"Right on cue, H2O asked, 'And what are the seven B's?... tip-toeing over the last three syllables like he was barefoot and they were a lawn full of honeybees.
"In an obviously rehearsed recital, Ma rattled out, 'Beans, Bait, Bass, Beer, Blue Lake, Jim Beam, and Bullshit!' And right on cue H2O made his face all crooked and revolted-looking—as if Ma's funkicity were something new."
I've just realized that during the summer when the spouse and kids are over in the Old World, I'm basically living the life of Gnat Buckley, a minor character in David James Duncan's The River Why (a book that has good fishing parts, but it takes "spirituality" way too seriously… man, I've become crotchety).
I remembered this passage when I looked at my dinner yesterday: bass, barracuda eggs, beans, brown rice, beer. If you count the bacon that used to cook the beans, that makes for six Bs, all in one sitting. And if you count the marinated anchovies that I had as the antipasto, seven* Bs –the perfect number for Bs or horcruxes or whatever you decide needs to be present in an exact mystical** number. [*Anchovies were bait when I went fishing for the bass and barracuda—the marinated version of the little stinkers is addressed in an older post. **This is another arcane holla to my friend Karen, who among other things is rather knowledgeable about cabalistic numerology.]
Stop. Rewind. I did say "barracuda eggs," and for most readers that makes a doubly out-of-the-ordinary menu item. Start with my use of barracuda as a species, which some erroneously equate with the vicious man-eaters responsible for countless attacks on innocent swimmers in tropical seas. It's generally off-putting to think that the fish on your plate at supper may have lunched on a fellow human –isn't this really just "cannibalism once removed"?
Well, for one it's only the "great barracudas" that pose a threat to human swimmers in tropical seas. The ones we have in temperate waters must be just "so-so barracudas," and they don't pose much of a threat, despite their wicked-looking teeth.
Another good reason for not eating a tropical great barracuda is that they, like a lot of large coral reef predators, have a rap sheet for accumulating ciguatoxin, which is definitely something you don't want to eat. Fishies like the one shown above, however, are quite edible and appreciated in many countries. In Japan, they call it kamasu. In Italy, it's luccio di mare. I'd be willing to bet that the French use this fish, too, though I have no idea what it's called there (when I first saw loup de mer on a French menu I figured that was it—the same as luccio di mare—but it turned out to be the boring ol' Mediterranean sea bass, 95% of which these days is aquaculture crap like most of the salmon that makes it to people tables).
For table fare, it's a good fish but not a great fish. I can enjoy barracuda meunière for a meal, but try a repeat the next day (a common occurrence, since these guys are fairly large and a fishing trip could provide meat for several days in succession) and it's not so swell. This is a fish that must be cooked with skin attached, which as with chicken becomes the tastiest part of the fillet. The flesh has a relatively assertive and characteristic flavor, and changing the cooking method, marinade, or saucing doesn't really make barracuda more "repeatable."
The eggs, on the other hand, are really quite nice. The Japanese method is to cut the roe into inch-long segments and simmer them in a soy-sauce-and-sugar based concoction. The skin shrinks with the heat, and the eggs get pushed out of the ends, making for a flower-shaped bite. It's a very pretty way to eat fish innards, but definitely not my favorite.
I prefer to open the roe and sauté, starting with the skin-side up, so that it gets fairly thoroughly cooked before the skin starts to shrink. After that, if it curls up and starts to bounce around the pan, you'll still have cooked eggs after a couple more minutes. Then saucing with a garlic and white wine reduction. And yes, a beurre blanc would be better. However, that would push my quota of "B" foods beyond the critical number of seven, and ol' Gnat Buckley wouldn't likely approve.
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