Mackerel Pike

This is a fairly mild mackerel but with enough flavor and oil for a light Wine Pickle. The flesh is very tender when raw but becomes quite firm when cooked, whether fried, steamed or baked.

A 5.9 oz fish will yield 3.6 oz of fillet (61%). That's skin-on but you don't want to try to skin it. As with other mackerels the skin is very thin and you need it to hold the delicate flesh together. Fried, the skin tends to bubble up rather than shrink.

You'll be hard pressed to find any scales on this fish, but you'll notice some strange little glowing blue flecks that seem to appear from nowhere. No it's not wayward flakes Ti-D-Bowl or some other cleaning product, it's normal for these fish.

Clean the usual way but remove and discard the head - mackerel isn't used to make stock. The flesh is very tender so treat it gently and use a very sharp knife to fillet:

1. Make a cut across the tail on either side and make cuts on both sides of the anal fin at the bottom.
2. Cut downward from the top all the way to the spine for the full length. You'll get little guidance from fins since there aren't any in the front two thirds of the fish.
3. Once you have the fillet free down to the spine and from the tail to the body cavity, fold it over the ribs and peel it off with a little help from your filleting knife leaving all the ribs attached to the spine.
4. Cut off the pectoral (bottom) fins and make sure the anal and dorsal fins have been completely removed from he fillet.
5. Check for any bones. You'll feel spines all along the centerline but they'll be soft when cooked so don't bother pulling them.
6. Don't attempt to remove the skin, you'll just break up the fillet.