The humble kahawai

Lily Morris 'in the chair', doing battle with a kahawai on the Russel Waterfront.

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The humble kahawai isn’t our most renowned eating fish, but sometimes we beggars can’t be choosers.

Besides, they are a good-looking fish, as far as fish go, and put up a decent scrap, often zig-zagging around everyone else’s line in the process.

We get our fair share of them up here in the north. Many is the day when northern men head out on a snapper hunt, expecting a bin full of large snapper to prove their prowess. However, we older anglers are aware that to expect to catch many large snapper is to invite the inversely proportional result of a few small kahawai.

A goodly chunk of my life has been spent as a charter skipper, and for a whole number of reasons I became a bit of a specialist here in the Bay of Islands. I ended up taking out absolute beginners and their kids on half-day trips with snapper the target.

However, I soon learnt that if you wanted some repeat business from a family, at least one of them had to catch a big snapper – and that it was up to me to entertain the kids while Mum and Dad felt the thrill of the vertical kind.

One of the best ways to keep the youngsters involved was to make sure they caught small fish on small hooks attached to small rods. Kids don’t want a monster fish to scare the fight out of them. Small people equal small fish. Sounds simple and it is. So while Mum and Dad had the big baits on the bottom, the little kids were catching the small fish that tend to congregate under the boat.

Although we don’t own a boat these days, this is still the rationale I use when taking my three and five-year-old children fishing in Russell Bay nowadays. We don’t go fishing down on the wharf, because it’s too easy for one of them to fall in. So we usually fish on the beach out in front of the Swordfish Club. Therefore, when the inevitable happens and one of them falls in, I can retrieve them without getting too wet myself.

Dom has started school now, so three-year-old Lilly accompanied me down to the beach on a beautiful morning last week. Sunshine, no breeze, high tide, and a winter chill to the air.
The rod has caught quite a few fish since being bought, along with a reel, for $20 two years ago.

Unfortunately the original reel met a stingray and was blown to bits, so had to be replaced by another tiny spinning reel of somewhat less dubious quality. The whole rig weighs less than a handful of sparrows and is just right for a little person.

The biggest snapper we ever get is of the barely-legal variety, and all are thrown back with much ceremony. We also get the odd run of small kahawai, which are similarly released.

On this particular morning, Lilly managed to hook, play and land a true horse of a kahawai. This fish took out a large amount of string and ran horizontally down the beach. The shallow water caused the fish to make three cool jumps out of the water, but to no avail, with the hook remaining stuck. All those small fish Lilly had caught previously meant she knew how to pump that skinny little rod and retrieve the 3kg nylon.

When that biggest of kahawai was finally hauled up on the beach, there was a round of cheering and applause from the small crowd of tourists gathered on the road behind us.

Lilly wouldn’t have minded at all if I had released that fish, but I figured it was about time that we went that next step – that whole killing, cleaning and consuming part of fishing that turns a hobby into a lifestyle choice of the more satisfying kind.

What I had in mind for this particular fish was an old recipe of my mother’s for one fillet, and a new recipe from my wife for the other one.

I have tried bleeding kahawai in the past, but after the taste test I haven’t been able to detect any difference. So I decided not to bleed it. What I did do, however, was leave a lot of meat on the skin while filleting. The meat closest to the skin is mostly the strong, red, gamey meat that generally makes a kahawai a strictly B-grade eating fish.

Filleting a kahawai this way tends to be relatively wasteful, as you only end up with a smallish amount of pinky-clear fish to eat out of what was once a very large kahawai. But it’s worth it.

The first thing I like to do with fillets of fresh fish is put them in the fridge overnight. The idea of catching a fish and eating it on the same day is all very noble, but the difference in texture gained by ageing fish overnight is almost dramatic. Eat a fish on the day of capture and your knife will crush the flesh under its blade. Eat it the next day and the meat is split by the blade’s downward pressure. The same effect is felt in the mouth. Keep the fish overnight and it won’t be as chewy – crazy but true.

So anyhow, the next night was kahawai night. The first course was the old recipe, courtesy of Mrs Morris senior.

This fried fish recipe from my late mother is very cheap and simple; I recommend you rip out this page and stick it to the inside of your pantry door.
 
 
Battered kahawai
The batter mix:
• ½ cup plain white flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Enough water to make a relatively thin batter

The process
Cut the fish into small slices, dip into the batter and fry in hot shallow oil.
As long as the oil is nice and hot, the batter will crisp up into a truly golden crunchy finish. This is undoubtedly the best fried-fish recipe available to a home cook without a deep fryer in the kitchen.
This is a stock-standard, old-fashioned dish that we have all tried variants of in the past. But the next recipe will be a bit out there for some of you old fishos!
Raw fish without lemon juice and coconut sounds radical, but let me assure you, it is very more-ish.

The dip
• A squirt of soy sauce
• A splodge of fish sauce
• A splash of sesame oil
• A squeeze of lime juice
• A sprinkle of brown sugar and toasted sesame seeds
• A smudge of crushed garlic and ginger
Add in some finely chopped capsicum and/or shallots, or whatever is trendy next week.

The process
Take your kahawai fillet and slice it as thinly as possible with a sharp knife. Dip the small fish slices into the mix for about two seconds and slurp it down. It’s fantastic. Even Lilly likes it.
So both Mrs Morrises know how to prepare a kahawai fillet. It really is a pretty humble fish that can taste a bit ordinary, but if you try either of these recipes, I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
 

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