Here’s another great fish from Salt + Sea in Portland: Atlantic Pollock (Pollachius virens). We’d catch these guys occasionally when we were fishing for mackerel as kids and my mother would cook
them up for the dog or cats to supplement their daily ration of dried food. The fillets that Jay delivered last night were monsters. The biggest fish we were used to were maybe 12 inches. These fillets alone were up to 18 inches long and 1½ inches thick.
The USA’s 2012 total harvest of Atlantic Pollock was over 14.8 million pounds, valued at $13,000,000 or more, which is actually a pretty low value per pound. This species, like Acadian Redfish (see our post of March 6th), as a stock survey of 2010 concluded, was not being over-fished. There’s more information about this fish at https://www.fishwatch.gov/seafood_profiles/species/pollock/species_pages/atlantic_pollock.htm.
For lunch today, we marinated the pieces of fillet with fennel seed, garlic, onion, paprika, turmeric, ginger, cardamom, mustard, cayenne, salt and pepper, then seared them on a hot grill before finishing them in the oven. A spritz of lime juice was all they needed along with a warm carrot and cabbage slaw and brown basmati rice.
