[Background music begins.]
[Shot of wooden building with Le Fumoir d’antan logo.]
Benoit Arseneau: My name is Benoit Arseneau, “Ben to Ben”.
[Shot of Benoit Arseneau, seated outside and in front of the wooden building.]
I’m co-owner of Fumoir D’antan, a business we’ve been running for 25 years.
[View of two wooden buildings, then an old photograph of the smoking chambers and back to the building with the Fumoir D’antan logo.]
So, we, what we did here was to put my grandfather’s old smokehouses back into operation.
[Back to Benoit, music stops.]
Smokehouse operator, you light your fires. Bang, bang! You do your set-up, you light them up, you watch them, everything looks fine. Good. But when your fires are going, you have to go back into your smoking chambers to see if it’s smoking well, if the fires are working well. We mustn’t forget that we’re burning fires in wooden buildings! OK? So it takes a certain amount of knowledge. You have to do the job properly.
[Close-up on Benoit’s face.]
We mustn’t forget that the technique of smoking herring is a food preservation method as old as the hills.
[Exterior views of a wooden building.]
Okay, they say that herring smoking has over 200 years of history.
[Shots of various old photographs of the smoking process.]
So, the herring is soaked in brine for 48 hours. They are then removed from the brine and threaded onto wooden rods through the gills. So, we’ll put about fifteen herrings per rod. Then we hang them in the smokehouse, and we smoke all of that for 60 to 90 days.
[View of a wooden door and of a photograph showing the interior of the smoking chamber.]
So, for 2 to 3 months, we’ll be stoking our fires right here on the floor of the building. Depending on whether it’s more humid or less humid, we’ll fiddle a bit with the fire, depending on the intensity of the smoke. Then we’ll let them dry like that for 2 to 3 months. Then, after 3 months, the herring will have taken on an amber color and will be a little harder.
[Shot of an exterior wooden window opening and herrings hanging inside.]
We’ll have lost 50% of the fish’s weight through water loss. And this product will keep at room temperature. For 2 years without any problem. So it really is a preservation method.
[Back to Benoit.]
The fish are smoked whole. After that, comes the gutting stage. So, with the knife, we cut off the head, cut off the tail, remove the belly, then simply save the two fillets from the back.
[Close-up shot of vacuum-packed fish fillets and jars of pickled herring.]
Which we’ll then sell like this or make a little marinated smoked product. And that is a delight for gourmets.
[Laughting]
[Music resumes briefly.]
[Shot of a transaction to buy a product from the Fumoir d’antan, then back to Benoit.]
In 2001, we diversified because we were getting requests for new products. So we bought this, a mechanical smoker, which works with sawdust. So, the products are the same. The products are brined or dry-salted or marinated for a certain time. After that, they’re dried, put on grids and then taken to the smoker. Then, with the mechanical smoker, we control the hygrometer … that’s the humidity in the chamber. We control the heat, the cooking and the smoke. So, these different parameters mean that we’ve set a standard for a product, and it’s going to taste the same all the time. So, it’s all going to be smoked the same way and prepared the same way. So, it’s a nice machine. It’s a great machine that allows us to try new stuff with our smoked products.
[Shot of old photographs of smoked fish.]
And now there are other projects on the way. There are other species that could be smoked.
[Back to Benoit.]
I think… With what we know, herring is getting more and more complicated. Mackerel is more and more complicated. Global warming means that other species are on the move.
[Shots of packaged products, salmon, scallops, halibut and other fish, background music resumes.]
Listen, we’re open to all kinds of ideas. Salted, smoked, dried, I think there’s a way of adding value to other species, other fish, other shellfish.
[Back to Benoit.]
All preparations, whether it’s smoked or not smoked, at some point you have to take the time to look at your product and then taste it. The textures, the health, the taste, it all has an interesting finish. That’s what makes you successful. Or that you don’t succeed in a production.
[Music intensifies, then stops.]
[Views of docked boats, then of Dan Dupuis.]
Dan Dupuis: Hi, my name is Dan Dupuis. I’m the owner, co-owner with my brother, of the Émilien D. boat. A shrimping factory boat based in Rivière-au-Renard.
[Shot of fishing nets and buoys with a boat in the background, then of the bow of a docked boat.]
We wanted to pay tribute to our grandfather when we started the project, so we called it the Émilien D.
[Shot of Dan walking through the passages of a boat, then Dan talking, inside the boat.]
So now, we’re the third generation of fishermen in our family. We’re the only factory boat in Quebec. Of course, there are some outside of Quebec, but they’re really bigger. So we’re the only ones who can cook, freeze on board and sell directly to the markets. In just 2 hours, we go from catching to cooking to freezing. Everything is done within 2 hours, so the shrimp hasn’t been lying around anywhere. You can’t get any fresher than that on your plate.
[Shots of Dan talking, pointing to various pieces of equipment.]
Here, we start by receiving the shrimp from the outside, from the nets. It then falls here into the basin. Next, we have a separating bin that separates the small fish from the shrimp remaining in the net.
[Shot of Dan in front of a conveyor belt.]
The first triage is done here. Then it’s off to the sorter, which separates them into four different sizes.
[Different views of the sorter parts.]
There, we’ll start with the smallest and work up to the biggest. This is a sorter. In other words, it separates sizes. We’ll start like… It’s a… There are different spacings on the bars, it “shakes”. The smallest will fall here, to the biggest at the end. There’s water on this, it flows all the way to the end. Then the other three sizes, which won’t be cooked directly, go into three different basins over there.
[Back to Dan.]
And it’s always going to be in the water, because a shrimp that’s lying around, that’s not in the water, will die quickly. We’ll cook it. The tail will be straight. When you want to know if a shrimp is of good quality, the shrimp’s tail will be curved when cooked. If the tail is straight, it means it’s been cooked dead.
[Shot of Dan in front of a cooker.]
Here we see the cooker. It cooks continuously. Within 200 seconds, the shrimp comes out cooked. It is cooled with water. The cooking is stopped immediately afterwards to keep the shrimp really fresh. Then we go straight to the freezer at the other end.
[Music resumes, shot of boxes andof the storing space with Dan at the back of the hold.]
We’re in the hold. This is where we store the shrimp. We’ve just arrived with a full load of shrimp.
[Shot of frozen shrimp.]
[Shot of boats moored at dock, music stops.]
Simon Langlois: Hi, I’m Simon Langlois, co-owner of Les Pêcheries Gaspésiennes. My position in the company is Director of Operations.
[Shot of Simon Langlois, factory workers in background.]
Here at Les Pêcheries Gaspésiennes, we offer fresh, frozen, salted and dried products. We also offer smoked products. We’ll be targeting the wholesale market in grocery stores for fresh fish, and in our fish shop too. Smoked fish will be available mainly in convenience stores and retailers.
[Shot of a room filled with bins, a forklift passes by, then a view of a water tank filled with lobsters.]
This here is the receiving room. We’ll be thawing fish and storing it ready for processing.
[Shot of a man in work clothes putting lobsters into bins, then gloved hands cutting a fish on a work surface.]
[Various shots of plant workers and back to Simon, then view of fillet production line.]
We fillet them. We’ll then put them through the skinner to remove the fillet skin. Then we prepare them for packing. All varieties combined; we’re talking about 2 million pounds a year.
[Shot of Simon talking.]
These are the smokers. We’ve now had three smokers since last spring.
[Various views of the smoker, control screen then back to Simon talking then opening a smoker, view of the inside of the smoker.]
These are ultra-modern smokehouses. They clean themselves, heat, cool and dry. In the smokehouses, we smoke turbot. We’ll smoke cod, salmon, mackerel and trout. Then in the… cold, we’ll do salmon.
[Back to Simon.]
We’re talking about a day’s production time.
[Shot of tanks filled with submerged fish fillets, then Simon talking, views of fish on outdoor drying tables.]
This here, is the cod from which we removed the “nove”. After that, it was dry salted. The cod loses its water, which will create the brine. We’ll leave it in the brine for a while, remove it, and send it outside to dry.
[Music resumes, shot of a man spreading fish fillets on a drying table, outdoors.]
The process will take about 3 to 4 weeks.
[Shot of the front of a building, Les pêcheries gaspésiennes sign, a man goes inside.]
Yeah! Here’s our fresh counter. We have our marinated turbot, which is excellent.
[Close-up on fish products, then on Simon talking in the store.]
We have… at the moment, we have turbot fillet which we just processed this morning, halibut steaks, halibut fillet.
[Shot of fish steaks, scallops vacuum-packed and Simon talking.]
We’ve got a scallop fisherman too. It’s been several years since we’ve been able to get any. He started again this year. They’re beautiful fresh scallops, right from the coast here.
[Shots of various fish products, lobsters in an aquarium and other packaged products.]
In the incidental catches, we’re talking about monkfish and white hake. We’re trying to work on this so that we can put it on the markets, so that people can discover them.
[Shot of Simon talking.]
We’ve got some big challenges ahead of us, especially when it comes to supply.
[Shot of tanks containing fish fillets, then of a production line with workers.]
We always hope to have the quantity needed to have good seasons every year. Then there’s the workforce. We’ve got some great challenges ahead of us.
[Exploramer logo.]
[Background music stops.]
