Coconut Encrusted Quillback...yum, yum!

[Steve-O]

After reading brudda kamuwela's mahi recipe....I just had to pull some fish out of the deep freeze and get busy in the kitchen.


So I thaw's me out some Quillback Rockfish fillets, a couple of halibut cheeks off a 60#er, and one pack of halbiut steak. I figure once I get the palm oil hot the dinner bell is ringing ...even before the fish chunks are swimming!

Here's the guy I ate if you're not familiar with Sebastes maliger or Quillback.


They obtain their name from the sharp, venomous quills or spines on the dorsal fin. At the base of the spines are venomous glands, which excrete poison into the spines. The stinging spines protect the quillback from predators-THANKS Wikipedia!

They, like most rockfish are gonna have something sharp on them and these guys win the prize in rooster spines.

So to the recipe.

One pair of quillback fillets thawed in cold water. These were skin on so I got my Rapala blade sharp and laid it down flat on the cutting board between the meat and the skin and pulled the skin.   ZING! no mo skin. Even the scales on these bad boys are sharp and quite scratchy.

Cut each into three chunks and did the same with the halibut cheeks and steak. About two pounds total meat.

Dry ingredients: half shredded coconut to half italian season bread crumbs (Dellalo brand). Salt and pepper is optional - none used this time.

Wet ingredients: one cup of Krusteze Buttermilk pancake mix, stirred up with one egg, half cup of milk, and just enough water to thin it a bit more. Consistency of thick pancake batter.

I did rinse the fillets once and drained them dry.  Then dip in the batter, roll in the stirred up coconut and bread crumbs and straight into the Fry Daddy Basket of 375 degree Organic Palm Oil (Tropical Traditions).

In just a couple of minutes the batter is golden and the chunks are floating. I dump 'em hot onto paper towels and took the rest of the dry, dumped it into the batter and made a handful of coconut hush puppies for my side.

A little lime juice on some and little cocktail sauce on the others, butter on the hush puppies and YUM! YUM! Ran out of cocktail sauce (GASP!) and made up a little zinger of a dip with Hunt's Ketchup and Wasabi Sauce stirred together. Sweet Heat!

The quillback was like melt in your mouth tender and sweet....the halibut cheeks were delish! as was the chunks of hali steaks.

Not sure which halibut I ate but the cheeks came off of this one.


Heading back to Alaska in 27 days.....but who's counting?

[kamuwela]

alright its 10 pm and you got me hungry.

[seaeagle2]

Yum

[Dominick]

Good job Steve.     Dominick