What a price!!

I thought I wanted halibut for dinner tonight.
I changed my mind.
I'm not about to pay $22 a pound for not all that fresh halibut tail pieces, "wild caught" or not.

So I had "butterfish" or "black cod", which I simply broiled with butter and panko crumbs. It was Ok.
It's better than tilapia, and I just had petrale sole last week. I also had crab last week, and the crab this year is scrumptious.

John

I thought I wanted halibut for dinner tonight.
I changed my mind.
I'm not about to pay $22 a pound for not all that fresh halibut tail pieces, "wild caught" or not.

So I had "butterfish" or "black cod", which I simply broiled with butter and panko crumbs. It was Ok.
It's better than tilapia, and I just had petrale sole last week. I also had crab last week, and the crab this year is scrumptious.

John

John, I thought Black Cod was a very good quality fish, no? Unless I'm mixing it up with another fish, it's very much like Chilean Seabass (Patogonian Toothfish?). I know I've ordered it in very high end restaurants and enjoyed it very much. Is Butterfish the same thing? Not familiar with that one.

[Jenise]

John, I thought Black Cod was a very good quality fish, no? Unless I'm mixing it up with another fish, it's very much like Chilean Seabass (Patogonian Toothfish?). I know I've ordered it in very high end restaurants and enjoyed it very much. Is Butterfish the same thing? Not familiar with that one.

Not John but the answer is yes--brilliant marketing move, calling it by the other name. Also called, in some areas, sable fish. I love how it's done in Hawaii, marinated overnight in miso and other seasonings.

Yes, it's a long, skinny, deepwater fish with a black skin. Jenise has more details.
It isn't cod, and it's pretty good fish, despite my grumpiness because I had my mouth all set for halibut baked with tomato, onion and a little cream. I thought about poaching it. Like fresh cod, it's very tender and you have to be very careful poaching it so it doesn't become fish soup, so I just broiled it.
Oh well, no halibut for a while.

John

[Jenise]

John,

Your post this morning caused me to get the taste for black cod in my mouth so when I happened to drive past this town's one fish shop and saw 'fresh black cod' on the sign, I pulled over. I'm going to make it per one of Roy Yamaguchi's recipes, though I'll cut back on the sugar. Here it is, if anyone's interested:


Ingredients
Miso Marinade and Butterfish:
1 cup sugar
1¼ cups white miso
½-cup sake
½ cup mirin
4 (6-ounce) butterfish, sablefish, halibut or pompano filets

Lemon-Parsley Sauce:
Juice of one lemon
1 cup beurre blanc
Parsley, finally chopped

Sweet soy drizzle:
1 cup soy sauce
1 cup sugar

Steamed rice for serving

Instructions
Prepare marinade by combining sugar, miso, sake and miron in a saucepan. Whisk to blend. Bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat and low and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, transfer to a shallow dish and let cool completely. Add the butterfish and refrigerate overnight.

Prepare sauce by stirring lemon juice into the beurre blanc. Toss in parsley to taste. Set aside and keep warm. To prepare soy drizzle, combine soy sauce and sugar in a small saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Continue to cook for about 15 minutes or until reduced to 1 cup.

Heat a dry, heavy steel saute pan or skillet over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the fish from the marinade and sear for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until opaque throughout. Transfer to warmed plates and pour the sauce around the fish. Spoon the soy drizzle over the sauce and serve with rice.

Recipe looks good except for too much sugar!

John

John, I thought Black Cod was a very good quality fish, no? Unless I'm mixing it up with another fish, it's very much like Chilean Seabass (Patogonian Toothfish?). I know I've ordered it in very high end restaurants and enjoyed it very much. Is Butterfish the same thing? Not familiar with that one.

Not John but the answer is yes--brilliant marketing move, calling it by the other name. Also called, in some areas, sable fish. I love how it's done in Hawaii, marinated overnight in miso and other seasonings.

So it is sort of the same texture as Chilean Sea Bass?

[Jenise]

Yes and no, Carrie. I think the flavor's similarly mild, but black cod is a bit oilier (hence, I'm sure, the name butterfish) and I'd say maybe 20% denser. Seems richer overall--hence (here we go again), the other name, sablefish.

The texture is more like Atlantic Ocean cod than like halibut. It would be good as the fish for fish and chips. It's oilier than either halibut or toothfish, and has a softer, less meaty, texture.

Joh

[Jenise]

Recipe looks good except for too much sugar!

John

That's what I thought--even if you reduce it to a smaller amount for one piece of fish. The mirin, for instance, is also quite sweet. I'm doing a 10 ounce piece that I cut in half, and for my marinade I used about two heaping teaspoons of miso, one generous teaspoon of honey, and liquified it with a bit of chardonnay (having neither mirin nor sake on hand).

I'd have used more like a tablespoon of sugar for a divide-by-4 recipe, but honey does come off as sweeter than cane sugar.
Didn't you have any sherry? That usually works Ok in that sort of recipe, though I usually have a bottle of the cheapest sake I can stand the taste of, just for adding a splash.

John

[Jenise]

I'd have used more like a tablespoon of sugar for a divide-by-4 recipe, but honey does come off as sweeter than cane sugar.
Didn't you have any sherry? That usually works Ok in that sort of recipe, though I usually have a bottle of the cheapest sake I can stand the taste of, just for adding a splash.

John

Well, I wasn't personally dividing by four so much as I was building up from the miso to suit my own tastes. I put enough miso for two small filets in a pan, then added what was enough honey for me, then diluted it with enough chardonnay to make a thick syrup. And yes I have sherry but I don't find sherry a good substitute for sake. One's maderized, the other isn't. The chardonnay worked better for me.

To Carrie: although I stand by my earlier statement that black cod is oilier than chilean sea bass, the cod I cooked last night was much more like chilean than I remembered so that's a very good comparison. It was not as dense as what we had in Hawaii just a few weeks ago.