“Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

I have tried my best today, to find just the right "Fish of New Zealand" poster. I found several that I attempted to copy into this post, but none of them came out as large or as clear as I wanted. After trying for a while, I remembered W. C. Field's good advice, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it."

Therefore, I'm not going to bring the poster to you, I'm going to bring you to the poster. Please, if you're interested, click on the link below and look at some New Zealand fish.

http://www.seafood.co.nz/types-of-fish/

If you weren't interested and didn't click, reconsider now, before you go on any further because the photos on the link are by far the best pictures you'll see on today's post. You can even touch each fish on the link with your pointer and it will appear that there is water rippling around it. A pretty cool little plus in my opinion. Go ahead. I won't go any farther with this post until you're ready...

...OK, well, I hope you all have been to the link and learned a little about the fish that swim in our waters. You might have read that the fish shown there are by no means all the fish that are eaten here. I am going to show you some pictures I took of some of the fish I've tried. I regret now that I have documented so few compared to all of them we've tried.  

The first two I'll show you are red snappers and are the number one game fish here. 

You're going to need to look closely to see the next fish. Taken together, they are known as Whitebait. This term is used to describe fish in several parts of the world, but in New Zealand, it describes the juvenile form (about 2" long) of five species of fish of the family Galaxiidae.

These run up rivers from the ocean in spring and are harvested by netting.  I have seen fresh whitebait for sale in fancy fish markets for as much as $119.00/kilo. I buy frozen packages of them for $7.99/200 grams.  The most common use for these fish is in fritters. That's just beaten eggs and flour, whitebait and salt/pepper. Fry them into little patties. Very good. And yes, you use the entire fish; head, bones, fins, scales and guts. (and tiny eyes)

Can you see their little eyes looking up at you?

Here's one that I got excited about when I saw them for sale at Henderson Seafood. I first heard about flying fish when I read Kon-Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl, as a kid. In fact, I just started re-reading it today and found that the author mentions flying fish on the very first page of the book. His 6 man crew sailed a raft from South America to the Polynesian Islands. (they landed on an uninhabited atoll) 

In his account, flying fish would often land on the deck of the raft which was only inches above the water line. One of the duties of the cook first thing in the morning was to gather all the flying fish that had come aboard during the night.  **

I thought that it tasted very mild. Thor and the boys enjoyed them too. Of course, they used them as bait as often as they ate them.

Here's one that I thought tasted just a little more 'fishy.'  Not bad fishy, but somewhat noticeable. They tended to break up too with only the lightest cooking so I'd had to give the interesting looking piper fish a B- on his report card. These little guys have a long list of alias. They're also called garfish, ihe by the Maori, or 'halfbeaks.' They're about the size of smelt.

This one has a rather interesting bit of history behind it. In 1769 Maoris living on the east coast of the North Island gave several casks of pickled John Dori to Captain Cook, who was on his first voyage to New Zealand at the time. The Maoris, then and now, know it as kuparu.

John Dori are very widespread across the globe and all have a large 'eye spot' on their sides that supposedly confuses their enemies.  

These fillets, which are usually sold here with the skin on for some unknown reason, cooked up very nicely. Good flavor and texture.  

I think I'll expand this post to include all sea food. There are so many interesting things to show you. Here are some tuatua and prawns. 

I boiled the prawns in sea-salted water and cooked the tuatua in the steamer above the prawns. They were both delicious with garlic butter.

Henderson Fish Market had both of them in big tanks. I rushed them home and we enjoyed them as a treat for lunch on Valentine's Day, the day Jeanne and I met 44 years ago. 

I enjoyed putting this post together.  I think that I'll continue showing you some fish and seafood you may not have heard about before. 

** I learned something recently about the Kon-Tiki voyage that I didn't realize. Two of the crewmen aboard the raft signed an agreement with the U. S. Army Quartermaster to eat no fresh food at all during the voyage. They lived entirely on field rations, tins of food and emergency rations that the U.S. wanted tested. (well, they claimed they did)

Can you imagine how dreary that diet must have been, especially when you had to smell things like flying fish frying in the morning?

My suggestion is that you find the book at the library and read it. It's the perfect escapism literature for snowbound folks.                                -djf