Cleaning stuff out of my parent’s place took much longer than anticipated. I was starving, so on my way back downtown I swung by Church’s Chicken. Armed with a BOGO coupon, I was going to order 2 Guacamole Wraps wolf one down and head home to unload the car.
But since it was later in the afternoon, they had to make my wraps and I had to wait a few minutes. I had seen the pickup truck when I pulled into the parking lot, but hadn’t paid it much mind. Standing around, I noticed a steady stream of people going up to it and walking away. The manager mentioned they were selling fish and I went out to check it out.
$15 for a large and $10 for a small – I got one of the larger ones and took it home. Impulse purchase – I didn’t even ask what kind of fish!
Worst part of getting a freshly caught fish – scaling and cleaning. Used the cleaver to scrape off the scales – they got everywhere! Should really do this kind of thing outside.
Much to my surprise, the fish was full of roe. Pulled that out and proceeded to fillet. I love my chinese cleaver, but it really is not very good at filleting fish. I suppose that’s why they sell fillet knives! Pretty sure this is the second fish I’ve ever prepped, so I don’t think it’s a bad job:
Things for the future: 1) Buy some needle-nose pliers. Pin bones are enough of a bitch to pull out without tools that are coming apart on you. 2) Buy/acquire a fillet knife
I was starving by the time I was done. Fortunately, the rice I had put on was done. I cut some roe out of the lump, put it on rice with wasabi and soy sauce:
To be honest, not all that good. Very rich but kinda stringy. Usually, when I make things at home, it’s at least as good as your average restaurant. This was far from even an Ikura Don from a crummy japanese restaurant in Vancouver. Since it wasn’t all that great and I had a lot of it, I went online to figure out how long it would keep and how to prep it.
So I learned that Ikura isn’t just roe – it’s prepared/brined. That’s why you get the awesome salty flavour as they pop in your mouth. The skein holds the eggs together and needs to be separated.
My method:
1) Soak in hot salty water – hot to the touch. For me, this was just hot tap water. The eggs will change colour and go a little opaque. The internet said not to worry, this just toughens up the eggs up since you’ll need to be a little rough with them to separate them from each other and the skein.
2) Once separated, rinse gently to get rid of any stringy bits. Add a teaspoon of non iodized salt(ideally sea salt) and mix. Put in fridge for 30mins.
3) Add another half teaspoon of salt, mix and then pour into a sieve and let stand in the fridge for an hour.
Finished Product:
This really was good. Very happy with it. I froze one fillet and the other skein of eggs for another day. This still left me with the head/spine. Normal thing to do when you have a resource like this is to make stock. Unfortunately, salmon is really too strong tasting to make into stock that’s much use for anything that doesn’t taste like salmon.
I threw everything in a pan, roasted it in the oven for 30 minutes before putting it in a pot with browned shallots, ginger, garlic and a carrot. Adding a can of tomatoes made a very tasty soup. But not entirely thinking clearly, I had included all the bones – including the tiny pin bones. This ended up producing a very dangerous dish. Lots of things to choke on. Next time, I’ll still stick to the formula – make stock from the bones/scraps. Strain/filter and then make soup with that. But considering how much meat I have in the fridge/freezer, it’ll be a while before I do this again.
Learned a few things so not the disaster it could have been. I’d say it was $15 well spent.
