The Beautiful Taste

The flavor, texture and “mouthfeel” of a fish depends on how it is handled on deck the first three hours out of the water. Rarely is there an opportunity to demonstrate how it all works.

When I learned Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish, and I would both be on the program at the Chefs Collaborative Summit in Boston, I proposed we organize a charter fishing field trip out of Boston prior. It would be an opportunity to show chefs the handling-for-best-flavor steps as fish came aboard. An ardent fisherman since childhood,

Paul was right on it making arrangements with Neponset Sport Fishing Charters for the 38-foot Blue Moon II, licensed for 6, which meant four open spots in addition to Paul and I.  Leigh Belanger, the Chefs Collaborative Program Director, recruited Board members Peter Hoffman, owner of Savoy and Back 40 restaurants in Manhattan, Amy Bodiker, an organic farming consultant from Cleveland, Robin Schempp, owner of Right Stuff in Vermont and Bruce Sherman, chef-owner of North Pond restaurant in Chicago. A great group.

I worked out with skipper Jim Maloney how we wanted to use the opportunity to demonstrate the handling steps from hook to plate to produce the best flavor. We would stun, bleed, dress, rinse and ice pre-rigor. A few days later, the fish would be prepared for the Chefs Collaborative post-conference National Board dinner by Michael Leviton at four-star Lumiere…a good opportunity to see and taste the results.

In the 1970s,  the pollution here was so bad, a fishing charter in the Boston Harbor would have been unthinkable. After the Clean Water Act of 1972, Boston was forced to curtail effluents and clean up its waters. Today Boston Harbor is  a poster child of marine water quality restoration projects, our fishing trip  a tangible outcome.

On fishing day, it was still dark when we found the Blue Moon II at the Neponset dock at 5:30 a.m. Skipper Jim Maloney and deckhand daughter, Lauren, were loading bags of ice. The sun was just peeking over the islands to the east as we eased out of the harbor.

It was a short 15 minute run to reach the pier that extends past the end of the Logan Airport runway. The pier supports the lights that guide incoming planes to the runway. An unlikely fishing spot? Maloney explained the pier provides habitat for various small fish that bluefish and striped bass feed on. Only one boat preceded us but before long there were dozens.

Our fishing method and bait would “depend on what they’re taking.” On this day it was to be “bunker chunks,” frozen menhaden cut into pieces. Skipper Maloney hands us each a pole with a chunk of menhaden on a hook. The boat is anchored.

While we are waiting for fish to take the bait held off the bottom with a balloon bobber, Greenberg tells how menhaden, an important mid-Atlantic forage fish, have been decimated with a single company, Omega Protein of Reedsville, Virginia, catching the vast majority of the fish.

“Menhaden are useless to humans in their pure form,” he says, “but Omega Protein grinds them up in the millions for use as pig, chicken and salmon feed and more recently as Omega-3 dietary supplements.” Greenberg recommended, Bruce Franklin’s book The Most Important Fish in the Sea. “According to Franklin menhaden populations were once so vast that the lead end of a school would arrive in Cape Cod while the tail end was still in Maine.”

Getting “skunked,” not catching a single fish, crossed our collective mind as the early morning sun greeted more boats appearing along the pier and reflected off the wide body jets lifting off overhead. Skunk days are rationalized with something like, “It’s just nice to be out on the water and get some fresh sea air. Catching fish isn’t that big of deal.” At least we lucked out for weather; it was flat calm.

But we wouldn’t be skunked this day. The ice was broken when the tip of Peter Hoffman’s pole made sharp lunges. Excitement on deck! With Peter reeling in, the fish made a swoosh here, and a dash there and a plunge until  Lauren finally scooped a large bluefish into the net and slung it aboard. The “skunk was off the deck,” as we say.

I couldn’t find a club of any sort to stun the fish with (charter boat fish are normally put into the fish box and left to flop) so I grabbed the long handled deck brush and gave the fish a sharp conk on back of head just above the eyes. The heart still pumps but the fish is immobilized…no flopping on deck, no bruising, no scale loss, no lactic acid build-up. Stunning is the first step on deck to getting a fish in top shape to the plate. Deckhand Lauren promptly nicknamed the deck brush, the “club brush.”

Although local, plentiful and sustainable, bluefish don’t appear on many menus in New England. Sportsfishermen have trouble giving them away. Often brown-hued and strong flavored, it is all in the handling. Our goal is to transform the sleek, oil-rich bluefish into an entirely different fish on the plate.

The next step is bleeding, severing the artery between the heart and the gill. We bleed the fish so it dies a relaxed death; removing the blood gives fish cleaner flavor.

Paul Greenberg had the next action. The bend in his pole and the grin on his face told of a strong. good-sized fish. He thought it to be a good striper by the heft, but alas another bluefish. They were good-sized here.

With the change of tide,  the current was now carrying some of the small forage fish away from the pier, maybe striped bass would give chase. Bruce Sherman had one on, but, after some good pulls, it shook the hook. A beaming Robin Schempp landed the first striper. As fish were landed, I kept up with the stunning and bleeding.

In 1984, the US Congress responded to a precipitous decline in wild Atlantic striped bass populations, overfishing and pollution of critical spawning habitat both contributing, with the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act. The re-emergence of wild Atlantic striped bass abundance after 25 years has been quite a fisheries management and pollution reduction success story.

“I am 35 years-old and when I was a child up until 15 years ago I never saw striped bass in Boston Harbor,” says Naponset Charters manager Jennifer Maloney. “They made a huge comeback after the cleanup.”

Amy Bodiker,  fishing for the first time in her life, hooked into a whopper striper. Her arms and shoulders tired from reeling in the powerful fish but the fish made her happy. At 38-inches long, it would be the biggest fish of the day and a lifetime memory for Amy. When Lauren had it in the net and on deck, I conked Amy’s fish and opened it’s artery with a West Coast troller’s salmon cleaning knife I had brought along.

When bleeding has ceased, the blood on deck is flushed through the scuppers and over the side with a deck hose or deck bucket. Fish are gutted or dressed as soon as they finish bleeding. I had a special trough for cleaning fish on my salmon boat in Alaska. On the Blue Moon II, I used Skipper Malone’s bait cutting platform.

After gutting and rinsing, the next step is to get the fish into ice right away. The sooner a fish is iced before the it goes into rigor mortis, the better. If a fish goes through rigor mortis without icing, it goes in quickly, doesn’t stay in very long and comes out quickly. Though very fresh, such a fish can end up with soft unappealing texture from both biochemical damage and the ripping and tearing of tissue at a microscopic level. When iced pre-rigor, the fish goes into rigor slowly, stays in a long time and comes out slowly. The result is resilient, supple flesh that retains all of its goodness.

The white matter often seen on the outside of cooked fish is albumin, a protein released from tissue damage be it from cooking at too high a temperature or for too long, from age or from less than ideal rigor mortis conditions. You won’t see albumin on the outside of a fresh, well handled and mindfully cooked piece of fish. The juices, proteins and goodness are held in inside by flesh with cellular integrity.

Fish should be iced in a straight position; fish that go into rigor bent often result in damaged gaping flesh. If a fish is straightened while in rigor, it will pop out, resulting in damaged tissue.

It is counterintuitive but the best eating fish is not the freshest. Providing the fish has been handled as described above, the best texture, flavor and mouthfeel results from letting the fish take its time coming out of rigor. The chemistry of rigor mortis is extremely complex. While I don’t completely understand what is going on, the longer a fish is in rigor the better it eats. If properly handled and iced, a fish can remain in rigor for several days.  The flavor and mouthfeel of a fish that has gone through rigor in ice and has been otherwise well handled is noticeably superior. More “juiciness” in the words of  one fish scientist. This is fish that gives the term, mouthfeel, meaning. To me, mouthfeel is related to, but goes beyond, flavor and texture.

Perhaps one percent of  commercially caught fish will have been handled as described here. I’m not sure how many commercial fishermen are actually aware of how handling affects flavor. I wasn’t completely until I teamed fishermen and chefs up to identify cause and effect relationships. Fish of this quality can boost the diner’s perception of the restaurant and the chef’s skill’s considerably. Countless times, I’ve heard waiters report back to the kitchen, “They said that was the best fish they’ve ever eaten.”

The loose idea was for our catch to be prepared by Michael Leviton at Lumiere, for the Chef’s Collaborative Board dinner three days later. From the standpoint of rigor mortis, the timing was perfect if we could keep the fish straight and in ice. Our challenge was to get our two bluefish and two stripers, rather large fish, from the boat to the Lumiere kitchen. Fortunately the dock at Neponset had a cart that allowed us to keep the fish straight. We slipped the fish into garbage bags, three of us making the transfer so we could keep the fish from bending. We put ice around the fish and filled the bellies as well.

Our van was waiting at the head of the dock. Our van driver was more interested in our catch stories than getting errant fish juice on his carpet. No worries. Peter Hoffman gallantly placed his rain coat under the fish just in case. Once again it took three people to keep the bagged fish straight when lifting into the van.

Michael Leviton was at the the Red Sox game so we would have to figure out quickly where to store the fish until he could pick them up. Bambara, the restaurant at the Hotel Marlowe would have a cooler. We didn’t go unnoticed with our cargo of four heavy, bulging white garbage bags and our inordinate interest in their placement on the hotel luggage cart.

At this point, our fish were all very stiff, very much in rigor and we were careful to keep them that way when transferring our bundles from the luggage cart to flat sheet pans in the kitchen. So far, so good. Michael Leviton would fetch them after the ball game and take them to Lumiere.

I was on the plane to Seattle when the bluefish was filleted, but, according to Michael, the fish cutter was impressed with the clear limpid blue color of the flesh, clearly different from the bluefish they normally received. “Great project.”

“The clarity of the striped bass filets was impressive,” said Leviton. “The fish ate wonderfully, both raw and cooked!”

Amy Bodiker reported on the fish courses at the Lumiere dinner.

“The fish was fantastic – and cooked with a lot of love! Robin’s striped bass was made into a tartar with a bit of an Asian application; the blues were served in a salad under a seared scallop; and my striper was roasted (and presented) whole. Served with roasted fennel and smoky tomato, green olive sauce. The flavor was spectacular!”

Left to right: Jon Rowley, Robin Schempp, Peter Hoffman, Peter Greenberg, Bruce Sherman, Amy Bodiker (kneeling)

You might also be interested in:

• The Beautiful Taste: Fish handling, Part 1
• Jon Rowley’s Seattle (Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth, November 2009)
• Salmon Q & A with Jon Rowley (Gourmet, June 2007)