Bycatch Report: Bank Sea Bass

 

Okay, welcome to the second instalment of The Bycatch Report, the feature wherein I document the weird shit brought into my market by our stalwart local fisherman.  The guys that work at Mt. Pleasant Seafood, my local fish-vendor, know me now.  I was looking over the ice, and one of them said 'Sorry, nothing weird today,' and the other called out 'Actually, I got something weird in the back!'  The first one shrugged, and said 'Well, alright!'  The second one came out with two small yellow fish I couldn't immediately identify.  I asked him what they were, and his response was 'Some reef fish.'  Apparently, one of the local boats had gone out for black sea bass and pulled these in as bycatch.  I bought them immediately, because, you know, SCIENCE!

To identify it, I googled 'carolina reef fish,' and found a great resource: there are a ton of fish-identifying posters sold to the lowcountry fishing crowd.  I know they're mostly decorative, but damn are they handy!  At first I thought it was an ocean perch, but the tail was unique in shape.

So what the hell is it?  Check out the crazy three-lobed design.  That unique feature ruled out perch, but also gave me something to look for, and in the end, I landed on the bank sea bass, a relative of the commercially-fished black sea bass, a great-tasting fish.  Apparently, they grow up to be 12" long, but these little guys were more like 8", nose to tail.

How fun was it to clean?  You know, not great.  3/5.  At least it scaled easily, and its bone structure was mercifully predictable (it cleaned up like a below-legal-weight black bass). 

How did it yield?  31%, which is pretty normal for a fish this small, but also means that 2 full fish (so, like, 20 minutes of work) are necessary for one adult human's entree.

How did I cook it?  I used the rouget-cooking method outlined in The French Laundry cookbook.  If you haven't read that book yet, it's not my problem.  You can get a copy from Amazon right now for $48.  Or a used one for $40.  Why is used almost the same price as new?  Because no one sells this book.  Anyway, it's a lot of doing whatever you can to dry the skin out before you cook it (scraping, blotting, towelling), and cooking it 95% on the skin side, and just touching the other side to the pan for 5 seconds.  

Anyway, I kept it simple, dish-wise.  Just some potatoes, turnips, and broccoli rabe, sauteed in  butter with some thin-sliced onion.

How did it cook up?  It was hard to get the skin crisp, and the flesh was delicate, but not everything in cooking is easy.  Sometime, you gotta flex.  Seriously, go buy the French Laundry Cookbook right now, buttercup. 

How was it?  Terrific!  Mild flavor, great texture on the skin!  

Would I buy it again?  Whoo, I dunno.  It tasted great, but holy hell, that was a lot of work.  Maybe if I could get enough of them to put on a restaurant menu, and I had an obsessive-compulsive psycho butchering my fish.  But if I caught one, I'd for sure keep it.

-js