I would like to eat more fish. Not just a greater volume of fish, but a greater variety. This is not a health initiative; it’s palate-driven. And I need help.
The fish I cook regularly are salmon, catfish, and mackerel. Occasionally I do halibut, and I’ve been meaning to do another roasted stuffed trout. That’s really about it. I’ve made sablefish a couple of times and been unhappy with the results.
It seems bizarre, since this is Seattle, but I have east coast fish envy. This is based purely on reading cookbooks. They’re always talking about inexpensive bluefish and other flavorful, oily fish. But I’m also jealous of Matt Wright, who blogs at [Wrightfood](http://www.mattikaarts.com/blog/) and seems to be able to make any fish delicious.
Here, in addition to the fish I’ve mentioned, we seem to have a variety of rockfish (“snapper”) and sole/flounder varieties. I’ve never had much looking cooking these, either. I’m not a big fan of fresh tuna, other than raw, and it’s expensive. I don’t like tilapia at all.
So here are my questions.
1. Are there any other fish common to west coast markets that I’m just not thinking of? Given my happy experience with frozen mackerel, I’m perfectly willing to consider frozen. I notice Matt made striped bass a couple months ago.
2. Any must-have recipes for the fish I’m shy with? I’m willing to try pretty much anything that isn’t too low in fat. I’d love to hear someone say, “Here’s my family’s favorite snapper recipe,” for example.
So, send me on a fishing trip and I will report back. (“I caught a recipe THIS BIG.”)
Butter. A nice dry white wine. Random firm white fleshed fish. A firm not white fish will also work fine, but if it’s not a white fish, it’s got fat. If that fat is even the slightest bit off, I will hate the fish and not eat it. So mostly I don’t buy fatty fishes.
Saute the fish in the butter. Make a quick pan sauce with the wine. Devour.
That’s my standard procedure for fresh white fleshed fish. Each sort of fish tastes different. Most of them taste good with butter. Overcooked fish is not very nice, but what is overcooked to you and what is overcooked to me may be two different things. Try the fish at different levels of doneness so that you know how you like it.
After I know how a particular fish tastes, I may vary things with different seasonings. Garlic is often good. Lemon (IMO) goes with chicken, not fish. Ginger or soy sauce? good. Lime? bad. I’d probably like lavender or herbes de provance with many sorts of fish.
The main thing is don’t skimp on the fat. A flaky white fleshed fish (like tilapia) doesn’t saute well, but IME most rockfish will.
This is my favorite whitefish recipe. Use whatever you can find. Sole, tilapia, snapper, etc.
http://www.cooklocal.com/2007/06/a_spicy_crispy_corny_fish.html
If you really want to up the fat content, you can pan fry it as well for extra crispiness.
Great ideas so far, although, Emily, I like both lemon and lime with fish. It sounds like I need to play around with the simplest preparation of white fish just to get the technique down. I’ll do that.
Patricia Jane, I think you’ve mentioned that recipe before and I’m sorry I haven’t tried it yet. I look forward to remedying that.
I love the slow-roasted salmon recipe in Jerry Traunfeld’s Herbal Kitchen book. It turns out super moist and flavorful, and every time I make it someone asks me for the recipe. You basically marinate the fish in a coating of olive oil for 30-60 minutes at room temperature, and then sprinkle with salt and bake at 225 degrees for 15-20 minutes. He has a nice herb sauce that goes with it, using wine, shallots, lemon, herbs, and lots of butter.
As an alternative, I frequently steam/bake fish in an aluminum foil pouch, which turns out very moist. Wrap fish in aluminum foil placed on a pan – seal it tightly but leave lots of air inside the pounch around the fish. Use a couple tablespoons white wine inside the pouch, which will steam it. Add whatever other seasonings you like (herbs, vegetables, etc.), and a couple dabs of butter. 425 degrees for 10 minutes or so (depends on the fish).
Heya Matthew
Glad you like the wrightfood book! I have to say that I certainly miss some of the small super-fresh oily fish from Europe – but the following would be my list of fish that I eat often..
Red Snapper – Grill whole, stuffed with aromatics (onion/garlic/fennel) and herbs (parsley, cillantro, or sage), and some lemon. This turns out great. Course, I know a lot of people in the US don’t like fish that stares up at you from the plate…
Black Cod – simply grill. A dead easy one since it is so oily, really hard to overcook.
Sake Kasu Black Cod – the above, marinaded in the sedament of Sake. Pick it up pre-marinaded at Mutual Fish, or Uwajimaya’s. Simply grill.
We all eat masses of salmon, if you want something different, do a Mirin based marinade.
Monkfish – really great texture (a little like lobster). Just the tail gets used. Cut into medallions, and sautee like scallops.
Scallops – enough said :D dead gorgeous
Branzini – great Mediterranean smallish fish, flesh of the quality of sea bass.
Stripped Bass – simple fish. Fry it up!
I am going to be doing some sardines tonight – a few fish places here seem to have them at the moment. These are great on the grill, or sauteed with a decent amount of olive oil, and some sea salt.
Places to get this stuff:
Mutual Fish – super fresh, knowledable staff.
Whole Foods in Bellevue (I don’t like the Denny/Westlake fish counter that much). WH Bellevue – awesome selection, decent staff.
Uwajimaya – great selection of varied fish.
you definitely can’t go wrong with Black Cod.
As for halibut, go for the ‘but cheeks, and cook them up like you would scallops. Yum.
Oh, and before buying fish, you should check the Fish List, which tells you about which fish to avoid for ecological reasons.
http://www.thefishlist.org/
I like ling cod — I usually cook it like halibut.
Is there any particular reason you don’t want recipes without fat? A lot of small whole fish is good steamed with soy sauce, scallions, and ginger (I guess you could always stuff it with braised pork belly)
L, I’m having trouble with the Fish List site–it keeps showing me the front page over and over. Monterey Bay Aquarium has something similar.
I do make halibut cheeks and they’re great.
Matt and Dawn, thanks for the tips. I love fresh sardines and will buy them next time I see them. Is monkfish expensive? It always seems so in restaurants, but I guess that’s true of all fish.
Laurel, I’m not opposed to such a preparation and am willing to give it a try–I’ve certainly enjoyed just that at Chinese restaurants. But I’ve also had plenty of restaurant fish experiences with white fish where I felt it was just too lean, though possibly because it was overcooked.
Dude, I’ve caught bluefish. Those things practically just throw themselves out of the sea around here.
We also have Maine mussels, which are eco-friendly and dirt cheap. Additionally you may have heard about our lobster rolls.
Mostly I buy farmed tilapia and catfish, neither of which are local but are sustainable. I should buy more bluefish but just about everything else that’s caught around here is collapsing, so I tend to shy away from the local stuff (you can buy cod at Whole Foods, wtf).
I meant finfish, FYI, not shellfish. I’m good with shellfish.
I love monkfish. It used to be one of my favorite fish to cook, but I guess everyone else has realized this, too, since they say it’s overfished on the Monterey Aquarium web site that Matthew mentioned earlier.
They actually have a handy little card you can print out and put in your wallet. We use it when dining out: http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_regional.aspx
I thought I got this recipe from Bon Appetite years ago, but I can’t find it on Epicurious. Anyway, it’s dirt simple and I always liked it:
2 red snapper fillets
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 cup fresh grapefruit juice
1 crushed or minced garlic clove
good pinch of dried thyme
put everything in a saute pan and heat over medium heat. simmer gently until fish is just done. remove fish (drain well) and keep warm. bring remaining juices in pan to a boil and reduce until syrupy. taste and season with salt if needed. pour over fish fillets. optionally garish with some grapefruit and or orange supremes.
This actually tastes like more than the sum of its parts and gives you a kind of sweet-and-sour/vinaigrette sauce over nicely poached fish.
That sounds great, Neil. I love sour.
Monkfish is really pretty cheap actually – most likely between 4 -7 a lb. Make sure that you buy a little over what you need, when you clean the fish you need to remove all of the black gunk that sits over the flesh – trimming/pulling this away can remove some weight!
It is funny, I think because it isn’t often seen in restuarants that it is expensive, which is rediculous because the fish is pretty cheap.
WholeFoods in bellevue normally has monkfish. They are decent about not stocking anything that is overfished.
Halibut – not my favorite white fish at all, apart from the cheeks which are great. If you ask me cod has better texture and flavor, and sea bass is in a league of its own. The only reason halibut is what it is, is that most people know it as a mild fish – a fish for non-fish eaters.
sod east coast fish — you have HALIBUT CHEEKS! I always bring back a bunch of them frozen when I come to Seattle. I haven’t gotten terribly creative in preparing them, but they’re great just grilled or pan-fried with butter and lemon. If I’m feeling slightly fancy, I dredged them in egg white, coat in panko with whatever herbs I have on hand tossed in, and pan-fry that.
Oh, I know lots of people do like fish with lemon or lime. I’m not one of ’em :).
I think it’s probably a texture thing. It’s very easy to have an acidic ingredient “cook” fish. That’s the whole point of ceviche. Acid cooked fish has a distinctive texture.
I should probably try some lemon or lime infused oil to cook fish. It’s easy enough to make, and it’d let me get some of the flavor I like without the texture change.
I love this sauce with any white fish.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/12366
I agree about halibut cheeks. Whenever University Seafood has them, I pounce on them (meaning I buy them) and usually poach them.
Rockfish, etc are great in cioppino and paella and those types of dishes, but that probably isn’t what you had in mind.
PS: If you like fish with some kind of acid, Jorgen will give you 10 ceviche recipes. He also has a fabulous mango chutney sauce and tahini baking sauce if you are interested. He plans for us this weekend to go out and catch herrings, which he wants to cold-marinate in the vegetable drawers of the refrigerator for the next 12 weeks. This recipe — or should I say experimental protocol, also available on request.
Chris, I’m certainly not opposed to cioppino and paella, and I love ceviche but have never tried it at home.
Herring is great! I’m wondering if there is some kind of local-to-Seattle trash fish that is abundant, strongly flavored, and so cheap that no one bothers with it. Any fisherfolk here? If I could raise such a fish to local prominence, I could be a great folk hero, or at least the guy who ruined the fishery.
I can loan you all of my equipment to sous vide some fish. I’m willing to bet that you’ll make sablefish that you’ll love.
Matthew,
Mutual Fish has had sand dab recently – M cooked it up quick and simple. Also Ling Cod.
How about smelt? If you’re looking for cheap, tasty fish, maybe something with a lot of bones — Americans apparently can’t deal with bones in their food.
I love smelt. Last time I had some was at Palace Kitchen.