It's been several winters now but I remember it as yesterday. Waking to the sound of a steel hull pounding through huge seas. When the vessel hit a bigger than average swell the whole boat would shudder and shake from bow to stern, all eighty metres of it. Your body would be slammed into your bunk and after hitting hard you would feel like you were being levitated; sometimes your tired arms would magically rise. Just when you were enjoying the weightless sensation you would be slammed down again. It was only through exhaustion that you could sleep at all. We were fishing off the west coast of the South Island for hoki. Later in the trip we would venture as far south as Campbell Island in search of Southern Blue Whiting. We were not alone. It was commonplace to see the lights of thirty or more large factory trawlers dotting the horizon on a clear night.
Boats from all over the world come to fish for the congregations of spawning hoki that gather on the west coast over the winter months. I was crewing on a Japanese vessel along with eight other Kiwis. The rest of the 42-man total were Japanese. The work was monotonous and hard and the trip was long. The boat caught and processed fish 24hrs a day and in between times you showered, washed clothes, slept and ate. Meal time was the highlight of the day and a major part of the meal was always fish.
We had fish in every conceivable way. Raw fish, salted fish, fried fish, baked fish, big fish and little. Dried fish, fish heads, fish soup and Ñ for a change Ñ squid or prawns or salmon, paua and crayfish. We ate scampi, sharks fin soup, baby octopus and full sized ones too; we ate fish roe. If it came from the sea we were served it. We ate oysters, cockles and even weed. It was a major shock for a guy who was brought up on meat and three veg. But you know what? I loved it. And what's more, I learned a great deal about the preparation of fish to eat. There was no such thing as a fillet of fish on the menu. The boneless fillet, battered and fried is probably the most common way fish is eaten in New Zealand. The Japanese used no such method. The Japanese idea of a prime cut of fish was everything but the boneless fillet. The favoured fish of the Japanese crew on my shift was the silver warehou (Seriolella punctata) and the preferred part to eat was the 'wings' or 'throat' of the fish. This part of the fish includes the muscles that support the pectoral fins, along with the most forward part of the fatty belly meat and the tender meat at the base of the pelvic fins. Most people throw this away with the head and frame after filleting. They are throwing away one of the nicest pieces of the fish. High in oils and rich tasting, they are delicious when rolled in flour and pan fried. The bones are reasonably large and if you treat them like a piece of K.F.C you should enjoy every finger-licking morsel. While at sea I ate the wings from silver warehou, white warehou and ling, and once at home blue cod, kahawai, trevally, small kingfish and snapper. The two last species were the nicest.
As I mentioned, the Japanese rarely filleted fish for eating preferring to split the fish as one would for smoking. The back bone was removed and the fish hung under refrigeration for a few days as one would with a beef or sheep carcass. Sometimes the fish would be chopped into small sections and sealed in a bag full of soy-sauce-based marinade. If a fillet was to be eaten at all, the rib bones were left in and although the scales were removed the skin was left on. The 'side' of fish was then cut into sections and pan fried. Leaving the skin on is a good move as just under the skin of most fish is a thin layer of fat which tastes really good. The skin also stops moisture from being lost during cooking.
Another cut of fish I had not eaten before was the 'V' of meat right on top of the fish's head. This is often missed by even the most careful knife hand and tossed overboard with the head and frame. The Japanese served these pyramid shaped slabs in a clear soup and they were really delicious. I don't know how to make the clear soup but I can tell you that if you take the time to extract this tender cut from a hapuka, large snapper or kingfish and fry it quickly in a hot pan you are in for a tasty, melt-in-your-mouth treat. It is very much like cheek meat. Many Kiwi fishos will have tried hapuka cheeks which are very nice and surprisingly easy to extract after a little practice.
The cheeks we ate aboard the trawler were from ling. These fish were a common by-catch and, being a large fish, they had to be filleted by hand. The fillets were packed and frozen (skin on) the throats cut out and packed in trays, and the cheeks packed in plastic punnets, not unlike strawberries would be. All of these parts destined for sale in Japan. Each day some of the cheeks were set aside for the crew. The skin was removed and the flesh carefully torn by hand into fine strips for consumption as sushimi.
Sushimi is basically raw fish. Most seafood is delicious raw if correctly prepared. On the trawler we ate raw ling cheeks, slices of warehou, tuna, salmon, raw oysters, scallops, paua and crayfish.
On one occasion a broadbill swordfish was caught in the net. As soon as it was discovered amongst the large catch of hoki several of the Japanese crew stopped work and went about butchering the 400lb fish. They carried huge slabs of the pinkish meat from the factory over their shoulders and then disposed of the mammoth frame overboard with the help of a winch. A small slab was left in the factory for immediate consumption. Not wanting to be left out I cut a slice and tried it. I was amazed, it tasted almost like ham! A wonderful culinary experience I will never forget, standing in a stinking fish processing factory many miles offshore in the middle of the night surrounded by tonnes of dead fish, frames, heads and guts, the ship shuddering and shaking in heavy weather and what was I doing? I was eating the part of the catch raw! I guess you had to be there.
A few days later the broadbill turned up on the table as sushimi. The basic trick to sushimi is to chill the fish to an almost frozen state, where the flesh is firm with little ice crystals forming through the fibres of the meat. The fish can then be cut cleanly across the grain with a sharp knife. A hard-core Japanese sushimi expert will dip his fingers in a bowl of ice while cutting the fish so the heat of his hands does not prematurely melt the outside of the fish. Presentation is all-important and condiments such as soy sauce, wasabi (a very hot green horseradish mustard) and slices of pickled ginger are and integral part of sushimi. The fish is normally cut into very thin slices, but with tuna or broadbill you can go thicker. I got quite into sushimi for some time after I got home and still enjoy it today. I think the best inshore fish to try is kingfish, trevally and snapper in that order. All the tuna species are excellent raw, even the humble skipjack which I know many regard as only good for bait.
One of the nicest fish I tasted while at sea was the white warehou (Seriolella caerulea). The warehou sold in most fish shops is blue warehou (seriolella brama) and occasionally silver warehou (Seriolella punctata). All three are of the same fishy family but the white warehou tastes quite different. The flesh is so tender, melt-in-your-mouth, rich, succulent, yummy, tasty Ñ get the picture? The best description I can come up with is a cross between hapuka and scallops. I have not come across any in a shop and suspect it all gets exported. The boat started targeting hake near the end of the trip and the Japanese crew got fairly excited when a few white warehou started showing up in the catch. Most of the warehou were packed into trays and frozen with the rest of the catch but some were put aside by the crew. They were gutted and gilled at the end of the shift before being spilt, then salted and spread on hammock-like nets around the deck to dry. These were presumably for consumption in port as none were eaten while I was on board.
Squid or 'ika' as the Japanese called them were often dried on deck also. They were gutted and then simply tied to the rail somewhere well ventilated. After a few weeks they went very hard and stunk like you wouldn't believe. OK, I admit it, I ate that too. The trick was to not smell the strips of squid before putting one into your mouth. 'Squid jerky' (which is what it was) is really sweet and full of flavour and, as it's very tough, it lasts like a pixie caramel. It was a really complex salty/sweet flavour that demanded a cold beer and, believe it or not, it was quite more-ish.
One other prime cut I got a taste for was fish chins. These are the small muscles below the bottom jaw of the fish where the gill plates meet. You have to cut across here to remove the gills from a fish. One day near the end of the trip a number of the Japanese crew knocked off work early and spent half an hour chopping up hake heads and removing their chins. Hake were the target species at the time and their was no shortage of large specimens which could not fit through the filleting machines and had to be done by hand. It was from these larger specimens (10-20kg) that the chins were removed. I never got to try any but it made me curious and when I returned home I cut the chin out of a large snapper. The snapper was 6 kilos and the chin was about the size of a fifty cent piece so don't get any idea's about feeding the family on them. They are comparable to the parsons nose of a chicken, that very fatty, tasty bit at the base of the tail. Don't worry weight watchers, the fats and oils in fish are a lot better for you and a lot more easily processed by the body than those from chicken or red meat. Because of the small size of chins I would recommend you only bother to take them from large fish: hapuka, kingies, and big snapper.
Aside from eating and processing a lot of fish aboard the trawler I encountered many species I hadn't seen before. One of the most spectacular to look at was the moonfish. These are also known as Opah and apparently taste fantastic. I never tried any but feel privileged just to have seen one in the flesh, a real wonder of the sea. We also caught some huge hapuka over 50 kilos, a bluefin tuna, that broadbill and lots of big sharks. This naturally got me thinking about the sportfishing opportunities this area offered. If tuna, sharks and broadbill could be caught here in the depths of winter as an accidental by-catch, what would happen if you targeted gamefish during the warmer months?
If you own a sixty foot-plus sportfishing boat and have an adventurous spirit, why not give me a call. Someone's got to do the ground work. The South Island's west coast may become a new frontier of sportfishing. All we'll need is a tank full of diesel and water to drink Ñ we'll live on fish... and rice...and seaweed...and sushimi...soy sauce...wasabi.
Sionara!