King Clip? Yes, King Clip, two ways.......

When not travelling, I'm totally a creature of habit....or as the Missus puts it, "boring". Of course She's the one who doesn't like to go shopping in places where She doesn't know the lay-out. Anyway, on most Saturdays you'll find me at Catalina Offshore. I'm there buying shrimp to keep us stocked, some fish to smoke for the Missus' lunch during the week, and maybe a thing or two for the weekend. Over time I've had the pleasure of chatting with Tommy Gomes whose title is Director of Public Relations and Marketing, but is much, much, more than that......those who know him can attest to the fact that he's quite a character, he also has quite a story, and a fisherman's sense of humor.

On days like this past Saturday, when he's done giving me a hard time, he asked me a simple question; "are you cooking this weekend?" And pointed me to this..... King Clip? I believe that I've eaten a good deal of seafood in my life, but this was a new one.  He explained, "really fresh, firm, good fat, large flake.... Don't screw around with it." As I mentioned before, when Tommy makes a recommendation I'm all in. So I got about 1.75 pounds of it.

Catalina Offshore Products
5202 Lovelock St
San Diego, CA 92110

Still, I went home wondering what the heck is King Clip? So after looking it up, I discovered that it's a type of Cusk Eel and is called Kingklip in South Africa.

Whenever I get some type of fish I haven't tried before, I do something rather simple. We've had an abundance of basil growing in our makeshift garden this year, so the Missus made a almond and pumpkin seed, oven dried tomato pesto. I seasoned the fish with simply sea salt, fresh ground pepper, and just a tiny bit of crushed oregano.

We had it with a simple arugula salad. Man this was some moist and tender fish. There's a bit of sweetness to it as well. The flakes are large and the flavor mild....oh, and the Missus loved it.

I had a bit left and decided to try something more "Asian" for dinner. I did the typical Shaoxing - ginger juice - white pepper Chinese style marinade. Seasoned with sea salt and five spice from QingDao and dusted one side with potato starch. Served up with my basic dressing for Purple Cabbage Slaw, this was very nice.

This fish would probably be very nice steamed. The firmness of the fish would allow for use in stews and even some braising, but I think you might lose the benefit of the fresh and sweet flavor.

Heck, if you see this at Catalina, just don't bother buying it........I'll take care of that, ok?

Oh, and I need to send thanks out to "YY", I made the Bo Luc Lac her dad prepared. It came out nice! Thanks so much!

I was going to make this on the Big Kahuna, but we ran out of propane, so did it on the stovetop.

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day weekend!

Comments

[Nhbilly]

Looks yummy. Hope I run into a filet in Redondo.

[Kirk]

I hope you do too Billy!

[Kyle]

Nice crust on the fish.

[Kirk]

Thanks Kyle. i found that potato starch works really well.

[kat]

mmm

[Kirk]

The Missus liked it Kat.