefully rubbed with the carcass, including the inside of the gutted abdomen, and left for 2 hours. Seabass is fried over a large fire on both sides. Then the fire turns off, the pan is covered with a lid and the dish is infused for 10 minutes.

It is very tasty to bake a laurel in foil. For this, the fish is rubbed with olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkled with salt and seasonings, necessarily using rosemary. Then wrap the fish in foil and send for 30 minutes in a preheated oven. The temperature is 200 ° C. 5 minutes before the foil is ready to open or remove at all. So you can get a nice crust.