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A Cup of Fish

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

SIR ISAAC WALTON ONE GOOD THING about catching your own supper is that you don't have to sing for it. And neither do you have to wonder if it's fresh, or run to a cookbook to see what to do with it.

Our chief objection to writing cookbooks at all, is that we belong to a tribe of scribe that puts down in all seriousness such silly things as "Add a cup of fish," and carries on old superstitions like this from A Baptist Home Circle Cookbook: "With hooks and nets you catch us You never regard our pain Yet we reward you with dainty food To strengthen your body and brain."

Like hell you do! That business of fish being brain food is the bunk, but it's darn good eating, all the way from bullheads to octopus. And no outdoor cook worthy of the name will throw away a fish just because it has an ugly leer, or because it's a "minnie" no longer than his little finger. Shiners, roach, dace, bream, all the small fry that comes to his net (not butterfly net) leap right into the pan, even if they have to be palmed off as whitebait. The French, in fact, tog themselves out in sports clothes, take a thousand francs worth of equipment out in a rented rowboat and spend the whole day catching one little shiner no bigger than the goldfish colletch boys swallow in the nude, and taking him home alive in a bucket to astonish the neighbors. But then, the French they are a funny race, and instead of fishing with worms they use wriggling cheese maggots and some exotic eaters actually fatten fish-worms on milk, cook and eat them, just as our Mexican neighbors fancy a mess of fat worms of maguey.

In other words: "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm."

The neatest trick of catching and eating fish in one streamlined gesture is done by the Brazilian panther who sits himself down beside an Amazon stream and dangles the tip of his tail in for a lure. Just as soon as one of those vicious sawtooth, man-eating piranhas or barracuda strikes he whips it out and in one streamlined motion catches it in his mouth and swallows it as expertly as a trained seal. "The cat would eat fish and would not wet her feet." And we knew a domesticated cat in Brooklyn that was almost as good a fisherman. Everytime we came home with a fish he'd be out on the front sidewalk to greet us with an affectionate rubbing of his whiskers against our ankles, and by the time we had climbed the four flights to our flat and got to the kitchen, there he would be on the back fire-escape smiling through the window like a Cheshire or any other triumphant swallower of mice.

And speaking of mice, that is the bait used for big rainbow trout in Western mountain lakes. A juicy live mouse is tied to a little raft of bark and floated out into the water until wham! the trout takes him and you take the trout. There is, indeed, nothing ladylike about the whole thing. Any fisherman of either sex who can bait her own hook can cook his own fish, wolf his or her whale blubber without benefit of Emily Post, gnaw their Alaskan candlefish at both ends, chip a snack of sculljoes or other sapid slugs and mollusks from the tide-washed rocks at Provincetown, cook their eels in beer and eat anything in the seafood line except maybe a clam sandwich after a whole day spent fishing with clams for bait.

In Cooking the Catch and Playing Indian you will find how to do your fish redskin fashion in clay or stuck on a stick; also under Cooking in Paper, Skewer Combinations, and in other sections there is tasty fish lore, including Court Bouillon in which to boil fish so they'll be more tasty, although our rule for getting the most out of fresh caught fish is to cook them in any way except in water-to boil 'em is to spoil 'em!-but you might try poaching them in wine or malt drinks.

Here are some suggestions:

Scale fish from tail to head, that is, begin scraping away the scales at the tail end and finish at the head. Do your scaling beside running water, if possible, to float away scales and debris.

Wash well to get rid of all blood, and skin bottom feeders which are apt to taste muddy. To skin a small "cat" or other pan fish wash it well, split lengthwise and lay it skin side down in a dry hot frying pan for a minute. When you take it up all of the skin will be left sticking to the pan. Never cover a dressed fish that is waiting to be cookedcovering makes it steam and spoils the flavor. Most fish taste better when cooked in the skin, and that's why salmon and sardines are canned skin and all. The gelatinous part between the flesh and the skin tastes best, so most large fish should be cooked whole if possible, and not just slammed into the frying pan in slices. It should be cooked with the head on, for there's no better meat than fish cheeks. But we Americans are squeamish about having codfish eyes leering at us out of a plate of soup or stew, so do as you like about the heads, but remember you're losing some of the finest parts if you chop it off and part of the shoulders with it. The bones are flavorsome, too, and should be removed only after cooking.

Fish cooked with grapes, bananas and oranges is tops; also beer and ale poaching helps carp, eels and similar sluggish customers, while white wine is good with some fish and red wine with others.

No recipe will ever do justice to that one-as long as this-that got away. But if you bring up an old shoe or boot you might try the classical recipe for Shipwreck Soup, under Soups.