Bycatch Report: Raft Fish

Introducing a (hopefully) semi-regular feature where I highlight some of the weirder things that come into my local seafood markets.

Ok, so I was at my weekly pilgrimage to my favorite Charleston fishmonger's, Mount Pleasant Seafood.  One of the things I like best about this place is their ice bin for whole fish.  I used to cut fish for a living, and I enjoy it, but I have hardwood floors in my kitchen, and an easily-angered wife, so I try not to cut at home too often.  This place has good cutters, and a steady supply of filets of fin-fish ready to go.  They have the favorites that everyone has, like snapper, tuna, salmon, and scallops, but also all the South Carolina local favorites, like black sea bass, tilefish, triggerfish, sheepshead, and the ubiquitous (and overpriced) grouper.  However, in their whole-fish section, they will occasionally have some weird by-catch.  Sometimes it's something delicious but too oily to really be commercially viable (bluefish).  Sometimes it's something that isn't good for much more than cut bait (spot).  Sometimes it's something that isn't plentiful enough to have a commercial fishery, but is totally awesome to cook and eat (grunt).  

Yesterday, I saw a new one.  The raft (or possibly raft fish).  The guys didn't know what else to call it, and they didn't know anything about it.  It was little, just about a pound, and of course I bought it.  Any time I have a chance to try a new fish, no matter how weird, I'll write it up here.  Here is what it looked like:

Just a phone pic, which doesn't really do it justice, but the skin was a really pretty blue-green.  The head looks a little like a barrel fish, but barrels are usually much larger.  I got my stubby fingers in there to show the fins, which were slicked tight to the torso.  

Okay, so let's do the run-down:  

What the hell is it?  A fine question.  Raft fish isn't something I've come across in any book or pamphlet.  Furthermore, if you google 'raft fish' you get a million hits, none of them useful.  Adding 'carolina' doesn't help one bit.   I finally found a possible hit, on fishesofaustralia.net.au, that identified raft fish as an alternate name for schedopilus macalatus, aka the pelagic butterfish.  That's a new one on me.  I've heard sablefish called butterfish, and this definitely wasn't one of those.  I've also heard Hawaiian opah called butterfish, but again, no.  I looked up the pelagic butterfish on Wikipedia, and found out that schecophilus is a genus of the medusafish group.  I looked at pictures from all of those, and they seemed to have similarly shaped heads, so that might be right.  Then, I got my best lead.  One variety of medusafish, the hyperoglyphe perciformis is the common barrel fish!  Maybe this is how they look when they are this small.  So my best theory is that the raft fish is related to (or perhaps is a young) barrel fish, but I say this with >50% certainty.

How fun was it to clean?  A pain.  2/5.  Big scales, delicate skin, so the skin wanted to rip during scaling.  Also, all the difficulties that normally come with small fish: tiny bones, delicate filets, skin that shreds at the slightest provocation.  At least the bone structure was nice and regular, and there were no surprises (spines, teeth where you don't expect them, etc).  

How did it yield?  Not great.  I'd say about 32%, but that's pretty normal for fish this small.

How did I cook it?  Kept it super simple.  Didn't want to introduce too many other flavors.  Also, the filets are only about 80g each, so really, too small for dinner.  I ended up cooking them skin-on (cooked 85% on the skin side, with just oil and salt, in teflon), then serving them with a saute of local shrimp, red potato, green beans, shallots, and a knob of butter.

How did it cook up?  Pretty good!  The skin wanted to arch up really bad, so it was a challenge to get it crisp all the way across, but I got decent color and a crisp edge all the way around the filet.  It wasn't slimy, but it wasn't crisp.  If the filets had been thicker, I probably would have gotten better skin texture, but I only got 1 shot.

How was it?  Delicious!  The flavor was mild, and the texture was extremely delicate.  The seared skin took on a nice savory note.

Would I buy it again?  I don't know.  It was kind of a drag to clean.  Maybe if it was a little bigger, or if I was specifically called upon to showcase local weird fish.  Or if I was doing a Charleston Harbor bouillabaisse, and trying to keep up the true spirit of fisherman's stew, by only using by-catch.  It's fun to rattle off all the kinds of fish in a stew and not name one thing a guest has ever heard of.

-js