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Blow fish tails made a common appearance on our summer food table. In summer, we lived at our house on the beachfront in South Jersey. Fish was part of daily life. Going to the docks at Cold Spring Harbor was part of the week. When the boats came in to the dock with their catches, we went home with weakies and blues and porgies and whitings.Then there were also the blowfish. Dockside blowfish showed themselves immediately from among all the other fish spread out on the wet dock planks. Blowsfish, often still alive, puffed themselves up to the size of a porcupine balloon.Their porcupine needles were an alluring threat to little kids.We loved to poke at the needles and watch the blowfish inflate even more with their menacing quills. I cannot say for certian, but I think the fisherman gave away the blowfish for free.
But the backbay docks at Cold Spring Harbor were not our only source of fish. Just in front of our house was the North Wildwood Fishing pier. The pier, now gone, was active in those days and the catch was plentiful. The fishing pier was something of an enclosed ecosystem that provided numerous ocean foods. From the pier fisherman caught blues, weakies and whiteys; shark and skate. In addition to the fish caught from the pier above, the pilings of the pier were also a never ending source of sea food. The pilings themselves were encrusted with mussels that we gathered when the tide was low. At the base of the piling, there was always a circular indented pond. You pushed your foot into the pond’s sand and wiggled until your toes struck the shell of a conch or piss clam. When you pulled up a pink shelled conch it made a wonderful sucking sound. When it was a clam, there was always a wild giggle as it sprayed all over us. Fish direct from the sea was a part of daily life. Sadly, these days, the pier is long gone and there are no more fish boats at Cold Spring Harbor that sell their catches dockside. My children and their children will never enjoy those simple summer days.
I have spoken of these days at the pier and at Cold Spring Harbor on other pages. On this page, I want to return to the story of blowfish tails. Blowfish were plentiful. We had them from the boats at Cold Spring Harbor or as throw away fish from the pier in front of our house. In either case, we would take the blow fish home, if not for food sake at least for the fun of watching them puff up if we prodded them with a stick. In the kitchen, my Aunt Mary would lop off their tails and fry up the blowfish.
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We would then enjoy them as a side to dinner or just as something to be eaten on a whim. When the beaches changed after one of the hurricanes in the 1960’s (I don’t remember the hurricane’s name), the pier was destroyed, Cold Spring Harbor transformed, and crass commercialization altered the beaches I knew as a child. With that loss, all the fish we knew faded from our table.
Much later, in recent years, with the advent of food television shows, I learned that blowfish are highly toxic. In Japan, they are prepared only under the strictest methods. The news stunned me. I remembered eating blowfish as a child. After all, my aunt and countless other little Italian ladies had been cooking and serving blow fish for generations. Still, I must say, it had been years since I had eaten or even thought about blowfish. I did some research online and consulted numerous cook books.The books had no information, but the Internet posted recipes from several sites.On all of these sites they noted that while the whole fish contained toxins, the tails was perfectly edible.That was the key.My Aunt was using only the tail. The sites I found were all from Manhattan. Well, I thought, if you can find blowfish in Manhattan, you can find blowfish in Philadelphia.
9th Street Philadelphia, The Italian Market Anastasi Fish
I went to 9th Street. Sure enough, at Anastasi’s on the corner of 9th and Washington, there they were: blowfish tails. I picked up a pound and brought them home. The recipe that follows is from a childhood memory. To the best of my recollection, we had blowfish tails simply breaded and fried and garnished with lemon. The one caution for blowfish tails is how to eat them. Use your hands. Hold the tail fin by your fingers and bite not from the end, but from the sides. The spine of the blowfish, although small, is still in the middle. You need to eat on either side of it.
This recipe is as simple as any recipe can be. It's straightforward breading and frying and serving with lemon. Blow fish tails may very well be a good way to introduce children to fresh fish. I would even go so far as to serve them with a honey or ketchup dip. |
What You Need
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Equipment:
Large wok or other pan for frying Sharp knife |
Ingredients
Blowfish tails
Frying oil Breadcrumbs Flour Milk Egg Lemon |
Breading
Use the tail of the blowfish as the handle.
Dredge the tail in flour. then in the egg/milk wash, then in the bread crumbs, |
Fry
Fry only two or three at a time.
I have found that the essential trick in frying fish is to keep the oil at a medium heat: too hot and the bread crumbs will burn and the fish will be raw. |
Serve with lemon
