I continue to play with arctic char (omble chevalier, Salvelinus alpinus) as part of that upcoming development project, and hurried use of a deba found me with a (not so) little pile of trimmings and an underwhelming sense of accomplishment.

Needless to say, that fish would have died from embarrassment from being associated with such an awful filleting demo, so while I was standing there with the brown paper bag covering my head in shame, I still had to find something to do with the big pieces of trim, all the meat left on the frame and all the leftover bits post-fillet.

I won’t climb on the fiscal responsiblity soapbox again (though it’s still true and I still want… a pony!), but the trick remains to be able to recoup as much as possible, use as much as possible and do it in a way that just doesn’t look well, gross. I’ve already dealt with the belly meat, but what exactly does one do with the skeleton, the head and all the assorted bits and pieces?

Bone crackers (deep-fried fish bones) are pretty popular in Asia since we don’t do the milk thing for calcium, but they’re not exactly the biggest seller in West, where the very manly men squeal like little girls at the sight of a fish head. The way to remove the remaining meat is to scrape it off the bones with a spoon, but the end result looks like mince for sausages, fishballs or burger patties. Transglutaminase offers interesting options but as this exercise was to do something quick, elegant and (above all) cheap, no meat glue. No glue. No glue for you.

Since it is essentially mince, cooks have been taking a page from beef and making fish tartar from the scrapings. That doesn’t sound particularly appetizing when I write it like that, but arctic char just so happens to make a visually appealing and particularly tasty bite when served in this manner. It’s all a question of style and how you apply that lipstick to the cochon.

Ingredients

• Fish trim from arctic char, excluding large pieces of belly trim
• One green onion
• Piment d’espelette
• Soy sauce (a Japanese or Taiwanese one; Chinese variants have different flavor profiles that don’t necessarily work in a tartar)
• Mirin
• Brown rice vinegar
• Zest and juice from one yuzu citrus
• Pepper

Preparation

Finely mince the green onion.

With a small spoon, scrape the meat remaining on the fish frame (skeleton), the fish collar (the portion immediately behind the gills), the areas around the fins, the back of the head and the unused pieces of belly. Ensure that no pinbones, membrane or other detrius are accidentally mixed in.

Combine all trim onto a clean cutting board, chop coarsely with a knife, and transfer tartar mince into a bowl.

Make a solution of soy sauce, mirin, brown rice vinegar and yuzu juice in the proportions 2:2:1:1 (this can be adjusted to taste). Add minced onion to the fish. The amount used depends on taste, but I added 1 part onion to approximately 5 parts fish. Add a pinch each of piment d’espelette and yuzu zest, and grind in a small amount of pepper (to taste). Moisten the fish and onions with the soy sauce solution, adding only enough to season the fish (there should be no excess liquid seeping out of the mixture). Readjust seasoning.

Service

Form the tartar into a quenelle with two spoons. Serve immediately.

Wine

This is a somewhat more robust application for arctic char, so most of the fish-friendly whites would go with it though I suspect that New World Sauvignon blanc and Chardonnay that aren’t too heavy on the oak and buttery would be better matches (I am not sure about the flintier Chardonnays from Bourgogne). Other varietals of interest would be Riesling (Alsacian rather than Germanic style), Grüner Veltliner and dry Chenin blanc.

Notes

This is one of those “no effort” ways to use up what is often discarded when prepping fish, however it can only be used when one has really fresh fish and a fish that can be consumed raw. Arctic char and seagoing salmonids fit the bill, though char itself is more delicate (refined?) than say salmon.

The tartar option retains the clean taste of the char, but offers personalized expression because not everyone will make the same tartar as the next guy. It also provides additional flexibility for service, as a tartar can be ramped up in portion size to make a starter or kept to amuse-bouche, and plating methods can range from the quenelle, to the ice cream cone (Viestad, Keller and others) to taste-challenged multi-ingredient architectural monstrosities (I won’t mention names but it’s not me). How flyé do you want to be?

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