European perch

My new culinary discovery!
European perch lives in lakes locally in Poland, and they are predatory, eating zooplankton and other fish as they grow; so they can be used to control some populations. Fried in butter, it tasted great, but scraping of the scales took an awful long time. Now I have scales all over the house... next time I will probably just remove the skin.
Also, I love the punk look of this fish, haha. I would probably keep them if I had a pond!

Awesome. It doesn't make sense unless you're really good at it, which I am not, or unless you catch fish of appropriate size, the which I do not, but I love to fillet. My favourite part is where you've sliced the sides away from the bones, and then lie the slab scales-down and run the fillet knife between the meat and the skin.

I'm wierd. Sometimes I practice it on roasted butternut squash. Shut up, I know it's strange. I'm fine.

Because I hate the waste, I keep the bones and everything excluding the entrails and fins to make bouillabaisse.

My grandmother used to make a fishball in gelatin recipe, served cold, for wigilia (Polish Christmas Eve for those not Polish, of Polish descent, or clued in). I imagine they'd make tasty ones if they're anything like the freshwater perch here in Canada.

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:Awesome. It doesn't make sense unless you're really good at it, which I am not, or unless you catch fish of appropriate size, the which I do not, but I love to fillet.

I just bought it... but I really like the shop, people who work there are quite knowledgeable both about fish and cooking. I don't know much about aquaculture (but am getting into it now, this season), so I was excited to find a local fish which can be sustainable (I guess). Tastes much better than carp! Quite royal actually.

My favourite part is where you've sliced the sides away from the bones, and then lie the slab scales-down and run the fillet knife between the meat and the skin.

I found a recipe which insisted on keeping the skin, but I was really bad at removing the scales... they were right, though; it was delicious. At least the part that I cleaned...

I'm wierd. Sometimes I practice it on roasted butternut squash. Shut up, I know it's strange. I'm fine.

Ok I won't tell anyone.

Bouillabaisse sounds like a peculiar fish soup! Maybe next thing on my list.

Funfact about perch:
You can stock a pond exclusively with perch!

The small ones eat invertebres and the bigger ones eat the small ones.
Results in less fish and therefore cleaner water than in a pond stocked with gold fish or something similar.