Fish

Fish is a funny thing. You grow up knowing certain kinds of fish. Some that I really remember are Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, Cutthroat Trout, Large-mouth Bass, Small-mouth Bass, Salmon, and Cod. You get to the other side of the world and you eat fish and you wonder, is this Salmon or Cod? Haha...there are other kinds of fish. Some of the ones that I have eaten here in Chile are Congrio and Reineta. Neither of them are fish that you can readily eat in California, if you can even eat them at all there, and their names don't translate too well to English. However, when any avid fish eater things of the words, "Chile" and "Fish" then one very specific specie comes to their mind:

CHILEAN SEABASS

There have been times that I have sat at a restaurant eating a seven or eight dollar fish meal and wondered to myself, "Is this Chilean Seabass and would I be paying $30 for this meal in California?" Finally I took the initiative to try and understand fish in Chile. First off, Chileans almost NEVER eat Chilean Seabass. Second off, the Chilean Seabass that you eat in California is not really Seabass at all, its just that in the 70's a major fish distributor decided that in high end restaurants "Patagonian Toothfish" wouldn't sell very well.  For all you ecologically friendly readers, the Patagonian Toothfish is supposedly an endangered specie. If you go to some restaurants in Santiago you may get served "Chilean Seabass", but is not the same fish you pay an arm and a leg for in Los Angeles. They say that in Patagonia it is not to uncommon to find the right fish served in a restaurant, so I think now that I know the name I may order it sometime...that is, if it doesn't cost me an eye of the face (Chilean equivilent phrase to arm and a leg).

So Eduardo, a faithful man in our church here, brought us a box of Reineta filetes. Have you ever had, and please excuse the alcohol reference, a beer-battered fish? It is delicious, and definitely not healthy. I'm not necessarily referencing the specific batter that has beer, just the batter that has the consistency that a beer-batter has. The truth is, that I am very against alcohol, and so I always avoid beer. However, I thought that these Reineta filets would be very good in that kind of batter. I typed into google "How to make beer batter without beer", and conveniently I wasn't the first person to search for that. It looks like as a basic rule you can take any beer batter recipe and replace the beer with club soda. So last night we did it! It was delicious! And afterwards there was extra batter so Annie cut up a Zuchinni and did that too! It was very good!

While on the subject of fishing... I have heard that there is some good lake fishing not too far from here. The man, Luis, that I am discipling has a cabin at that lake. He also has a motor boat and fishing poles. He said he loves to fish and asked me to join him. It is trout fishing, and whereas the average trout in California is less than a pound, it sounds like the average fish he catches is more like three to five pounds (that's the average). Sounds like some good eating to me, and hopefully a good way to bond with Luis! I need to find some honey holes anyways before my dad gets here, so I can teach him how to fish. I'm not a huge fish eater, but my neighbor is fanatical about fish. I took him some of the reineta that Eduardo brought us and he was very thankful. I know I'd score some points if I brought him some fresh trout filetes.