Viva El Mar: Fish for the New Year #2, Arctic Char

Quickly becoming a household tradition is something Ngoc and I call Crab Night. In the winter months, its not uncommon to find us on an otherwise uneventful Friday night steaming a couple live whole crabs and calling it a night. Yesterday we mixed it up a little, since I'm kind of feeling overloaded on crab as of late.

While Ngoc opted for the traditional Dungeness, I instead scored a half pound fillet of fresh arctic char. The char, as you can probably tell from the photos, is a close close relative of salmon, with a very similar taste and firmness that falls apart in layers. It differs in its higher fat content, due to the frigid ocean temperatures in its nature habitat, the arctic circle. It actually is the found farther north than any other freshwater fish, and is listed by fish watch as a sustainably harvested species. In addition, one observation of my own is that char seems a little firmer than salmon...it held up pretty well on the grill over open heat.


The high fat content and firmness lend themselves to a variety of cooking methods. Last night, I goosed the grill and gave her 4 minutes on the skin side of the filet, and 3 minutes on the meat side of the fillet. Over the grill flame, a crunchy crust starts to develop on the meat side of the fillet after 3 minutes. This is good! BUT, you don't want to overdo it and dry the fish out. Accordingly, use the skin side of the fillet to control your meat doneness. If you want a drier, more well cooked piece of fish, go for 5-6 minutes on the skin side, while still maintaining the same 3 minutes on the meat side. My grill was on medium high. After that, a little salt and some pepper, possible a squeeze of lemon, and you're good to go.

Look at that strip of fat! It's like a frikkin' pork chop!

Hopefully this will give you a laugh. We are without a porch light at our new place, so grilling has been done with everything from car headlights to an open back door that spills light out onto the porch. This method seems to work best thus far:


Also, I developed a little recipe for Sweet Potato Fries on the fly last night to go along with the fish. You'll never believe the secret ingredient. After peeling and slicing a couple of sweet potatoes (variety of your choosing, I used Japanese sweet potatoes) into 1/3 inch thick fries, heat up your wok and about 3/4 to a full cup of vegetable oil until a drop of water really sizzles on the oil surface. In batches, fry the fries for about 2 minutes for each batch. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 425.

After each batch of fries comes out of the wok, arrange them on a greased cookie sheet. When they've all made it onto the sheet, sprinkle a half teaspoon of GARAM MASALA per potato over the fries, along with a pinch of cayan pepper. Bake for 30 minutes.

After you pull the fries out of the oven, scrape them into a metal bowl and shake with a pinch of kosher shalt. Viola!