Fishy Dishy Tales

I trekked over to Leederville on Saturday after my first pilates class since moving to Australia to visit Kailis Bros fish market. The goal going in was to get some Salmon or Snapper to make for Sunday night dinner. The fish market is attached to a restaurant where I image they specialize in seafood dishes - probably worth a visit sometime. I strolled in and looked around - it was much smaller than I expected but so clean, well organized and with a wide variety of seafood ranging from whole fish to fillets to shrimp to squid, octopus and lobsters.

However what caught my attention were the Garfish. They are long narrow sliver fish with pointy mouths and I have not seen them anywhere outside of the Caribbean - not even in frozen form. I was immediately excited and hit with a wave of nostalgia - my mom used to make these fish for us grown up and they were fabulous. Could I recreate her dish - having never made it? So I did what any sensible daughter does - I called her, woke her up at 11pm her time to ask how she did it and armed with a recipe marched back into the store and bought myself some Garfish (and a snapper)

So I would first need to fillet and debone the fish - given their size not an easy task. So armed with 2 sharp knives - the large one to cut the heads and tails off and then to cut the body into 2 pieces and the small sharp knife to fillet and remove the super tiny bones

 Once I had a pile of fillets (not too badly mangled if I say so myself) and a pile of heads, tails and centers here is what would happen to them. The fillets would be seasoned breaded and fried, the fish body parts would be used to make a fish broth/fish soup that would be served with polenta seasoned with onions and chives.

That was exhausting enough but my work was not yet done - I seasoned the fillets

And put the body parts along with onion, garlic, celery, carrot, bell pepper, seasoning and water on the stove to simmer for the broth

I also had to juggle and start the polenta at the same time (How did my mother do it when there were real hungry people depending on her for this meal) I should have just thrown some rice in the rice cooker - one less thing on the stove needing my attention

And oh one of the things I used to love was the lightly fried onions that topped the fish but I do not like the smell of fried food in my house and having the fry the fish was going to be my limit so I decided to broil the onions instead.

Got my egg mixed with water garlic and dijon mustard to dip the fish and my gluten free bread crumbs for the dipping - my mom always used flour but I do not have flour and I was not dragging home a 5lb sack of flour on the bus just for this.

Then into the skillet for a shallow pan fry. I was reminded why I never fry anything. Oil splatters and it stings when it hits you and then it gets on the stove and other pots and ugh then I had to clean it all up

Well I finally got the fish done, by then I had racked up an impressive mess in my kitchen - (thank heavens for a dish washer) and really needed nap to recover.

Verdict - Not Bad! But still not as good as Mom's and not worth the time and effort for just me, plus the effort after to remove all smells of any thing fried from the house. (Forgot to take picture of everything plated)

However, it was quite fun to do once the kitchen was clean and I could step back and admire my handy work. The remainder  of the fish and onions with get smothered in a spicy sauce (escovitch fish) - because I do not like day old fried fish by itself and as everyone knows the best part of frying fish is what you do with it the day after.

Later in the week the snapper will be simply broiled in the oven with some asparagus for supper - this will take one dish and some foil - easy peasy on the clean up