Shoreline fish take on a starring role

• Easy and delicious ways to prepare local fish

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Left to right, moana, taape, moi and uhu (parrotfish) are inshore species that can be cooked at home in a variety of delicious ways. Photos by Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Chef Guzman's blackened taape with papaya relish is a treat for both the eye and the palate.

How to fillet a fish: The fillets are the fleshy flanks on either side of the fish. The object is to detach them from the spine and ribs. Fillets may be prepared skin on, or the skin may be trimmed off.

1. First, scale the fish, running knife blade against the direction of the scales. Gut the fish, removing gills and innards. (This is best done at an outdoor sink.) Place fish on its side, cut down its length on either side of the backbone.

2. Using the tail as a handle, cut fillet free from tail to head, keeping blade close to bones. Repeat on other side of fish.

3. To free the fillet from head, cut into the fish just to the rear of the pectoral (chest) fin on one side; no need to cut head off. Also, slice the fillet across the other end to free it from the tail.

4. Finished fillets should be deboned: gently feel for bones and pull them out with pliers. These moi fillets can be fried so skin is crispy and flesh is tender. Bones can be used for fish stock or soup base.

A friend's voice would be heard calling from the yard of their Kahului, Maui, home and Ernest Guzman would step out to make his selection of fresh-caught shoreline fish from the coolers in the back of the fisherman's truck. The cleaned fish would go into the freezer, later to be pan-fried or made into soup by mom Jacinta Guzman.

Guzman, now 33 and executive chef at Sam Choy's Diamond Head Restaurant, doesn't have much time for fishing himself but he enjoys it when he can get away. And when Choy's partner James Lee suggested that the restaurant should do more with whole fish, he was intrigued.

Lee referred him to his friends at Ishimoto Fish Market in Chinatown. "I went down there and started looking around and I realized: These are all the types of fish we ate when I was growing up!"

But he also realized that most local folks are stuck in a two- or three-recipe rut when it comes to popular shoreline fish such as kumu, akule, moi, 'o'io and aholehole: batter and deep-fry it, wok-fry and serve it in a ginger-scented sizzling oil, steam it or chop it up in a soup.

Having followed a difficult but very deliberate career path that took him from Maui to West Virginia to New Orleans and back to Hawai'i again, Guzman was ideally suited to bring a more cosmopolitan approach to the homely fishes so dear to Islander hearts, and so readily available off our shores and in our grocery stores and fish markets.

He began experimenting, using Cajun-style spices on taape, creating sashimi from moi, baking a whole kumu in a French-style salt crust. Customers enjoyed his "Friday Fish Night" specials, but his staff was a bit at sea, so he created a "bible" for them, a book of fish photos naming and describing each species.

Tasting the food, and hearing about the back-of-the-house bible, now-City Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz, who had co-authored several popular restaurant guides and worked for Watermark Publishing, urged Guzman to write a book.

Since writing a cookbook happened to be on Guzman's to-do list (just as becoming executive chef by age 30 had been), Guzman threw himself into recipe testing, writing and researching, getting his old boss Emeril Lagasse to write a foreword and enlisting popular former TV personality Hari Kojima to illustrate his step-by-step approach to filleting a fish.

"The Shoreline Chef: Creative Cuisine for Hawaiian Reef Fish" (Watermark, paper, $12.95) was released late last year. Guzman declined to have the book published in hardback, preferring a user-friendly spiral binding and lower cost. "I wanted the book not to scare people, to be a book they would really use. If they splatter sauce on it, they can just wipe it off," he said.

And useful the book is: Guzman selected 15 of the most widely available shoreline species (though he did cheat and include the deeper-water ulua). Each is introduced by its Hawaiian and English names, pictured and described in detail, and used in several recipes. The book includes helpful tables of similar fish (so you can substitute when one variety isn't available) and a guide that rates them by flavor (delicate to robust), texture (firm to tender), best cooking methods and seasonal availability.

This is information that isn't readily available outside the local fishing world. It's the kind of book that newcomers to Hawai'i, or folks like me who didn't have a fisherman in the family, can take to the market to help with buying choices.

From his student years at Kapi'olani Community College to the day he introduced himself to Hari Kojima and asked to pick his brain, Guzman has been known as "the guy who asks too much questions."

"I tell people, 'Open your mouth. You don't ask for something, you don't get it,' " Guzman said.

He opened his mouth early on, getting a friend of a friend to introduce him to Alan Wong, then just poised for fame at the CanoeHouse at Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows. A few years later, he asked Wong to get him an apprenticeship at the Greenbrier Resort in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, where Wong had worked as a young chef.

Those were tough times for Guzman, a Maui boy who had never experienced changing seasons or a kitchen where he didn't understand half of what was said. He almost came home, but Wong pretty much ordered him to stick it out. Which he did until he felt ready to move up the ladder.

Then, he asked Emeril Lagasse for a job the year Lagasse was named one of Food & Wine magazine's best new chefs. He got the job and was plunged into another new culinary world. "They had nothing that I knew what it was — no ginger, no lemongrass," he recalls. But within days, he was proposing new ideas using an Asian influence, and within a month, he was promoted to sous chef.

Guzman and his wife, Samantha, soaked up the Big Easy, learning all they could about the food, the techniques and about the restaurant business. Guzman recalls meeting Sam Choy briefly on a visit to the Islands when Emeril was doing a guest-chef stint at the Kea Lani on Maui, and being star-struck when he later saw a picture of Choy on a magazine cover, holding a giant opah. "I kept the magazine, but I didn't know I was going to work here," he says.

When Samantha was pregnant with their first child, the Guzmans decided to head back home, and it was his wife who, on the sly, sent Choy her husband's resumé. He got a call to come down for an interview and was asked to make lunch for Sam and the partners. "I'll give you an hour," said Choy.

"I thought about what Emeril had taught me. He'd say, 'Hey, Gooooz, we're gonna do six courses on this theme tonight. Get to work.' " He also recalled Lagasse turning out the garbage can and finding too much expensive, usable food wasted. "There's your raise, guys," he'd say to the chefs.

So Guzman dived into the walk-in and found some pork chops and leftover osso bucco. He grilled the chops and served them with a savory bread pudding made with the osso bucco scraps. "I decided I'd show them I'm not just the person who needs the whole lobster and the caviar to make a meal, but I can be Mr. Utilizer, too," he recalls. "I think it was the bread pudding that got me the job."

In the same way, Guzman now makes use of inexpensive fish such as taape that many fishermen consider "rubbish." Combined with well-chosen ingredients and a little technique, the bony fish can become "Casian (Cajun-Asian, get it?) Spiced Taape with Papaya Relish" and cause locals who once sneered at the cheap stuff to come back for more.

Easy and delicious ways to prepare local fish

Introduction to three shoreline fish

Uhu uliuli/speckled parrot fish: Moderate flavor, firm texture, suitable for poaching and steaming, available year-round. Favorite uses: kelaguen (Guamanian ceviche), foil-wrapped and steamed, hibachi-grilled.

Taape/blue-striped snapper: Bony, inexpensive, originally from the Marquesas. Moderate flavor, medium texture, suitable for sautéeing and steaming, available year-round. Favorite uses: sauté or deep-fry.

Moi/six-fingered threadfin: Versatile bottom-feeder, raised in ocean and shore pens. Delicate flavor, tender texture, suitable for most uses, available year-round. Favorite uses: stuffed whole, thin-sliced moi sashimi with citrus. Source: "The Shoreline Chef," by Elmer Guzman; Watermark, paper, $12.95

Local-style Foil-wrapped Whole Uhu

• 1 (4- to 5-pound) whole uhu (parrot fish), cleaned, with head and tail on
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 4 ounces sliced Portuguese sausage
• 1 sliced lemon
• 1 sliced medium onion
• 1 ti leaf
• 1 sheet foil, large enough to wrap fish
• 1/4 cup minced ginger
• 1 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 cup sliced green onion
• 6 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Score fish 1 inch apart all along its body, creating 1-inch diamonds on both sides. Season inside and out with salt and pepper. Rub mayonnaise on the score marks and inside the cavity. Tuck sausage, lemon and sliced onion in the score marks. Place ti leaf in center of foil sheet. Place fish on ti leaf. Sprinkle remaining ingredients evenly over fish. Gather edges of foil to center and crimp tight to prevent steam from escaping. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Serves 4 to 6.

Filipino-influenced Moi Ceviche

• 16 ounces moi sashimi
• 1/4 teaspoon thinly sliced shallots or yellow onions
• 1/4 ounce thinly sliced green onion
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1/4 cup calamansi juice*
• 2 tablespoons Chinese soy sauce
• Thai sweet chili sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

To make moi sashimi, fillet moi and very thinly slice flesh. Arrange shallots, green onion and ginger over fish. Pour calamansi juice over, then soy sauce. Dot each piece if fish with chili sauce, salt and pepper. Let sit 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

*Calamansi is a small citrus fruit that is a bit more tart than lemon. It is sometimes available at farmers' markets or Asian stores or in Chinatown. Lime juice can be used instead.

Casian-spiced Taape with Papaya Relish

• 4 to 6 whole (6-ounce) taape, scaled and gutted
• Chef E Spice (see recipe below or substitute Essence of Emeril)
• 6 tablespoons salad oil

For papaya relish:

• 1 whole, ripe papaya, skinned, seeded and diced
• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 1/4 sliced green onion
• Juice from one-half lime
• 2 tablespoons salad oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Make papaya relish by tossing all ingredients together and chilling.

Season fish moderately with Chef E Spice. Heat oil in sauté pan over medium heat. Cook fish 3-4 minutes on each side until done. Serve with papaya relish.

Serves 4-6.

One of the things that makes the book worth the price of admission is a collection of unheralded but very useful "Basic Recipes" at the rear of the book. These are the sort of chef's secrets that make the difference between home and restaurant dining. Among the preparations are stocks, butters and butter sauces, Asian and herb oils, an oven-roasted "salad" that serves as a base upon which to serve many fish preparations, and "Chef E Spice," a standard spice mixture that Guzman learned while working at Emeril Lagasse's flagship restaurant, Emeril's in New Orleans. This recipe makes a lot — but you'll find many uses for it, or you can give it as a gift.

Chef E Spice

• 6 1/2 cups iodized salt
• 3 1/4 cups paprika
• 1/2 cup cayenne
• 2 1/2 cups ground black pepper
• 2 1/2 cups garlic powder
• 1 1/2 cups onion powder
• 4 cups dried oregano
• 4 cups dried thyme
• 3/4 cups togarashi (Japanese pepper mixture, sold in stores)

Combine all ingredients.