MSC #OceanToPlate Challenge

This month I had an awesome opportunity to participate in Marine Stewardsip Council (MSC) #OceanToPlate Challenge. This challenge is all about letting Canadians know that there is a robust, traceable, certified option when it comes to sustainable seafood! The MSC runs the world’s most recognized certification and labelling program for sustainable seafood.

It starts with certification of fisheries against our strict environmental standard and continues all throughout the supply chain so that all the companies handling certified seafood properly separate it, never mix it with non-certified product, correctly label it and have all the paperwork in place so that it’s traceable back to a certified source (the fishery).

This level of assurance is only available through the MSC program in Canada, and in fact, our most recent DNA tests show that 99.6% of products carrying the blue MSC label are correctly labelled (this in comparison to approximately 30% of seafood worldwide that is incorrectly labelled)

When the MSC #OceanToPlate Challenge was first presented to me, I knew this was totally something my mom and I would love to do together over Mother’s Day weekend. My mom & I pretty much roamed the entire Loblaws planning & picking out ingredients here and there with a MSC certified label. We ended up making 2 dishes – a Seafood Pasta & our healthier version of fish and chips.

We visited our local Loblaws for this challenge. It was rather easy for us to find products that were labelled MSC Certified. Whether that be a fresh item, frozen product or even in the canned aisle.

We started off by popping our Wild Keta Salmon Cakes & Lobster Mac N’ Cheese Bites into the oven. These were absolutely delicious – my mom and I pretty much snacked on these 2 nibblers while cooking our main dishes.

 

To prepare for our Dish # 1, we threw some of our trusty Fettuccine pasta into boiling water.

We heated olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add minced garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until lightly browned.

Added scallops to the pan. Turned up the heat to medium high. We seared one side until golden brown then flip!

We continued to add the rest of the seafood and waited for the mussels to open. DO NOT pry them open. If they do not open, they are inedible.

Added my creamy pasta sauce + the cooked fettuccine into the pan

Dish # 1! – Our Seafood Pasta in a lovely creamy sauce.

Sprinkled a little bit parsley & parmesan.

Dish # 2 – {Prepping} Cutting Sweet potatoes into evenly slices.

Sprinkled some salt & pepper to taste and added a bit of rosemary. Baked for 30 mins at 200C. Turning the sweet potatoes half way.

Whipped up 2 eggs.

Laid some breadcrumbs on a plate.

Soak up the raw fillet into the scramble egg

Then quickly place the fillet straight into the breadcrumbs.

Put a bit of olive oil and cook the fillet until it turns into a pretty golden colour.

Dish # 2! – Our healthy version of “fish and chips”

A few fast facts about the MSC program:

The MSC runs the world’s most recognized certification and ecolabelling program for sustainable, wild-caught seafood. Our program :

• Sustainable: Robust environmental standard for fisheries (based on the latest science)
•  Verified: Certified fisheries undergo annual audits to ensure they maintain and improve their sustainable practices. Re-certification is required every 5 years.
• All certifications and annual audits are conducted by an independent third-party certifier
• Traceable: Our Chain of Custody certification for companies in the supply chain ensures any product with the blue MSC label can be traced back to a certified source
• Properly labelled: DNA tests show that 99.6% of seafood with the MSC label is in fact what the label says it is. This in comparison with an average of 30% of seafood that is mislabelled worldwide.

Special thanks to the MSC team for hosting this #OceanToPlate Challenge. Stay tuned on the blog for a giveaway where I will be challenging YOU to participate in the #OceanToPlate Challenge =)

This is a sponsored post but Foodinthecitytoronto.com remains unbiased in our content.