Seafood

On The Sauce: Josh Lewis – La Casita

JOSH Lewis might be one of the only chefs in Australia who can service his restaurants with the fish he catches on his commercial fishing license. In the past year, he and his family decided it was time to combine his two passions fishing and cooking. Cutting the middle man out to ensure he knows the origins of the fish he cooks for his patrons. He started ‘New Moon’ as his commerical fishing business. After spending the day with him catching and cooking, it is clear that working entirely with his own catch has made him proud and energised to bring premium seafood from the ocean to the kitchen, and your plate.

Josh has a high standard of expectation in the culinary world. Being an experienced chef over several decades he has built a reputation around quality. He has established himself in the small coastal town of Brunswick Heads of Northern New South Wales. I went to visit him to check out one of his establishments ‘La Casita’ an authentic, yet trendy Mexican joint with a pulse and chiefly stocked tequila and mezcal bar. La Casita translates to small and warm house, the venue upholds the identity, but Josh’s passion for food makes this place worth veering off the highway to visit.

Josh has three restaurants of his own in Brunswick. Roco is a ramen bar that replaced his fine dining offering, Fleet. He has a chicken rotisserie, “Birds of Paradise”. Just down the road is “La Casita”, Once he has caught enough fish for his menus, he will start to sell locally to other venues. His fish is in seriously high demand, because the way he looks after it makes it taste better and last longer. Once the fish he catches hits land it usually doesn’t travel more than a few kilometres by road. Reducing each fish’s carbon footprint through emissions. Something worth considering is that being locally caught seafood is valuable to your physical health and the planet. It means you get nothing but seasonal produce. Josh is constantly rejigging his menu based on what the ocean is offering and what he can procure. 

Josh’s commercial license and fishing strategy

Josh has a “Line West” commercial fishing license that allows him to fish waters that are west of 183m. He is not allowed to commercially fish inland waters such as estuaries and rivers. Typically he targets seasonal oceanic offerings. Pelagic species Longtail Tuna, Cobia, Mahi Mahi and Spanish Mackerel in the Summer months and demersal-dominated Winters including pearl perch, bar cod and snapper. 

Josh uses several techniques as a commercial fishing operator relying on rod and reel, fishing with tackle that your likely to see on most recreational vessels. Deep dropping, live baiting and slow pitch or vertical speed jigging. 

He is predominantly a solo fisherman. Being a lone soldier on a vessel day-in-day-out means that you hone your skill set and have a genuine understanding of all the details to complete a job. There is no way that he can handball lowly jobs to an apprentice or skip through the safety elements of the job. He has to do absolutely everything with care, if anything goes wrong the consequences are real. Having said that, he knows his local waterways and where fish are likely aggregating based on conditions. He puts the necessary time into maintaining his vessel and equipment so that he can be confident in a safe and fruitful return. 

Josh loves jigging for all sorts of species including bottom dwellers. He loves catching Kingfish and Amberjack and always has a sound around for arches to drop on. There are no shortcuts for this manual-intensive style of fishing as a commercial fisho. You need the same amount of elbow grease and gumption to get the job done. Often when the currents are roaring and you are pumping and winding 300g jigs from deep water it is sweaty work. Add in an angry kingfish that pulls hard to the boat and you get a fairly good workout. Most recreational anglers will leave once they get their share. But Josh will stay to fulfill his orders which can mean seriously stretched arms. It is a laborious job, but you’d rather be out here than on a tin roof.

He launches his boat out of Brunswick Heads which has a notoriously dangerous and narrow bar. The Brunswick Bar is one that you need to know what you are doing before crossing, even on a good day. Local knowledge is essential and even Josh says that every local has their own story of a near miss. Low tide is particularly risky with the run-out tide almost being impossible to navigate against any decent swell. Breaking waves and treacherous currents have seen more than a handful of videos posted on social media of boats capsizing, taking unnecessary risks without an intimate knowledge of the bar. 

Stopping and observing the bar from a safe distance for a good 10 minutes is crucial to gauge the conditions and look for the consistency of set waves. Life jackets are mandatory for all vessels. If you are not confident, a good skipper will be able to say “not today” and turn around to keep everyone, the boat and equipment safe for another day. Josh has to skip days of fishing for extended periods due to conditions that can create mounting pressure to meet the requirements of his restaurants and customers. 

The bar was not ideal for the morning we were set to head out for a fish. The bottom of the tide was at dawn and there were 5 boats waiting for up to 30 minutes for the tide to rise and ‘fill in’ the bar. We got out smoothly and headed for a long drive to a very special fishing spot. 

Our session

I feel blessed to be able to join someone like Josh in doing what he loves but also puts food on his family’s plate. When he trusted me to visit several of his honey holes it truly was a privilege. One GPS mark he described to me over the phone as a certain success, which may have put a little more pressure on the day to reach expectations for both of us. 

This mark is unusual because he says that he has had a very low rate of the parasite Kudoa. This parasite is one of the reasons that fishos in Northern New South Wales and Queensland tend to avoid kingfish. There are higher rates of infection in more tropical waters. At the moment there is no way of telling if your fish has the parasite as there are no physical telltale signs. You can even eat the fish as sashimi and still not experience any changes to the flesh. It is not dangerous for humans to consume. When the fish is killed the parasite releases an enzyme that causes the flesh to liquify and turn to mush once cooked. If any fish Josh sells has this parasite, he will need to refund the customer and it can be damaging to his reputation. Josh cuts a small portion of each fish’s tail that he sells and cooks it in the frying pan to see if it is infected. This way he keeps his legacy intact and mitigates any risk of a fish being wasted.

We rocked up to the fishing spot and as he described we immediately sounded a solid ball of what looked like pelagics. He set up a drift upwind of the pinnacle and our 300g Majorcraft Jigpara vertical jigs rigged with Gamakatsu tuned assist hooks were zooming to the depths to intercept the schooling fish. The rig we were using was a PENN Slammer 7500 spooled with 60lb Atomic 8x braid and a Samurai 5’6 jigging rod PE 3-6. Great quality gear, accessible to anyone keen on getting stuck into some deep water kings. 

We truly put the outfits to the test. Josh sprung the idea of reaching a personal goal of a total of 100kg for the day. He has only achieved this goal once before. With an extra set of hands-on board, I bought into his aspirations and had this image of greatness in my head. The reality of the difficulty in achieving such a milestone came at about midday. We have caught 10ish fish and he said that it was probably only around the 40kg mark. Fish ranged in size from 70 – 90cm, a great size for him to be able to confidently sell to his clients. With non-stop jigging in-between catching I was already pretty spent. It was time to put the camera away, roll the arms up and get on with it if we were going to crack the ton. 

Conditions in the ocean are constantly changing. If you are ever on the water and it seems lifeless, the day is not over. Conditions can change favourably or adversely at the drop of a hat. If you have sounded fish, there is a good chance that they will turn on at some point. Perhaps a tide change or even a lure change could be the difference. 

We experienced an hour where the kingfish, decided to shy away from our jigs. They even turned their noses up at a live yakka dangled in front of them. We took the time to check out a neighbouring reef that presented similarly. A few drifts highlighted solid soundings but no hookups. We swapped between the reefs for the rest of the day giving each school time off when the bight dwindled. 

Sure enough, they came on thick and fast. The drift was nearly 2 knots which gave us only 1 drop on the mark before we needed to redrift. Our hottest run was 5 drifts in a row where we both got double hookups. We would wait for our own rod to get buckled but the fish were so aggressive that we wouldn’t cause a scene until both of us were bending. It was so fun and some of the best kingfish jigging I have experienced.

Josh says that he usually prefers jigging to live baiting in these situations. Maybe he has a sick mind and just likes jigging all day, but there may be some logic to it. The jigs move through the water column quickly covering a lot of ground, much more than holding a live bait steady. The jig excites fish and they often fight over the lure. Bigger fish tend to outrun the rats and we only released one undersized fish all day. Josh has the same size limits as recreational anglers and closely measures any fish which are usually released if they even need measuring. In the end, I was convinced that jigging is a viable yet overlooked commercial fishing technique.

After a flurry of fish, Josh said “We will need a minimum of 4 fish to reach our target but 6 will be more than enough”. We took the gamble, calling it a day after another 5 fish totalling 26 individual specimens. I was really holding on to the idea that we could potentially reach this arbitrary figure of 100kg. A figure that had kept us motivated throughout the day to keep dropping, and dropping and dropping. I was amazed at how Josh is able to physically and mentally persevere, by himself whenever he can get out of the bar.

We were unpacking his ice box back at his place in Bruns. The fish were soldier-packed into fish market boxes to be weighed. The fifth box calculated the total for the day’s catch at 95.8kg. We fell short of the mark, but it was still his second-best day commercial fishing to this date. Even though this has been his first year in opperation with New Moon Fishing. The number was there to keep us in the fight, I was stoked to help Josh with his haul.

Fish Care

With a fine dining background, Josh has become accustomed to working with proteins that have been truly cared for to bring out their best eating qualities for customers. He treats every fish that hits the deck with the utmost respect and care. He Ike Jime’s every fish with a brain spike, clips the gills on both sides and flushes the blood by pushing the fish back and forth in the water boat side. He neatly soldier packs them in a saltwater ice slurry with a foam mat to cushion each fish on its journey. He brings an extra box just for ice, regularly checking the temperature of his slurry with a thermometer to ensure optimal conditions. He tries to keep the temperature at around 5 Degrees Celsius, a number he has slowly refined with confidence in the final product. Much colder and the eyes turn white and the colour of the skin can burn. 

Not a single fish out of our day’s catch had the Kudoa parasite. Could the way that he dispatches and handles the fish have any bearing on the release of the enzyme from the parasite that damages the flesh? This is purely a thought and not an idea backed by science. Or is it just this magical mark we fished?

Cooking

Josh may be a great commercial fisherman, but his real expertise lies in the kitchen. Spending his career developing skills and researching a range of cuisines. He is a talented and creative chef. I was interested to see what he could do with kingfish that was unique. He delivered. 

Josh used a kingfish that had been hanging in his cool room for 2 days as opposed to one of the days catch. This allows the meat to develop savoury flavours and set for ease of breaking down. I love fish tacos, but think they are overdone in the ‘catch and cook’ social media communities. I wanted a real chef with a trained skill set to tell me how to make a real fish taco. 

Josh hasn’t just opened up a Mexican restaurant in Brunswick to fill a gap. He aims for an authentic dining experience. So much so, that he travelled to Mexico on a research trip to see how the locals do it. He noticed that each household had a device for hand-pressing their own fresh corn tortillas. The contraption is made of heavy metal, a lever is pulled to press the flat pieces together. A rolled-up ball of special corn-derived dough fits inside and is pressed into the perfectly round and consistent tortilla. Josh had to have one of these for the restaurants to be able to bring the true taco experience to his customers. It gets used every day and is a drastic difference from the commercial brands you buy grocery shopping.

He portioned his fish into lengths the size of your middle and index finger put together. Lathering them in a beer batter with imported Mexican beer and flash-frying them. A roast garlic salsa, fresh cabbage and jalapeno to top off a dish you could go back for more and more because of its simple and classic flavour profile. A fish taco should feature fish as the prominent flavour with accoutrements enhancing what is already so valuable. 

Tostada was another dish that was whipped up at La Casita for me to try. I loved this dish because it was a flavour that I had never tried before. Plus it encourages anglers to use the offcuts of their catch to cure in a ceviche-style dish. Josh presented the dish with perfect cubes of kingfish from his offcuts. However, your average angler may be scrapping at the rib cage (which Josh did for another dish) to remove the flesh with a spoon or finding irregular pieces so that they don’t go to waste. The Kingfish was cured in the Tostada by lime. Salsa Macha is a spicy Mexican condiment that Josh nailed with chilli and peanuts. He layered this on a crispy housemade flatbread and topped it with a few cubes of seasonal melon.

For the main course, Josh decided to highlight another dish on the menu that fits in with the essence of ‘on the sauce’. He tries to use every edible part of the fish. Every fish that he catches is able to have so much versatility on the menu as different cuts have different eating/cooking qualities. This dish is something that people could be tentative to order if they were not familiar with eating heads and wings of fish. If they didn’t know that all of the most juicy and flavourful fish is hidden in the hard-to-reach places. Full of fat content as they don’t get worked like the tail and shoulders. Josh says that people see this dish come out from the pass and request it from the menu because they are keen to try new things and are blown away by the presentation.

When filleting the fish, Josh was able to keep the wing and head intact as one piece to be cooked and served together. He takes this a step further by using a heavy-set knife to split the kingfish head in half. The head takes less time to cook and is open to the naked wood-fired flame that all food is cooked over at La Casita. The smoke and fire tenderise the meat and char the skin. The benefit of splitting the head is that all of the meat is easy to access and identify. He says that so often the skull will be returned with every edible component sucked dry including the eye. A roast pork fat and tomato sauce, finished with garlic, salt and vinegar to taste is spread over the kingfish to serve. Sensatrional. 

The head is full of meat. How often do you see frames and heads of fish discarded at the boat ramp or thrown to the pelicans? Everyone knows about the cheeks, they alone are worth the added effort of cooking your fish heads. But there is so much more. A long finger of meat stretches between the eyes down to the tip of the nose. When filleting you usually cut this section of meat at the top of the head. It attaches to the main fillet when kept whole. Behind the eye socket, there is a nugget worth scooping out, it usually has a grey colour to it after being cooked and is packed with flavour, just like the oysters on the underside of a cooked chook. Picking at the head you will find pieces of pearly white edible goodness everywhere you look. With larger fish, a single head can easily feed a family. Do yourself a favour and save one for the BBQ to find out for yourself.

Next time you are up that way, pull into La Casita and give Josh a yell. He will be somewhere in the vicinity and is worth saying g’day to. Stay a while, knock the scab off a few of their Mexican imports and have a top-notch feed. Thanks Josh for having me, see you next time. 

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