Hunt, Gather, Cook by Hank Shaw

Author:Hank Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2011-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

In the market, you will usually find rockfish sold as skinless fillets—usually misleadingly called Pacific snapper, although rockfish are nowhere near as fine flavored as real red snapper, which only lives in the Atlantic. If you have a skinless fillet, use it in any normal fillet recipe. Dredged in flour and sautéed, rockfish is excellent. It’s also good batter-fried or made into tempura. Snapper and black sea bass are normally sold skin-on.

Rock cod, porgies, and black sea bass are often sold whole, or scaled and gutted. You’ll find whole fish mostly in Asian markets, but they’re being sold this way increasingly in high-end Western markets as well. If you buy a whole rock cod or black sea bass, I’d advise one of three treatments: grill it, crispy-fry it in oil, or steam it Asian style. Each suits this fish perfectly. You get a smoky hit of flavor with grilling, while crispy-frying takes advantage of the fish’s firmness. Steaming highlights its delicate flavor.

Crispy-frying and steaming have been perfected by the West’s Asian American community, so look to Asian sources for your inspiration. In the Mediterranean, fish are often grilled simply and served with lemon and salt, and this technique works well with all wreck fish.

Porgies are best done in this Mediterranean style. The fish is a good stand-in for the gilt-head bream, one of that region’s most sought-after fish. I prefer porgies grilled whole over charcoal or fruit wood, but I also like them dredged in chickpea flour and crispy-fried. The chickpea flour adds a nice earthy note.

All of these fish are good raw in homemade sushi, but make sure to freeze them for a few days (after gutting and scaling) to kill any possible parasites. You will find rockfish and black sea bass sold as “suzuki” in sushi bars. These fish are also excellent “cooked” by citrus in seviche or chopped into a tartare.

Being lean, they all freeze well, too. I’ve eaten rockfish that had been vacuum-sealed for a year and was still edible, although I would not recommend storing them longer than 6 months.

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