If you know me very well, you’ll know that I tend to bang on a lot about fish. Partly, that’s because we live about ten minutes’ walk from the very excellent Auckland Fish Market; partly it’s because we try to eat as little meat as possible. And partly, well partly, it’s because I just really like eating fish.
When I was a kid, my late grandfather Poppa was still fishing. A master boatsman, I suspect there are secret snapper fishing spots around Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf that he took to the grave. He’d head out on his classic launch Korowai – all varnish and polished brass – and come back with a stack of fillets. We’d get a phone call in the afternoon and would rush over to my grandparents’ place to pick up some of the freshest, most beautifully filleted fish I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. Mum would lightly flour it and fry it ever so briefly in butter. To do anything else with it would be a crime.
The problem is, though, that I’m no fisherman: as a child I wasn’t very into killing things and so I never learned, which is a shame. So I can’t get out and catch my own fish. And much as I like snapper, these days I don’t really eat it – it’s on Greenpeace’s Red List and, when they used to put out a guide to fish with Forest & Bird, it wasn’t too high on the list either.
The probem is in this country, despite a very flash Quota Management System, we aren’t fishing sustainably: there are a number of fisheries in New Zealand, hoki and orange roughy in particular, where bottom trawling is rife. There are others where the catch level – or, if you like, the market demand – is simply unsustainable. I think part of the problem, too, is that in this country we’ve come to think of “fish” as being white and small flaked, like snapper and tarakihi.
That’s not only unsustainable, it’s boring.
It’s ridiculous to be this way, living as we do in a country surrounded by water, and it’s incumbent upon all of us to get out there and try different types of fish. It’s also incumbent on us not to eat the Vietnamese catfish that seem to be appearing in supermarkets – and, alas, the Auckland Fish Market. There may possibly be nothing worse for you to eat than a fish farmed in the Mekong Delta (I know, I’ve been there) and then transported across the planet.
What’s got me thinking about this recently is that a new fish guy has come to my market. He doesn’t have a huge range – it seems to be whatever he can lay his hands on that week – but he can, importantly, tell you where it was caught. It tends to be the less-eaten or more sustainable types, although he did, sigh, have snapper the other day and, sigh, he seemed to be selling rather a lot of it.
I came over all excited and bought some sardines the first week he was there: caught off the coast of Northland, they came whole, and he gave me some vague instructions on how to fillet them. Scrape off the scales, chop off the head and tail, cut a slice down its belly and haul out the guts. Then, very gently with the tip of a knife, you lift the spine up and out.
Which sounded very simple, until I realised I’d never before attempted anything like that before. I do, however, possess some sharp knives and an internet connection, so figured I’d be ok.
Simple? Um, no. It made a bloody, smelly mess in the sink and I managed to massacre the first one so that it was basically the skin with some flecks of flesh clinging to it. But I got the hang of it, and made a good job of the others. Then I felt most manly. By the time my partner got home, the fishy guts had been disposed off and the fish were grilling nicely, skin on, rubbed with a bit of salt and pepper and olive oil.
The next week, he had hapuku wings – the bit around the fin, which is a bit fattier than the rest of the fish. While hapuku isn’t as sustainable as sardines, I justified it on the basis that people don’t normally eat the wings – I suspect they get turned into fish fingers. Five bucks each and dinner was halfway there: I rubbed them with olive oil and salt and pepper, set them on a bed of lemon and parsley and roasted them on 200º for about 20 minutes before finishing them off under the grill. I served them with oven-baked chips – of which more later. They were superb and succulent and we had a jolly old time sucking the meat off the bones.
Then, there was kahawai. When I was a kid, kahawai was good only for bait or smoking, which is a travesty. When properly bled, it’s a stunner. It’s a great cooking fish, because it’s oily and strong and flakey, brilliant for omelettes or frittatas or just for simply grilling and serving with potatoes and salad. Best of all? It’s cheap: a whole fish will cost you a measly $5.
So get out there. Seek out fish you haven’t eaten before or cooked for a while. If you must have white fish, at least make it tarakihi. And don’t touch the catfish.