This week on the Local Food Report, we talk about cooking with oily fish. It’s tricky. But when you get it right, it’s so good.
When I met chef Tony Pasquale at his restaurant Scully Joe’s in Wellfleet, he told me he’d just finished breakfast.
“I had some fried mackerel with some hard-boiled eggs,” Pasquale said. “We had a little spicy sauce, a little orange reduction, a little pepperoncini oil.”
With family from Italy and a cooking style that often leans Portuguese, Tony is not afraid of the oily fishes of the world. But a lot of us cooks are. So, I decided to ask him about his secrets, especially when it comes to cooking the two most common oily fish we have in local waters.
“We’ve got some mackerel, we’ve got some bluefish,” he said. “I've always loved bluefish since I started coming here as a kid. I don’t know people still seem to have some stigma about it. I mean obviously it’s the best the day you catch it and grill it. But the oily part doesn’t bother me and the Portuguese and the Italians to some extent remedy that with some of their vinegar. It just tastes like a beautiful, oily piece of fish.”
Vinegar, Pasquale told me, is the secret to most successful recipes that involve fattier fish.
“So, with Bluefish—I went to Sardinia two years ago and they have a dish, it's just called agliato di pesce and it's mostly sun-dried tomatoes, pureed up with lots of garlic and lots of vinegar,” Pasquale said. “And you just kind of make a paste and we cornmeal fry the Bluefish and then coat it in that. You serve it room temp. And that takes away any of the fishy fish part. And man, it's good.”
I asked Pasquale if it’s a bit like dressing a salad with oil and vinegar. He explained that the vinegar is strong enough to change the texture of the meat.
When I looked it up, I discovered that the vinegar breaks down proteins in the fish to cut through the oils, bringing out the flavors and softening the meat. And This is the same secret to another Portuguese dish, vinha d'alhos.
“Which just means ‘wine of garlic.’ It's just lots of vinegar, garlic, and olive oil. I'll soak stuff overnight, drain it off, and then fry it.”
I asked if that could be done in barrels in a large-scale preservation operation.
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “You don’t soak it that long because the fish will start to fall apart, so 24 hours is enough.”
I realized I was thinking of escabeche, a dish of marinated fish, meat, or vegetables, traditionally cooked or pickled in an acidic sauce, typically vinegar, with spices like paprika, onions, and peppers.
“Oh yeah, that's different,” Pasquale said. “We do that with the sardines here. You fry it, you cook the fish and then soak it in vinegar.
Before refrigeration, escabeche was an essential preservation technique, a way to keep fish safe to eat and tasting good for weeks, even in warm weather. Tony also makes something called Mohlo Cru, which is a Portuguese red sauce made with pickled peppers. And he says when mackerel and bluefish are super fresh—like just off the boat a few hours—simple is even better. Just fillet them and put them on the grill—no acidic sauce needed.
“I think people associate oily [fish] with stinky fishy,” Pasquale said. “And that's just old stinky fishy fish. So, get out there, get some mackerel, get some bluefish. There's more to life than cod and salmon.”
I suggest that oily fish are good for you.
“Yeah, I’m gonna go with that,” Pasquale said. “Small, oily fish health food! The small, oily fish diet. Come on down!”
All joking aside, oily fish such as mackerel and bluefish are well-known for their potent omega-3 fatty acids—essential fats our body can’t make on its own. Regular consumption of omega-3s is well known to boost heart health, protect joints, support brain function, lower blood pressure, and they’re especially critical for fetal brain development. Local mackerel season is happening now, and bluefish are just arriving for the summer—so get cooking.
In case you didn’t catch the reference, Skully Joe is an old name for salt cod.
Tony Pasquale says a recipe like this sun-dried tomato paste is the perfect treatment for bluefish.
