a tale of a piece of cod

This is a tale of a piece of cod that was utilized to the fullest. It is a piece of Alaska lingcod that I bought from an Asian market. I have long since given up buying frozen cods as they are always disappointing, in that the precious fish is wasted. It has been more and more difficult to buy good quality fish. I only know of one shop in Portland that I can count on now. While grocery shopping I bought a piece that is slightly over 2 pounds taken from the tail section.

You don't get to pick and choose as you have to take what is available of a freshly slaughtered fish. Often they want you to take the whole piece but they were nice enough to agree to cut me a piece rather than the whole tail piece. This piece is big enough that I could fillet it myself and divide the meat into a number of meals.

Buying fresh fish is always a stressful business as you have to use them up before the seafood deteriorates. In this case there are many meals to be prepared. Over time I learnt to preserve a piece of raw fish for a number of days with the least of deterioration.

I used this professional boning knife to fillet off the meat from the two sides; the cod skin is extremely tough so you need a sharp knife for the job

flip it over and fillet the other side

I did a good job this time as there was very little meat left on the skeleton; nothing would go to waste as you will see later

next I trimmed off the skin of the fillet and divided the meat fillet into roughly four equal pieces, which would give me four meals of the meat alone; I reckon each piece is sightly under seven once

first meal - I planned a stir fry of cod with celery and shiitake mushrooms; these are the pre-prep'ed ingredients ready for the stir fry

While this dish used celery I would just share one of many of my gripes with food ingredients in this country. The best part of celery are the leaves and yet with store bought one they are always trimmed off. The other is spinach. The stalks towards the root is most flavorful, and often better yet include a little bit of the root stem. Spinach sold in real Asian markets is nearly always the complete plant with root and all. The plant also keeps better this way.

for a stir fry like this I do the cooking in the outdoor kitchen as the oil fume is too much to deal with with domestic kitchen ventilator and kitchen arrangement

a couple of minutes later this is the finished dish

the second piece of fillet is more the less the same except I used choy sum rather than celery

the third piece I decided to add some dense tofu slices to bulk up the dish

four days later I finished up the forth piece of fillet with another stir fry of cod with celery; here I grated some garlic for to season the slices of fillet

Lingcod meat is odd. Uncooked the meat is firm and hard to cut. However once cooked the meat falls apart with the slightest of touching. Because of this sliced cod demands some skill to stir fry and requires to be done in high heat with plenty of oil. Rather than stirring you have to toss the ingredients instead, and with the least of stirring.

As to what normally were to be treated as waste this is how I used them. First the two pieces of cod skins. Alaska ling cod skin is as tough as snake skin and I am not exaggerating. I am sure a cobbler can make a pair of shoes out of them, with the proper tanning process.

for me, I rather make them into a snack; just coat the skin with a little salt, pepper, and corn starch and deep fry them

deep fried cod skin is quite chewy compared to other fish skins but delicious as well as healthy

what is the faith of the bony skeleton? I used it to make a little of fish broth with some shrimp shells

 the broth is used for slack season’s danzi noodle 度小月擔仔麵

Actually there is one more meal that I made with this piece of cod. With one plate of stir fry cod leftover, I made a delicious stir fried noodles the next day, using the leftover as the foundation of the topping.