Special Report By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published Lent, 2007 2007 Seafood Countdown The 33 Best Local Fish And Shellfish Every year during the thirty-three weekdays of Lent, Menu presents a list of the best fish and shellfish found on New Orleans tables. And every year, the theme varies. The most recent Seafood Surveys listed the thirty-three best seafood restaurants and the one hundred best seafood dishes. Five years ago, the countdown was of the best seafood species we eat in these parts. I thought it was time to look at that again, but with a different perspective. In 2002, we listed all the seafood found on local menus, regardless of origin. This time around, the list will include only seafood that comes from nearby waters. So no lobster, salmon, or mussels. I've limited the list to those fish that I've seen in stores or restaurants. Fishermen have access to many more species, but fishermen are few, and gourmets are many. Also left off this list are fish that can be considered local only because they're farm-raised locally. (Tilapia is the best example of that.) Even with those limitations, even the last fish on the list is a very good one. It shows just how fine our local fishery is. And this is a perfect time to point this out, because despite all the problems fishermen have had to face since the storm, the supply and quality of Louisiana seafood is as good as ever, according to people in the business. Here's what's been revealed of the countdown so far. . . #1: Oysters My favorite assessment of the goodness of our local oysters was by Richard Collin. In his last restaurant guide, his recommendation for the Best Meal at the Acme Oyster House was: "One Dozen Oysters on the Half Shell; Beer." Then he offered his Better-Than-Best Meal at the Acme: "Two or Three Dozen Oysters on the Half Shell; Two or Three Beers." Yep. The only thing better than oysters is more oysters. Oysters are, to my palate, the finest of local seafoods. That's more true this year than ever. During the past few weeks, I've heard the same message both from oyster lovers and oyster sellers: They're especially good, meaty and firm right now. Beyond those wonderful qualities, the oysters out there now have a great complexity of flavor that's not always there. Not only are the oysters that grow around here among the best in the world, but they're available in tremendous quantity, throughout almost all of the year. The resource is so fine and so available that our cooks have dreamed up hundreds of ways to prepare them. Oysters appear in appetizers, soups, salads, seafood entrees, meat entrees. . . everything but dessert. The hurricane killed of millions of oysters by burying them in silt, but that wasn't a long-range problem. The beds began producing as soon as six weeks after the storm, and the re-seeding process will have them back up to pre-storm levels of production next year. All that's left to be done (unfortunately, it will be a big job) is to restore the oyster fleets and dock facilities, particularly in Plaquemines Parish. Oyster connoisseurs agree that the best way to eat them is immediately after the shell is opened. Raw oysters on the half shell, despite all warnings about the dangers they present to our health, are the standard presentation. The health warnings are true, although most of the problems affect a small minority of the population. Oysters are seasonal. But you can eat them whenever the mood strikes me. Refrigeration on boats and trucks eliminates the reason for avoiding oysters in non-R months. However, summer is when they're at their least appealing. In early summer, the liquor in the shell can get milky. In early fall, oysters are lean and can shrink a lot when cooked. Neither of these effects is harmful, and only slightly impact enjoyment. I admit to a local-pride aspect to my love of our oysters. But I've had oysters wherever I've traveled, including the famed Blue Points, Belons, Malpeques, Kumamoto, and Olympia oysters. None of them shows me anything that I find lacking in our oysters at their peak. On the other hand, all of those are much smaller than ours, are expensive, and typically sold a few at a time. To hell with them. Beyond being delicious, our oysters represent a value. On a weight-per-dollar basis, there is no less expensive seafood. All of this adds up to what, for me, is the Number One seafood resource we have. #2: Pompano Everywhere in the world I go, I try to find out what the locals believe to be their best fish. I've enjoyed a lot of different fish that way. But after I did, my belief that pompano it's the world's most delicious fish is reaffirmed. At least as far as my palate is concerned. Pompano is not for everybody. Pompano makes a statement. It's full-flavored, and on the high end of the fat category. I hate the word "oily" to describe a fish, but pompano is so oily that when you clean one your hands come out feeling like you've rubbed them with shortening. You don't have to clean it much. Once the fish is gutted, it's ready for cooking. The whole fish, placed on the grill with the help of a fish basket, cooks just fine. Even if you fillet it and remove the head, leave the skin on. The scales are so fine as to be edible, and if you don't want to eat the skin it comes right off. Still, it tastes a lot better when the from the skin penetrates and adds flavor and tenderness. Pompano has an unusual texture. It doesn't really either flake or shred. Nor is it meaty like tuna. All the adjectives and comparisons that come to my mind don't do it justice, so I won't use them. The flavor is the flavor of fish. I know that sounds nutty, but too many of the fish we are fed don't have that taste. The general preference is for blandness. Pompano detractors describe it as "fishy." So do I. That's what I like about it. The axiom to follow when cooking pompano is to keep it simple. Broiled or grilled, with a touch of lemon butter, salt, and pepper--that's the ultimate. The natural flavor of pompano stands alone. Anything further detracts rather than adds. The all-time worst use is pompano en papillote--at least when done in the traditional way, with a thick seafoody sauce. The sauce and the preparation are good, but they overwhelm the taste of the fish. The problem with pompano is that it's seasonal, and the seasons are peculiar. As I understand it, pompano move back and forth along the Gulf Coast, from Florida to Mexico. We get the fish when the schools pass in front of us. With the advent of better shipping of fish, however, we've had pompano much more than we once did. It's even a pretty fish to behold, with its silver-lamé skin. It's a member of the jack family, and has that wide shape with what looks like a too-small head. The ideal size is between a pound and a pound and a half. Some of the best restaurants for pompano are Galatoire's (the grilled pompano meuniere is my nominee for Best Fish Dish in New Orleans), Andrea's (his version with pesto cream sauce is especially good) and K-Paul's (they do a blackened pompano now and then that's always been terrific). #3: Red Snapper Red snapper is a favorite not only around New Orleans but all across America. That makes it more expensive and less often available, even though fishermen catch a lot of it in nearby waters. That all of it is caught with rod and reel adds to the scarcity. In restaurants where they really know their fish (Brigtsen's, Commander's, GW Fins, and Andrea's, to name a few), red snapper is frequently and prominently featured on the menu. Snapper is distinctly better in taste and texture than redfish, with which it is often confused (on menus, not in markets). Red snapper has a tender texture that still holds together well even though I'd call it a flaky fish. The taste is so pure and good that I consider it the standard fish flavor. The oil content is relatively low, but despite that there is no lack of savor. Some people grill red snapper, but I don't think that really brings out the flavor of the fish best. My favorite cooking method is pan-sauteeing, particularly using that method wherein you sear the fish in some butter or olive oil, remove the fish momentarily, add the wine and lemon juice and onions or bell peppers or mushrooms or whatever, bring that to a boil till its tender, then put the fish back in and finish it in the oven. The fish comes out tender and perfect, the sauce picks up a lot of flavor from the fish, and the dish is terrific. Red snapper also lends itself to being cooked whole, particularly if it's a smaller snapper. The technique of covering the fish with a pile of kosher salt and baking it (at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes for a five-pound fish) gives startlingly good results. We only wish there were more red snapper around. However, the species has been overfished and is now heavily managed both at the state and federal levels (as it should be). So red snapper comes and goes. Anytime it's available fresh, you should grab it. #4: Soft-Shell Crabs Soft-shell crabs are almost absurdly delectable. And we human Orleanians are not the only ones who think so. Every creature that eats crabs relishes these. It's a wonder any crabs make it past that vulnerable stage. Soft-shell crabs are just regular blue crabs molting their old, too-small shells. We all know that. But did you know. . . Almost all soft-shell crabs are farm-raised. Wild crabs hide effectively and can't be caught by normal means. Soft-shell crab producers can tell when their crop is about to molt, and from that point on they observe them closely. A crab is taken out of the water as soon as it molts. Otherwise, the shell stiffens and gets "papery." Strictly speaking, there is a big difference between a buster crab and a small soft-shell crab. A buster was on the verge of molting, but taken from the water before it does. The shell is removed manually, usually resulting in the loss of the legs and claws. A crab increases its size tremendously in the minutes after it sheds the old shell. If you ever see the process, you'll wonder how that crab could possibly have been in that old hard shell. It does that by pumping up with water. By catching the crab before it has a chance to do this, you get meat that's significantly richer and more flavorful. Crabs are definitely one of those things that get better as they get bigger. A gigantic soft-shell crab contains, among many other wonderful things, two massive jumbo lumps of a size one rarely gets in straight crabmeat dishes. I'd prefer one "whale" (as they're known to the trade) to two smaller ones any day, even if the two smaller ones together weighed significantly more than the big one. The hardest part of preparing a soft-shell crab is cleaning it. You have to open the underside and remove the "dead-man's fingers" (the gills, which really do look like their nickname) and the sand sac. Some places just leave the crab as is, and what you get is notably flattened. Some places stuff it with crabmeat stuffing. For a long time at Commander's Palace (and maybe still), they jammed a couple of shrimp in there. My favorite solution: put some crabmeat inside. No cooking method is better for soft-shell crabs than deep-frying. I've occasionally had broiled or grilled soft-shell crabs that were as good as fried. But never better, and usually worse. The single best recipe for soft-shell crabs was the cold-smoked-then-fried crab at Christian's. The smoking process was so gentle that live, moving crabs came out of the smoker still moving. It came to the table fried and moistened with brown butter and fried parsley. (This is one of many reasons we hope Christian's will reopen.) The guy who first had the idea of topping a soft-shell crab with more crabmeat was Warren LeRuth. That was one of the best dishes at LeRuth's, and it took the soft-shell crab up to the next level. You can still find it there at Clancy's, which does it exactly as LeRuth's did. This is the time of year when the first and best soft-shells begin to appear. The crabs are stuffed with delicious white meat and go down good. With the warmer water temperatures, they should be more common day by day. I hope the restaurant you go to gives you two of them. #5: Hard Crabs And Crabmeat It's the waiter's and chef's favorite trick: turning ordinary dishes into irresistible creations by just throwing a little crabmeat on top of whatever it is. With an appropriate uptick in price, of course. That's how appealing crabmeat is. And with good reason. But that's the least interesting way to use this fantastic local seafood. The best way is to serve the biggest lumps imaginable more or less as they are. Or with the lightest of sauces. The flavor of our local blue crab is so distinguished that it needs no help. We occasionally see stone crab claws, king crab and snow crab legs. Occasionally even exotic crabs from around the world. At the bottom of the spectrum, there's the fake crabmeat they serve in sushi bars. I'd trade it all gladly for the meat of the local blue crab  (hereinafter called simply "crabmeat"). It reigns supreme. Crabmeat is found in several forms, listed here from the most expensive to the least: Marbles. These are the largest lumps from the biggest female crabs. Very expensive and rare. Jumbo lump (also known as backfin). This is the big lump of meat from just below the point where the claws are attached. There's a little sliver of thin shell in there that's almost impossible to remove without breaking the lump. For this reason, when I don't find shell in dishes made with crabmeat, I get suspicious. Restaurants buy almost all the jumbo lump in the market. Even in the best of times, the price per pound rarely drops below about $15, and it's usually over $20. Lump. This is the same piece of crabmeat, but from smaller crabs or broken off big ones. Lump is sometimes available at retail, but you have to look for it. It's still good for crabmeat ravigote, crabmeat au gratin, and things like that. Special white. This is the best available in most stores. It's the white meat from inside the crab, but it's usually shredded up. The flavor is not bad, but the look isn't as good as lump, and the consistency from one container to the next is. . . well, there is no consistency. This is good for making soups and sauces, and for topping things like baked fish. Claw crabmeat actually has a stronger flavor than any other part of the crab. It's perfect for stuffings or dressings. It doesn't look as good, however--the meat is dark and stringy. So it's the cheapest kind of crabmeat, universally available wherever crabmeat is sold. Whole boiled hard-shell crabs. This form may be the ultimate way to eat crabmeat, because you have all of the above in there. At the peak of the season--the beginning of the summer--it can't be beat, even though it's a lot of work. (It's always seemed to me that eating boiled crabs will cause you to lose weight, because you expend more energy than you get from the crab.) Crabmeat has shot up in price in recent years because our crabs have become part of the national market. The people along the Chesapeake Bay--who have the same kind of crabs we do and a similar crab-eating culture--buy up a titanic quantity of our crabs. The meat is in demand all across the nation. On the other hand, producers of crabmeat in South America have entered the market with pasteurized crabmeat in sealed cans. It's much cheaper, and for the price it's not terrible, but it has nothing on fresh local crabmeat. It's one of the great delicacies we have around here. The season for crabmeat is just beginning now. Enjoy it! #6: Speckled Trout The favorite fish in New Orleans white-tablecloth restaurants for decades, speckled trout was losing that reputation among gourmets about ten years ago. The fish had suddenly become rare. And therefore desirable. It was an artificial shortage. New laws limited the commercial catch of speckled trout to almost nothing. For many months of the year, there were not--and are not now--any Louisiana speckled trout to be had in restaurants. When the fish returned to menus after these seasonal scarcities, we realized just how terrific a fish speckled trout is. And how all the recipes developed with that particular shape, taste, and texture never really worked as well with other species. The first fact about speckled trout (or "spotted sea trout," as the ichthyologists call it) is that it's a drum, not a true trout, and not related even distantly to those fresh-water, salmon-family fish. If you've ever had rainbow trout or ruby red trout substituted in a dish created with speckled trout in mind, you see how important this is. Neither texture nor taste are similar. The best speckled trout weigh about two or three pounds. (They can grow to over ten, but they get worse as they get bigger.) Really small ones are excellent cooked whole--either fried or broiled. Beyond that, you're talking about fillets. Although some trout is poached and broiled, I've always felt that the fish lends itself to cooking in some kind of fat. It's great deep-fried for dishes like trout meuniere and amandine. (Despite what the waiter says about those dishes' being sauteed, the fish is probably fried.) But it does saute very well, too. These are the dishes in which the flaky, nutty flavor of speckled trout becomes magnificent. The best coating to use on trout, in my opinion, is simply a light dusting of flour seasoned with salt and pepper or Creole seasoning. In the case of trout meuniere--the classic preparation for this fish--the flour blends with the butter in the pan to make the sauce. I think trout also comes off very well in preparations that essentially steam it to doneness. I'm thinking here about having the fish on a pan, topped or surrounded things like bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, bread crumbs, white wine--that sort of thing. I don't often see restaurants grilling or blackening trout, but that's just as well. The fish tends to fall apart on the grill, and often dries out. (Keeping trout from turning dry while cooking is the essential step.) If you're a fisherman, you've noted no shortage of speckled trout in recent years. If you're not, much of the trout you've eaten has had to be shipped in from North Carolina. The commercial quota on trout, given the very healthy population of the fish, is absurd. We need a campaign among eaters to change the law that allows  two hundred trout to be caught by recreational fishermen for every one sold in a restaurant or store (and that's a conservative figure). #7: White Shrimp Louisiana shrimp are the world's gold standard for shrimp, and white shrimp are the better of the two major species we produce. Although not as many white shrimp are caught as brown shrimp, the white shrimp crop are worth more because they tend to be bigger, and the bigger the shrimp, the better they taste, and the more they're worth per pound. White shrimp migrate from the Gulf into the estuaries along the coast in the late spring and early summer, and stay there, fattening up, until things start to cool off in the fall. Fall is the white shrimp season, although some turn up in the spring in some years. Although to the untrained eye white shrimp and brown shrimp look pretty much alike, white shrimp are the ones with the ridiculously long antennae. Shrimp are sized according to "count"--the number of shrimp per pound. The best for barbecuing or broiling are under 20 count. Most of the shrimp you get in more elegant dishes are 20-25 count; for things like fried shrimp or shrimp Creole, they go as small as 40 count. There are no better shrimp for barbecue shrimp, grilled shrimp, broiled shrimp, or any other dish where big shrimp are needed. The meat is a bit tenderer than that of brown shrimp, and the shells aren't as hard. They're easier to peel, it seems to me. And at least one authority notes that white shrimp don't eat acorn works, which is what gives some shrimp that pronounced iodine flavor at certain times. Although getting them fresh off the boat is clearly the way to go, white shrimp freeze and thaw without any significant damage to texture or flavor. So they're available year-round, not just during the fall shrimp season. Worst shrimp dish, if you ask me: fried. Best: New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp, as created by Pascal's Manale. #8: Bluefin Tuna I'd say the finest moment I've ever had eating tuna fish came about three years ago at the Sake Café Uptown. They'd just bought a substantial lot of fresh Gulf bluefin tuna. Bluefin is the species that you may have heard of selling for thousands of dollars per fish, with the buyers often as not being Japanese. Bluefin tunas weight hundreds of pounds, with the record being 1500 pounds. Its size puts it at the top of the ocean food chain. It also explains its desirability to man as a food fish. It's a little too desirable, frankly. That explains the high prices. Which, in turn, is evidence of its being overfished. I can't say I can eat bluefin tuna with a perfectly clear conscience. But we don't get many chances to do so. Bluefin tuna flesh is an amazing thing to behold. Cut from the best parts, it displays no flake structure at all. It's solid meat, with an amazing silky texture. It's deep maroon in color, with a beautiful bright highlight. The flavor is vivid and wonderful. If you're going to eat bluefin, the only way to go is sashimi. No rice, no searing, none of that. Raw, all by itself. In a side-by-side tasting with the standard yellowfin ("ahi") tuna, I'd say bluefin is better--but not tremendously so. However, the bluefin tuna I had that magical day at Sake Café was cut from the fatty belly of bluefin tuna (toro). This stuff melts in your mouth, and leaves an amazing creamy sensation. It's hard to believe it comes from the same fish. Even the color is different--an orange hue. If bluefin tuna ever comes your way, try it. But don't get into the habit of eating it. You won't encounter it often, and I think we maybe ought to put the brakes on its fishery until populations recover. Unfortunately, the Japanese will be hard to convince of that. (They're still whaling, after all.) #9: Brown Shrimp The shrimp we gather from local waters are of such fantastic quality that we're safe in calling them the best in the world. For years, they were the standard of all America. In most of the of the country, when people ate shrimp they were probably eating our shrimp. I guess it's a measure of how little importance quality holds when it competes against price that imported shrimp of substantially lower goodness have all but taken over. Even in supermarkets in the New Orleans area, you really have to work to find local shrimp. And that's really crazy. We ought to raise hell about that. (I know I do.) Not all is disaster, though. During shrimp season, restaurants have a hard time getting fish, because all the boats are out catching shrimp. Shrimp remain the most valuable single seafood commodity in the country, with Louisiana leading the league. Three kinds of shrimp are on our seafood countdown. River shrimp, good but rare, showed up at #32. White shrimp will appear in a few days on this list. The main shrimp species that we boil, fry, and barbecue, however, is brown shrimp. There are two seasons for brown shrimp, in the spring and the fall. During the season, trucks can be seen on roadsides all over the area selling shrimp out of ice chests. The Shrimp Lot in Westwego is the best place of all to find them, because these are the shrimpers themselves, selling the decapods they just caught. The rest of the year is not bereft of shrimp, of course. Fortunately, of all seafood shrimp are most amenable to freezing. Even refreezing them doesn't seem to destroy them--although, of course, there's nothing like getting them when they're still moving. Few food items inspire more culinary creativity than shrimp. You can cook shrimp just about any way you can think of, and thousands of ways haven't been invented yet. But for my money the two greatest shrimp dishes are New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp (which, of course, have no barbecue aspect) and shrimp remoulade. I can't get enough of either of these two dishes. I think a greatly underrated and little-served dish is broiled shrimp--butterflied or not, with perhaps some garlic butter but certainly a nice hit of salt and pepper. Shrimp scampi is a great pan-sauteed version of that. On the other hand, I think fried shrimp are boring (I accept that I am in a minority in holding that view, and that it represents a major taste eccentricity). And to my palate shrimp Creole is the worst dish in the entire Creole cuisine. Again, there are many disagreements, but I don't think tomatoes and shrimp go together. The biggest drawback to shrimp is peeling them. For most dishes, this is essential. But in some the shell is not a problem--especially at certain times of year, when the shells are very soft. For example, I almost always eat barbecue shrimp unpeeled, which is much less messy. You can go to most Japanese restaurants and order fried shrimp heads--which are exactly that--and find that they're wonderful. As are shrimp "spiders"--the complex of legs, with the meat attached at the top. We could go on endlessly on the ways in which Louisiana brown shrimp are delectable. #10: Redfish Redfish has returned to restaurants in recent years, thanks to the success of redfish farms. I haven't had any wild redfish to compare it with (commercial fishing of redfish has been shut down since the middle 1980s), but the quality satisfies my palate. We might still have wild redfish were it not for the blackened redfish craze. Some fishermen went after the bull redfish--the breeding stock--and decimated the species' ability to reproduce. That problem has abated, and the numbers suggest that redfish could be fished commercially again--but the law hasn't changed. The redfish farms are interesting. They're in the marshes along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. Tidal waters can move in and out of the pens of fish, bringing in not only new water with the right brackish salt content, but also natural food for the fish. If you want to see how well, order the grilled redfish at the Red Fish Grill. It's good stuff. A lot of what has passed for redfish in recent years wasn't really redfish. Black drum--not a bad fish, and closely related to redfish--has been the most popular substitute. Another is a Central American fish called corvina, which even experts find difficult to distinguish from true redfish except for the fact that it's missing the spot on the tail. The problem with corvina is that, like most warm-water fish, it has an even smaller window of perishability than usual, and it has a way of being a little over the hill when served. Redfish is probably the most versatile of local fish. There's not a single preparation I can think of that I'd hesitate to apply to it. It's an exceptional fish for the grill. It's the best local fish of all for poaching. Poached redfish with hollandaise is almost too good in comparison with its simplicity. The same process with more flavorings in the poaching liquid results in redfish courtbouillon, a greatly neglected classic. Pan-sauteed dishes with redfish are terrific. Baked redfish--whether done with the whole fish or fillets, with or without toppings--are superb. Smoked redfish is wonderful. About the only thing I wouldn't do with redfish is serve it as sushi--and then only because of an unacceptably high possibility of fish parasites (harmless and not even noticeable when the fish is cooked.) The most important thing to know about redfish when cooking it is to eliminate any of the dark blood line that you might find. As usual, the smaller ones are better than the big ones. When ordering redfish in a restaurant, make sure that it IS redfish. There's much more of it out there, thanks to the farms. But substitutes are rife. #11: Wild-Caught Catfish Much of what needs to be said about catfish appeared earlier in this countdown, in the essay on farm-raised catfish. That product dominates the industry these days. To such an extent that it's very unlikely that the catfish you're served in a restaurant will be the wild-caught fish that made catfish famous to begin with. But a few restaurants still serve the wild fish, notably Bozo's and Middendorf's. Taste it, and you understand why catfish was held in such high regard thirty years and more ago. Especially when the fish are on the small side (the smaller, the better), the flavor and tenderness of wild-caught catfish is wonderful. There's nothing quite like it. There's a corny quality in the flavor. I know that doesn't have much meaning, but it's as close as I can get. It's also clean-tasting, which farm-raised catfish often isn't. The gold standard locally is the fish that comes from the streams that run in the neighborhood of Des Allemands. There, places like Spahr's Pleasure Ponds restaurant on Highway 90 keep the flavor alive. If only more New Orleans restaurants did. You want to roll it in corn meal and fry it, of course. Or maybe fry it whole after cleaning it. #12: Lemonfish Lemonfish is also known by two other names: cobia and ling. It's a big fish that is, I'm told, fun to catch. They get up to about 100 pounds, and when you land a nice one it's cause for celebration. Not just because of the battle, but because of the prize. This is a great eating fish. The fillets of even a moderate-size lemonfish can be as much as three or four feet long and four inches thick. It's an off-white color with a good, firm texture and easily-removed bones. The name is a reference to a citrusy taste that the fish is alleged to possess, although I can't say I've ever noticed this. My peak experience with lemonfish involved a grill propped up by two oak logs, a ground fire fed with pecan wood, a sugar plantation, and a pack of Cub Scouts. My friend and seafood purveyor Harlon Pearce (he and I were both Scout dads) brought a large lemonfish fillet. We coated it with Creole seasoning and dropped on the grill for about twenty minutes. The outside was nearly blackened. When we cut into it and started passing it around, even people who had their doubts about such a big fish cooked that way were knocked off the stumps they were sitting on. It was the best grilled fish that's ever come my way. Lemonfish is almost always cut into steaks, then grilled. Well it should be. It has all the qualities you want of a grilling fish: it's thick enough to encrust without overcooking, it lends itself to interesting seasoning levels, and its flavor is meaty. It also comes out very nice when broiled. Recently, I've encountered lemonfish in sushi bars. It's great with ponzu, green onions, and a squirt of Sriracha hot sauce  instead of the usual soy sauce and wasabi. #13: Choupique Caviar You may not think of caviar as seafood, but it certainly is that. Eggs are found in all fish, but most fish roe isn't especially distinguished. (Although speckled trout roe is much liked by some people, including me.) Caviar is fish roe that's been separated into individual eggs, then treated with salt to preserve it. The less salt, the better the quality. The world's greatest caviar comes from several species of gigantic sturgeon that live in the Caspian Sea. But that stuff is extremely expensive and hard to get, since the fish are endangered. But we have a local caviar, and to my palate it serves well. It comes from a primitive fish that lives in rivers and bayous around Louisiana. Ichthyologists call it a bowfin. The local name is choupique (pronounced "shoe-pick"), from a Native American word that means "mud fish." The process of making caviar from the fish's roe was developed by a family living in the Atchafalaya Basin. John Burke, a young failed oilman, thought it had possibilities and marketed it under the name "Cajun Caviar." He later changed the name to Choupiquet Royale. The excellence of choupique caviar cannot be gainsaid. It's not just good for what it is; it's a first-class caviar by any standard. The grains are very black and on the small side, but the flavor is so good that very little salt is used in its manufacture. It was still a very new product when, in 1989, I bought two pounds of it from Burke for $25 a pound to serve at our wedding reception. I put the cans out there on the ice, with the classic accompaniments. Those who were at the party who knew caviar were very impressed that I would serve such great caviar so liberally. They didn't know what they were eating, and were amazed when I told them. I wouldn't hesitate to serve it whenever caviar is called for. It is much liked by local chefs for its flavor; the local aspect is a bonus. Choupique caviar is not constantly available, but this is the time of year when it's harvested. You have to go to a gourmet shop or high-end grocer to get it. Or you can go to a restaurant. The easiest is the Bourbon House, where they serve dollops of choupique caviar atop raw oysters. That's Dick Brennan Sr.'s favorite, they say. Here's more about choupique caviar from its maker. #14: Tripletail Tripletail is a fish found throughout the Gulf of Mexico and  Caribbean. It also swims up the Gulf Stream and into the Atlantic, so fishermen in the Carolinas sometimes catch it. There it's better known by its other name--blackfish. But "tripletail" has a better ring, doesn't it? That arises from the positions of the dorsal and anal fins, which are about the same size and shape as the tail fin. So they give the illusion that the fish has three tails. Tripletail is an exceptional good eating fish. Unfortunately, there's no mass commercial catch of it. Because it's either line-caught or turns up as a bycatch in shrimp nets, it's not widely or regularly available. (Otherwise, it would turn up higher on this list.) Only restaurants that actively work the market every day buy it. In fact, finding tripletail on a menu usually means you're in a pretty good place. Although tripletail is a moderately big fish--some ten inches wide and about a foot and a half long--its fillets remind me a lot of those of the much smaller speckled trout. In fact, I find the flavor similar, too. As with trout, tripletail seems to be best cooked in the saute pan and served with a sauce on the buttery end of the spectrum. It can also be blackened or bronzed. (K-Paul's used to have some fun by calling it "reddened blackfish.") However, its texture makes it tend to fall apart on a grill. The flavor is excellent, and you shouldn't hesitate to order tripletail wherever and whenever you find it. #15: Sheepshead Today's fish is the most underrated of all the fish we eat locally, for reasons for that have nothing to do with its looks or goodness. In flavor and looks, it's right in the range most people prefer. The reason it's not eaten more often is that name. Sheepshead. One night at Mr. B’s, I overheard a couple of tourists reading the menu. “Listen to this, Heather. ‘Grilled fresh sheepshead served with a lemon beurre blanc.’ My goodness, they really do eat anything down here!” That’s why the state fish authorities created an alternate name: rondeau sea bream. But it’s been slow catching on. The other problem is also pure public relations. There are so many sheepshead in local waters that they’re always cheap. Unscrupulous fish dealers are always swapping it for other, more expensive fish. But they get away with it, because the taste of sheepshead is at least as good as what it’s being swapped for. Sheepshead is nothing new. Its on New Orleans menus as far back as my collection goes (100 years). Yet we’re still not used to the name. Which, frankly, is apt. Sheepsheads’ big heads have teeth reminiscent of the wooly animal’s. But it’s a beautiful piece of fish. It's white, firm, and flavorful without being oily. The larger ones are very good on the grill or in the black iron skillet, where it stays moist. Smaller ones can be pan-sauteed or broiled to resemble redfish or drum. I’m always pleased to find sheepshead offered as a fish of the day, and I often order it. I’ve never had less than a delicious fish made with the species anywhere. It’s a fish that you should never hesitate to order or buy for your home kitchen. As long as you don’t have to clean it. You get less fillet per pound than you do from most fish. And that head is really big. But most of us don’t have to worry about any of that. We just eat. #16: Black Drum Drum was once despised, almost to the point of being considered trash fish. Then redfish disappeared from markets and restaurants, and suddenly we were eating quite a bit of drumfish. And found that it wasn't so bad after all. In fact, drum and redfish are close cousins and similar in many ways. One of those is important: you don't want a big one. It was the fishing of the big redfish by people who didn't know any better (and needed to supply the market for blackened redfish 20 years ago) that resulted in its being taken off the commercial fisherman's list. The right size drum is sometimes called "puppy drum." This is a two-to-four pounder, and it's a nice fish indeed. It works for most uses to which we put speckled trout (another relative), and it's often brought in to sub for specks when the season is over (as it is right now). Drum is about the same white-with-a-tinge-of-gray color, with flakes of approximately the same size and texture. Drum grills nicely--better than speckled trout does. It also is a very good fish for broiling. In fact, I'm trying right now to think of a cooking method for which puppy drum isn't especially good, and all I'm coming up with is sushi. (Parasites in members of the drum family make it unsuitable for that purpose, although I have seen it now and then at sushi bars.) One of the best dishes I ever tasted involving drumfish is the one they do at Drago's under the name "drumfish Tommy," and elsewhere as "drumfish on the half shell." The fish goes onto the grill with skin and scales facing the fire. The top is brushed with garlic and herb butter, and it's left there until done, without turning. The skin gets black and crisp, insulating the fillet from overcooking and lending a sort of steamed effect. Drum is also the only fish of its kind that's still legally available to commercial fishermen in quantities that make fishing for it a viable proposition. It's caught on long "trotlines," which lend themselves to commercial fishing. The populations are stable and the resource is strong. #17: Flounder Some years ago I was having lunch with a couple of friends, both of whom are knowledgeable, avid eaters. The chef, who knew us all, came out and told us that he thought the best dish he had that day was a whole Mississippi Gulf Coast flounder. He then told us that, if we liked, he'd make the same dish using expensive, imported Dover sole instead of the flounder, at the flounder price. We looked at each other. Frank said, "I'd rather have the flounder." Dick said, "I think the flounder's better." "Me three," I chimed in brilliantly. Flounder is misunderstood and unappreciated, second only to sheepshead as the area's most underrated fish. For the few restaurants that specialize in flounder, it's the biggest-selling dish in the house. Its fans know where to go, and those who aren't fans are usually converted by the first experience. But that isn't many places. There are two reason for this. First, lots of restaurants used to offer flounder, but didn't actually sell it. Instead, they sold some anonymous white, frozen fish. This is still going on in Mississippi. I once watched people gigging flounder through the windows of a Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant, while eating a "flounder" that was flagrantly non-fresh and probably not flounder. The second problem is that flounder seems to have been created to be cooked whole. It certainly tastes best that way. But many diners are put off by whole fish. And even more troublesome are those millions of little free-floating bones around the perimeter. Experienced eaters can get through those, but newbies might get a mouthful of bones. Indeed, this was exactly my experience early on. It took me years to get past my prejudice against flounder. Flounder is lower in fat than any seafood we eat. This fact accounts for its subtlety of flavor. I find it has a slight nuttiness that's delicious. It may be the ultimate fish for preparing amandine style. It's good with any variation on butter sauce, particularly those involving lemon. You can bake or fry flounder well, but to my mind the ultimate method is to broil it. This is, as I mentioned, best done with the fish cleaned but otherwise whole. All you need do is butter the pan, cut some diagonal scores in the skin on top, season and butter it, and run it under the broiler until the skin is crisp and the flesh is popping out. What a sight! For fish lovers, few things could be as appetizing. The promise is fulfilled. Done this simple way, flounder is magnificent. And I would take it over a twice-as-expensive Dover sole, any day of the week. #18: Crawfish Good news: this year promises to be a great one for crawfish. The problems caused by the storm are past, the populations of crawfish are strong, the rain has been falling where and when it will be best for the crustaceans, and we're getting boiled and live crawfish earlier than usual. The best thing and the worst thing about crawfish is the same thing: its seasonality. The good part is that when crawfish come into season after being gone for months, there's cause for celebration. We remember how good they are to eat in big piles, just boiled and hot. We remember all the good times we've had in the past eating crawfish. It's the same effect Christmas has. However, the marketing side of crawfish doesn't like its here-today, gone-tomorrow seasons. They want the stuff on menus all the time. Why? Because people--especially tourists--order it. Besides that, a host of dishes with crabmeat or shrimp in the sauce can be made with the much cheaper crawfish. So they are, by restaurateurs whose pencils are as sharp as thier palates are dull. So we get crawfish at times of year when crawfish are not very good. Or inferior Chinese crawfish, which bear the additional stigma of being frozen. (Shrimp freeze well, but crawfish do not.) If all the crawfish out there were fresh Louisiana bugs at the peak of the season, crawfish would rank eight or nine places higher on this countdown. But no higher. The taste of crawfish is more subtle than is widely believed. It's not as distinctive as shrimp. Not as rich as crabmeat. Not as delicate as lobster. It does come into its own only with the assistance of crab boil, cream, or a good dark roux with the trinity sauteed in. On the other hand, if you make a stock from crawfish shells, you have something. Some of the best soups and sauces I've ever eaten had crawfish stock at their hearts. The finest crawfish dish of them all is crawfish bisque--if it's made the old, rustic way. That's with dark roux instead of cream as a base, an intense crawfish stock, lots of whole tails, and balls of crawfish stuffing added at the table. Crawfish etouffee is almost as good. One of the best aspects of the dish is that, like gumbo, no two versions are alike. Most of them are great when made well with good crawfish. The spicy, dark etouffee at K-Paul's and the mild, light-roux etouffee at the Bon Ton couldn't differ more, but they're both terrific. Of all the truths about crawfish, the one that rings loudest is this: if the crawfish you are about to eat have shrunk to a size that will fit on your thumbnail, you are about to eat Rubber Eraser Stew. But that's what happens in a lot of dishes I find with crawfish around here. The things are much more delicate than most chefs assume. We ought to treat them with more respect: cooking them with great care, and eating them only when fresh, in season, and local. #19: Sea Bass First issue: this is not the fish called Chilean sea bass, served with some frequency in restaurants around town, is not really a sea bass, and it's not the fish I'm talking about here. (It comes from the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica, and we're just doing local fish in this survey. A number of sea basses live in the Gulf of Mexico, and we're seeing them on our tables more often. Until recently, we had more experience with sea bass from our trips to New York than we did around here. The sea basses are much more common in the Northeast, where they are much liked. With good reason. Black bass, white bass, and striped bass (in order of my preference) are very fine eating fish. They're fairly easy to catch, too (that's what I'm told, anyway) and easy to fillet. The smaller ones (the striped bass can get pretty big; the others are around the size of a speckled trout) are very good fish to roast or fry whole. They lend themselves well to being baked under a pile of kosher salt (the way Chef Jamie Shannon used to do at Commander's Palace). As for the fillets, they're pretty and pale ivory, excellent in the standard white-tablecloth dishes: meuniere, with pecans, poached and topped with hollandaise, etc. We don't see this as often as we'd like to, but it's a great fish you should certainly grab if it turns up as a special anywhere. John Besh likes it and serves it often at August. #20: Wahoo A wahoo is a big fish--getting up to a hundred pounds at times, although they're usually more like fifty or seventy-five. They live in the blue-water areas of the Gulf of Mexico, grow quickly, and are in fairly large supply. The name, I hear, comes from what you say if you catch one; it's supposed to be great sport to pull one in. Wahoo is a member of the tuna and mackerel family. It's streamlined and very fast. Like tuna, it's more often cut into steaks than into fillets. And it does not stand to be overcooked; do that, and it becomes dry and a bit tough. The most common method of preparation for wahoo is grilling. However, it's also good in moist preparations, like bouollabaisse or a courtbouillon. I once had a light, tomato-and-holy-trinity sauce with more lemon and black pepper than I was used to finding, plus a few shrimp. It was a spectacular dish. We used to see more wahoo than we have in the past few years. However, it's been the fish of the day here and there lately, so maybe it's making a comeback. It's underrated at the table, and I wish more chefs would use it. #21: Yellowfin Tuna Fresh tuna went from unavailable to a favorite hereabouts in just a few years, in the early 1980s. Once it did, it became hard to imagine a time when, if you said tuna, you meant tuna from a can. The fresh was just not available. (We had no sushi bars then, either.) Tuna is unlike most other fish we eat in this area. It's never seen in fillet form--always in steaks. It's not white, it's shades of deep red. It has the texture of meat, with flakes so big that sometimes a large piece of the fish shows no flake structure at all. Yellowfin tuna--also known as "ahi"--is the most common kind we get from the Gulf. (Bluefin will turn up higher up this list.) When you see it in stores, it's often marked "sushi grade." There is no official sushi grade, and you can ignore that. Tuna cookery calls for different rules. It's certainly the fish that's most often eaten not cooked at all, or nearly raw. The first raw fish people learn to appreciate in sushi bars is tuna. Something about it makes the raw-fish experience easier to accept. The greatest truth ever uttered on the subject of cooking tuna came from Chef Paul Prudhomme. During a legislative hearing on the disappearance of redfish in the early 1980s, chefs were being blamed for the overfishing of redfish. Chef Paul pointed out that there is a much better fish to blacken than redfish: tuna. He's right. Nothing's better blackened than tuna, and no way of cooking tuna is better than blackening it. What comes out is something that looks likes, feels like, and almost tastes like a beefsteak. Which is the key to tuna, in my mind. You don't cook it like fish, you cook it like meat. If there's a style of cooking or a sauce that would go well with a steak, it probably will work for tuna, as well. Even offbeat ideas, like tartare, are great with tuna. It seems to me that the quality of tuna in restaurants these days is better than it once was--and worse. I'm encountering tuna here and there that's cut from the tougher parts of the fish, toward the rear. This is especially unsavory when the fish is serves sashimi-style. I'd like to make a suggestion to chefs who cook tuna. Instead of cutting it into the four-by-six-inch steaks three-quarters of an inch thick, how about reducing the width and increasing the thickness? The best tuna dishes I ever had involved what amounted to blocks, rather than slices, of tuna. #22: Mahi-Mahi Mahi-mahi is the Hawaiian name for a fish found in warm oceans worldwide, including in the Gulf of Mexico. Its other names are dorado and dolphinfish. I think the confusion caused by that latter name is why we use the Hawaiian one instead. Dolphinfish only look like dolphins--the marine mammal with so much brain power that it can train humans to gather around its tank and bring it fish. The dolphinfish, however, is a true fish. It is a great food fish. First of all, we don't have to worry too much about its survival as a species. Mahi-mahi breeds and grows so fast that only an intensive effort could dent its population seriously. (Although they seem to be pushing it hard in South America.) My first taste of mahi-mahi came neither in New Orleans nor Hawaii, but in San Francisco. Mason's, a faux-Polynesian restaurant in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel, burned kiawe wood (the Hawaiian name for mesquite) in a grill. There they cooked several fish species from Hawaii. The waiter touted me on the mahi-mahi. It was white with the faintest blush of pink, and had a firm, meaty texture. I thought it one of the best grilled fish I ever ate, and savored it as an exotic experience not likely to be duplicated at home. It wasn't two weeks before I did see it on a New Orleans menu. And it's been around ever since. Mahi-mahi is a very good fish for the grill. It needs little preparation beyond a dusting of Creole seasoning--although I think it benefits from an hour's marinating in a blend of olive oil, white wine, and lemon juice, to break it down a bit. (It is a chewier fish than most, especially in the thick part of the fillet.) Mahi (it's on first-name basis with most waiters and chefs now) can also be broiled to very fine effect. For either grilling or broiling, you want fillets that are at least three-quarters of an inch thick in the center. I prefer fillets to steaks of this fish, although both are found. The sauce should be something simple, like a beurre blanc or the lighter forms of meuniere sauce. Or some sweet-spicy relish-like salsa like the one I give you below. The one problem you sometimes find with mahi is that some chefs are not careful enough about removing blood lines and tough parts. Also, I find mahi-mahi's quality is hit unusually hard by freezing, which seems to dry the fish out. It must be very fresh. #23: Spanish Mackerel One of these days, the pendulum of vogue will swing back to mackerel, and we'll start eating it again. Right now, about the only restaurants you'd find this common Gulf fish are sushi bars. Even in those, you'd be lucky to find mackerel. Look at a New Orleans restaurant menu from fifty years ago, however, and you very likely would see it. Spanish mackerel was very commonly served in the classic restaurants. The liking for it declined after World War II, and now it's about down to zero. And here's why. Mackerel is a strongly-flavored, oily fish. That's what I and its small number of fans like about it. It's a good taste, but a much more forward one than most people are accustomed to getting from fish. Mackerel tastes "fishy." That seems to me a good thing. The mainstream eater, however, wants fish not to taste much like anything. There's nothing bizarre about it, though. Spanish mackerel is a member of the same family as tuna. Its populations in the Gulf are substantial. They grow fast (they are extremely fast and effective predators of smaller fish) to around twelve pounds, although smaller ones are better. Their meat is on the gray side (another turnoff for some people). Like Charlie the Tuna, Spanish mackerel has good taste. One of its favorite fish to eat is speckled trout. And it tastes good. You can cook mackerel in all the usual ways. It's quite good fried. Broiled or grilled is nice, too. Sauces with big flavors of their own are natural companions, because the flavor of mackerel stands up to them. (I'm thinking of the preparation Chef Duke does at Café Giovanni, with artichokes, olives, capers, mushrooms, and butter.) The ones in sushi bars are very small. (I'm not sure they're local.) The great way to have it prepared is as raw sashimi, cut right off the whole fish. Then the remainder of the fish (head, bones, tail, skin) is sent to the kitchen, which fries it. You can eat that pretty much whole. Exotic, but delicious. #24: Hake Here's another one you may not have heard of before. But it's a legitimate Gulf fish, caught frequently enough that I've encountered it fairly often on the menus of restaurants that put some work into finding fish. Indeed, I've run into it three or four times in the last few months, so perhaps its popularity is increasing. The hake is a funny-looking fish. It has a tail the comes to a point, with a continuous fin along its back and underside. It looks like a standard fish in front and an eel in the back. It turns up in shrimp season, when it's found as a by-catch in shrimp nets. Hake is distantly related to cod. Like that fish, its flesh is white and flaky, and lends itself very well to the fish dishes we like to cook and order in restaurants. I'd say it comes out best sauteed; it's a little too soft for the grill, although some chefs prepare it that way. It's a good fish. Try it if it's offered as a fish special. #25: Squid (Calamari) Squid come in all sizes, but the most familiar of them are the small ones from the Gulf that restaurants (particularly Italian ones) serve as calamari. These are almost always deep-fried and served with some kind of tomato-based sauce--either in the direction of cocktail sauce or spaghetti sauce, depending on the place. Sometimes you see it with a Creole mustard-and-mayonnaise sauce, or even a butter sauce. What you can count on absolutely is that the customers of any restaurant serving fried calamari will claim that those are the best in the city or maybe the world. A few qualities separate good squid from not-so-good squid. The first is how well it's been cleaned. There are two tricks, neither of which is performed consistently. Squid needs to have the "pen" (a stiff sliver of cartilage), the ink sacs, and the little beak (one of which bit me once!) out of there. Second, some squids are stuffed with eggs, and in places that serve squid as a specialty you might get one of those. They're a treat. Drago's--in the days when they prepared squid so many ways that they actually has a squid platter--was famous for serving that kind of gravid squid. If the squid is fried, lightness is the key. Calamari get really tough when overcooked. (The texture is somewhat chewy to begin with.) I like to get not only the rings (the body cut crosswise) but the tentacles (which a friend once aptly described as "fried spiders"). Squid is also excellent poached and then marinated in olive oil and herbs to make a cold antipasto, either with or without a salad underneath.  And then you have the wide range of dishes combining squid with rice or pasta. Seafood risotto or cioppino are a couple of those, but the best are those dishes in which the sauce is built using the squid's ink. This is done throughout the Mediterraneon, particularly in Span and Italy. You get a plate of dark-gray rice or pasta with the squid scattered through it. That's my favorite way to eat the beast. Larger squid (and they can get so large that they can actually battle a sperm whale to the death) are also served here and there, but you usually don't realize it. Large sections of the body wall of large squid can be grilled. Every sushi bar has that same kind of squid, usually in a combo sushi plate. (It's the very white stuff with the firm texture whose sides are usually fluted with a knife.) Like all such things, it's cooked a bit first. Nevertheless, I find it very tough and flavorless. I always check to make sure that's not what's coming. That isn't the local squid, anyway. #26: Amberjack Amberjack has always been popular in Florida, but was not seen in New Orleans restaurants until the fish crisis of the middle 1980s. That's when redfish was taken off the table, speckled trout was severely limited, and chefs had to start looking for alternatives. Some chefs liked amberjack; others didn't. I see that still going on. A restaurant either serves amberjack all the time, or hardly ever. I think the reason for this is the tremendous quality differential from one amberjack to another. While the smaller fish are beyond reproach, the bigger they get the less appealing they are. It's even reported that past a certain large size (and these babies can grow well over 100 pounds), amberjack is poisonous. So, whenever I'm offered amberjack, I ask questions. First, how is it cut? If it's in fillets, it's probably good, although I want to know how thick those fillets are. If the fish is in steak form, I won't order it. Amberjack's closest relative in local waters is pompano--which will be found very far up this list. But if there's any similarity in taste or texture to that great fish, it's eluded me. Nevertheless, amberjack is a nice off-white fish, with enough fat to give it an interesting flavor, but not so much as to make it taste strong or oily. The most common preparation of amberjack is grilled. It stands up nicely to the heat, and takes a good Creole seasoning as well. If you have a fillet of eight to ten ounces, you could blacken it to good effect. Back when amberjack just started appearing in restaurants, Chef Roland Huet put some into his cold-smoking pit at Christian's. The results were so fine that whenever amberjack comes my way, at least a bit of it winds up in a slow-smoking situation on my Big Green Egg. It's great that way, hot or cold. Even works as a smoked fish for breakfast. #27: Swordfish   The well-named swordfish has been returning to menus and fish markets in recent years, after nearly disappearing five or six years ago. The problem was the usual one: overfishing. However, management of the stocks in the Atlantic has brought swordfish populations up to nearly what they were two decades ago. If the program keeps up, the average size of swordfish, which is much smaller than it once was, will recover, too. These are big fish. They can grow to be over a thousand pounds. A hundred to three hundred pounds is more common. A fish that big is not filleted, but steaked. A piece of swordfish resembles that of tuna in every way but color; the swordfish has a silvery bronze look. Swordfish also is like tuna in the way it's typically cooked and served. Swordfish contains less fat than tuna, but for some reason it doesn't seem to dry out and get tough the way tuna does. So, if you're interested in a steak-like fish but don't like to eat medium-rare fish, swordfish is the fish for you. (Still, don't cook it to dry.) While all kinds of restaurants serve swordfish, I've always found Italian chefs do the best work with the species. ("Pesce spada" is the Italian name for the fish.) Particularly when grilled and served with the light, herbal sauces made from olive oil, garlic, crushed red pepper and herbs, swordfish shows off its unique flavors best. If there's a problem with eating swordfish, it's in its higher-than-average mercury content. It's at the top of the food chain, with very few enemies other than man. That's where the mercury goes. But it's no worse in that regard than tuna. Just don't eat it all the time. #28: Not-So-Red Snapper Red snapper is one of the great eating fish of the world, and will appear further up the list. But its populations are under pressure and you can't always get it. To fill the gap, the fish business supplies restaurants and a very few stores with other species in the snapper family. None are as good as red snapper, but they're far from bad. Of these, the best is the mangrove snapper (also called the gray snapper). It's a bit bigger than a red snapper, and its flesh is slightly grayer, a touch firmer, and not as sweet (I don't know what other word to use). However, it grills up very nicely, and lends itself to dishes with sauces. I've also encountered vermilion snapper and lane snapper here and there. Both are about half the size of a typical red snapper, but other than that I find them both similar. The lane snapper in particular is very tasty, and is tender and meaty enough that it can be broiled or fried whole, as Chinese restaurants do. I'd also like to try poaching this and serving it with hollandaise, or perhaps with an intensified version of courtbouillon. None of these fish are seen with any consistency anywhere. Frank Brigtsen has offered them at his restaurant more often than any other chef I know. But now that you've been introduced, you'll know to try them if they turn up on your menu. #29: Farm-Raised Catfish A lot of people believe that catfish is the best eating fish of them all. I don't think that's true, but I find the prospect entirely reasonable. Catfish is not only delicious--it's unique. There really isn't another fish like it. The best fried catfish (and fried beats any other preparation all hollow) is a pure joy. However, the forces supplying us with catfish seems determined to lower this esteem. Almost all the catfish you're likely to find in restaurants or markets is farm-raised. There's nothing wrong with that idea. In fact, once the techniques of raising catfish in ponds per perfected, the benefits of farm-raised catfish were tremendous. The fish were always available, in a very consistent form. That's still true. And it's why catfish has become the default frying fish on seafood platters around town. (It replaced trout and redfish about twenty years ago). It saves a restaurateur many headaches to have a standing order for so many pounds of catfish to be delivered twice a week, in the knowledge that it will be there, no matter what. However, over the long term, farm-raised catfish has changed quite a bit. The primary evolution involves size. As the producers become more adept and getting more pounds of catfish grown at a faster rate, they've gone to much larger catfish than was once the standard. Every week, as I shop through all the different grocery stores that I do, I look through the catfish and usually find that all of the ones ion the case are much too large for my tastes. What's the problem with that? It's that small fish are better than big fish. There are some exceptions, but in general within a given species and within the normal size range of marketable fish, little ones will be better than the big ones. When it comes to farmed catfish, the much smaller freshwater flow in the ponds as compared with their native rivers and streams gives the fish a flavor that's. . . well, let's say, something less than pristine. And the bigger the fish is, the worse it gets. It's not a terrible product. However, when you see where catfish appear later on this countdown--as a wild-caught fish--you'll see the depth of disdain I have for what the farms are putting out these days. They should at the very least revise some of their systems to put out a better product, even if it has to be at the specialty level at a higher price. I'd pay it. I love catfish, but I don't buy what's out there these days. It's not all their fault. Restaurants feel better about serving a single very large fillet of catfish instead of many small ones, thinking that making their customers eyes pop is better than making their palates pleased. The shape of catfish fillets makes that technique fail. The ends get overcooked, and the center stays undercooked. Few things in the world are worse than undercooked catfish. #30: Escolar Escolar is a controversial fish. It's a delicious fish on the grill, and is widely served in sushi bars. Its appetizing appearance and flavor ought to place it much higher on this list. But the species presents a couple of problems. The name looks like something spelled backwards. It first became popular because Emeril Lagasse liked it and often served it. Recipes for it are in his cookbooks. (And few others.) There's some confusion as to what kind of fish escolar actually is. We know it's a member of the tuna and mackerel family. But databases of Gulf fish show several species called escolar. One of them is also called oilfish, which some people in the fish business say is widely sold as escolar, its close relative. The true escolar is not oilfish. It has the texture of tuna, but it's white instead of red. Indeed, other names escolar goes by include "white tuna" and "albacore." (The latter is inaccurate.) Real escolar is one yummy fish. The fat content is very high, and it keeps the fish incomparably tender on the grill. Indeed, escolar may be the ultimate species for grilling purposes, and I hardly see it prepared any other way. The fat (none of which is apparent after it's cooked, although it does get on your hands when you work with the raw fish) also contributes to the flavor. It's mellow, meaty, and just plain good. Escolar should be cut into thick fillets. I like to marinate it in something spicy (but not acidic) overnight, then get it onto the grill or the hot black iron skillet. As in the case of tuna, the fish shouldn't be overcooked--leave it juicy in the center. Now the bad news. Escolar gives some people who eat it a harmless but inconvenient reaction in the lower digestive tract. (I don't have to spell this out, do I?) It happens to me every time I eat escolar. But I find the fish so delicious that I eat it anyway. (Although I refrain from doing so in sushi bars.) This is something you should know about--but not worry about too much. It doesn't get everybody that way. #31: Triggerfish The name comes from a sharp, stiff spine that pops up into the upright and locked position when the fish is threatened. That makes it an unattractive meal option for bigger fish. That doesn't affect us, however, and triggerfish is a delicious item for the grill and elsewhere. It shares with sheepshead the quality of being hard to clean, giving disappointingly small fillets for the size of the fish (which is usually around two or tree pounds). That's why triggerfish are more eaten by fishermen than by restaurant patrons. Although it is an acceptable commercial fish in Louisiana, chefs and fish processors aren't crazy about messing with it. However, the meat is very white and beautiful, and the flavor is excellent. If it turns up as a special where you're dining, order it. The standard cooking method is to grill it with Creole seasoning and olive oil. However, I find it to be one of the two or three best fish to use for a courtbouillon, bouillabaisse, or other juicy seafood stew. It holds up well in the broth and the white color makes the resulting dish extraordinarily attractive. It's always seemed to me that if a restaurant decided to turn this into a specialty, it could really make a name for itself. #32: River Shrimp River shrimp have been enjoyed for a long time, but unless you catch them yourself you may never get a chance to sample them. The one and only time they came my way was a few years ago at the old Lafitte's Landing, at the foot of th Sunshine Bridge. Chef John Folse he told me that when he was a kid he used to catch and eat them all the time. River shrimp come out of THE river--as well as the Atchafalaya and even the Red River. Living in fresh water, they're unusual to begin with. They have a bluish tinge--kinda pretty, really. They're medium-small, about 65 to the pound. The flavor of river shrimp is very unusual--sweet, almost. Both Folse and a guy at Langenstein's (who I called after seeing the store's ad for river shrimp a few years back) told me that river shrimp should not be cooked with crab boil--just some lemon slices and salt. Folse gave me a big bag of them, and I took them home and did exactly that. They tasted so good that they needed no sauce. I pulled off the heads and ate the rest, without peeling. No problem. River shrimp are highly seasonal. If they turn up at all, they do so in the early spring. If they show up, they're very plentiful. Despite that, they rarely make it to market. Still, I include them in our Seafood Countdown to encourage more marketing and selling of them. One more funny thing about river shrimp. The people along the river disdained them, because they were so easily caught. Isn't that always the way? Maybe if they were rare and expensive we'd see them all over the place. #33: Groupers Grouper is much more popular in Florida than it is here. (Indeed, there's been a scandal in Florida recently about whether restaurants are serving other fish under the grouper name.) But groupers are is commonly caught in Gulf waters, and shows up ever more frequently on local menus. Groupers come in a number of species, some better than others. The one I've liked best is the Warsaw grouper, a rather large (as much as forty pounds) fish with enormous flakes. That's what I like about it. You can serve it one flake at a time. (I remember having a dish once in which flakes of grouper were alternated with slices of sea scallops.) Yellowfin grouper--a smaller fish--seems to be more common. That's probably whatyou have if you're served a fillet. The color of cooked grouper is very white. That's one reason chefs like it: very white fish has enormous appeal to customers. As does another characteristic of the fish--its mild flavor. I find it a little too mild for my tastes, in fact, and whenever grouper comes my way I always marinate it a few minutes in olive oil, give it a good crusting of Creole seasoning, and either grill or broil it. More polite methods of preparation will result in a very subtly-flavored fish. But many people like that. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. 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