Iris has declared that her favorite fish is no longer mackerel, it’s trout. This doesn’t strike me as an improvement, but you can’t pick your friends’ favorite fish.
So I’ve been buying rainbow trout, which is not exciting, but it’s relatively inexpensive and sustainable. Sometimes I roast it whole, but often I fillet and saute it, and if I ask the fish counter guy to fillet it, (a) I never know what I’m going to get, and (b) Iris is disappointed, because she likes to see the whole fish. Probably I am being too hard on the fish counter guys, but I still haven’t recovered from the time I asked them to scale a piece of salmon and they had no what I meant.
Anyway, my filleting technique is not exactly going to get me on Iron Chef, so I consulted YouTube and came up with this English guy:
One minute and 46 seconds later, I pulled out my honesuki and did my best filleting job ever.
Has YouTube ever saved your dinner?
What fish counter do you go to?! I have never had any trouble with the guys at Pike Place. There is one ‘monger I prefer, Pure Food Fish — they are near Uli’s Sausage, a bit north of the pig.
Well, I am loyal to Pure Food Fish when I’m shopping at the market, but this fish was from QFC.
I haven’t got fish from Pure Foods yet – I tend to stay the heck away from Pikes, just too many people.
I never trust grocery store fishmongers, even the “higher end” grocery stores (the worst filleting job I have ever had done was from WholeFoods).
Mutual Fish does a consistantly good job when I need them to – far better than I could do.
The only thing I would add to that great video of filleting you have there is the importance of a rediculously sharp knife – preferably a thin flexible bladed knife.
Well, there’s more than one way to do it. The knife I used was sharp but thick, and it worked great.
I tend to shop PPM on weekday mornings.
I like Pure Food Fish, but I rarely go to PPM. Mostly we get our fish from Mutual, or Uwajimaya, but any prepping, mostly just scaling, tends to be done by me. Then my parents lecture me about my poor technique when they find errant scales in our dinner, and I find bits of iridescence in my eyebrows later in the evening.
I find bits of iridescence all over my kitchen and also all over my husband (the scaler). Sometimes on the dogs, too.
Pike Place is also doable on a weekday late afternoon, just before close.
Glad you all also like Pure Food. It was chance that I found it but I have tried the others a couple of times and I like Pure Food best. They are the least showoffy, I think is part of it.
I just purchased 4 big farm raised rainbow trout from Costco. A good quality and sustainable fish so no guilt. My concerns about freshness were allayed immediately when I opened the package and found nothing but fresh air hitting my nose. I recently found a recipe from an old local Sun Valley cookbook for trout called simply “Idaho Trout.” Ingredients: 6 Idaho Trout, fine and fat. There are more ingredients because you supposed to soak your unfilleted trout in milk and salt for 30 minutes before sauteing in olive oil and butter. When fish are cooked through remove from pan and finish sauce by adding 1 cup dry white wine, chopped dill and salt and pepper. Pour sauce over fish and serve. I’ll blog about the results on Monday. Eat More Sustainable Fish!
Hi Mamster, just found yr blog and am enjoying it immensely. But: May I humbly suggest you take Iris up into the Cascades this summer and catch a little brook trout from one of the many alpine lakes and fry it up (sans fillet) right there. This will obviate any arguments about who carries the best farmed fish!
Cheers,
Finny