THE other night I used three skinned and filleted luderick caught that morning to cook Hanoi fried fish. Nothing complex, the fillets have the bloodline cut out, get coated with a mix of plain flour and tumeric, are quick fried and sprinkled with some chopped dill. Delicious, served with a crisp salad.
Now some folks don’t rate the luderick as a good eating fish, but it’s all in the handling. These were ike jime’ed, bled, cleaned and chilled and as usual tasted great. If they’d been left to die in a sack or bucket they would have been awful, which is reflected in the dismally low price these prized sportfish bring in fish markets. Wirrahs and black spinefoot sell for more.
This sent me wondering about what are generally considered to be Australia’s best eating saltwater fish. The most complete set of edibility ratings I’ve struck are in Roger Swainston’s guides to temperate and tropical fish of Australia, where all our species are ranked from no stars to 4 stars, where a 4 equates to “excellent eating”.
Only 24 get the 4 stars. Ten are temperate species: WA jewfish, pearl perch, King George whiting, sand whiting, snapper, Tasmanian trumpeter, black sole, and john, silver and mirror dory. Eight are tropical: barramundi, coral trout, barramundi cod, rosy snapper, and sweetlip, grass, blue-lined and yellow-tailed emperor. Six species overlap: spangled emperor, narrow barred Spanish mackerel, mangrove jacks, baldchin groper, blackspot pigfish and tripletails.
I’ve tried a majority of these and wouldn’t dispute the rankings. Baldchin groper I haven’t, but given their popularity in the West they must be good. Likewise tripletails, which I was surprised at initially, but after reading Peter Zeroni’s recent web piece on their eating qualities I shouldn’t have been.
So what about species that didn’t crack the 4 stars?
For me, golden snapper, black jew, threadfin salmon, red emperor and dusky flathead must be knocking on the door for selection in the top team. But it’s all pretty subjective and largely based on handling and keeping qualities. Some fish do well for a day in the fridge, some are great straight out of the water. Some freeze well, some don’t. Maybe the best eating fish is the best handled, or maybe it reflects where they’re caught. Or maybe it’s the fish you caught and kept this morning. To her dying day my old nan wouldn’t eat mullet, luderick or “black” bream, which I think were just bream caught from well up the estuaries…..a bit like dark coloured barra from predominately freshwater areas, which taste tainted.
As mentioned earlier, even the much maligned wirrah brings good money in fish markets and is popular for Asian cooking styles. What do you reckon?
