Instructions
I can resist anything but temptation, or at least so said Oscar Wilde. For my own sake I can forgo anything except luxury – I do like a bit of pampering.
But luxury is an inherently problematic concept because it is, by its very nature, personal and discretionary. My wife finds considerable joy in an hour-long foot massage, while for me this would amount to an interminable and overly-touchy tickle torture. On the other hand, I find great joy in an evening spent amongst learned colleagues tasting the finest whiskies from around the world, while she would decry this as a session of diesel-sampling.
In the world of seafood, luxury comes in several forms. Pambula oysters, Tasmanian rocklobster, WA marrons, Yamba prawns….and one of my favourites, hapuka.
If you’ve not tried hapuka before, then you’re in for a surprise. It’s everything you may have expected in fish, and then a whole bunch more. It is more moist, more savoury, more lingering and layered than any fish you’ve previously tried.
Found mostly in the great southern trawl (a triangular area between Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand) the fish go through several life stages that affect their fishing. While coastal dwellers as juveniles, mature hapuka head for the deep, mostly found between 200m and 800m below the surface, scrounging the seabed for food.
As such, many unethical fishery operators now drag-trawl the seabed for hapuka, destroying the grasses, corals and habitats in the process, ruining the marine environment for generations.
So if you want to try hapuka, and I think everyone should at least once, then insist on buying line-caught fish. You will pay a little more for it, but it’s a worthwhile investment. Not only will you get to sample one of the best fish in any part of the oceans, but you’ll also be taking a stance against reckless and destructive fisheries practices.
Oh, and as for the cooking? Keep it simple – you really want to be able to savour every morsel of this excellent fish.
Pan-roasted hapuka with asparagus and lemon aioli