Buenos Aires – No, not another adventure like last week’s cyclone. 
I was around the corner yesterday at the fish market looking for something that looked good for dinner. I’m still not up on all my local names for fish, so I tend to pick by looks alone. There were these beautiful long filets of a pinkish white fish that each weighed around a pound and seemed like a rich, meaty sort of fish. Gatuzo didn’t ring any bells, and the man behind the counter kept saying something about a dog and crabs that truly didn’t ring bells.
A 1-pound plus filet of fish is a bit more than I wanted for dinner, so I chopped it in half and reserved the rest for tonight. Behold the Patagonian Smooth-Hound (oh there’s the dog), a type of shark. They feed on crabs and other crustaceans (aha!). It all begins to fall into place. The fish indeed had a rich meaty texture that looked like it would stand up to a fairly strong sauce. I wanted to stay relatively simple, and I suddenly remembered a package of fermented black beans that I’d picked up in Barrio Chino last week. This recipe is a one portion size, but easy to scale up for as many filets as you want to cook.
1 8-ounce filet of gatuzo (or other firm fleshed fish)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of fermented black beans
1 teaspoon of whole green peppercorns (dry, not brined)
1 clove of garlic, sliced crosswise
saltOver low heat saute the garlic, beans, and peppercorns in oil until the garlic just begins to turn golden. Season the fish filet with just a little salt and add to the pan. Saute on both sides until cooked through, regularly spooning the sauce over the filet as you turn it. You probably won’t need more salt as the beans contain a fair amount, but feel free to add more if you it’s to your taste. Serve the filet with the sauce spooned over it. I served it along with a couple of thick slices of beefsteak tomato that I quickly seared (grilled would be even better) with a little of the olive oil from the pan.
I happened on the 800 block of Uruguay, where there were a couple of small restaurants that seemed to have a common “jazz” theme. I decided on one called Bird just because I liked the name and it looked a little hipper (should I use hepper in relation to jazz?) than the others. Black pleather placemats, waiters in black sweaters and black jeans, decor of painted musical notes and jazz memorabilia, all tastefully displayed… why not? The specialty of the house seems to be composed salads. They have quite a few pre-created combinations, each named after a famous jazz musician, none of the combinations quite fit what I wanted.
The create your own option was more my style, and they have roughly two dozen different salad ingredients to choose from. 
I selected fresh tomatoes, basil, and roasted red bell peppers, then topped it off with crab. Okay, crab stick. Everything was supremely fresh, and dressed simply with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little salt. To follow the salad I ordered a torte de acelga, or swiss chard torte. I was expecting something akin to a frittata or quiche, but instead got this somewhat unappealing looking plate of fried swiss chard. Okay, it had a hint of chopped onion in it, and just enough egg to hold it together, but in essence it really was little more than an unseasoned, flattened pile of swiss chard. A bit of salt helped, but not much. Watching other things come out of the kitchen it seems that salads really are their forté at Bird. I’d go back for one anytime, I think I’d just skip the hot food.
[…] Chopped and grated and mixed it’s delicious – and the basic principle is to mix a nice balance of hot, sweet, and cooling ingredients and then just add a little basic seasoning to brighten it up. A little acidity, generally from citrus, tends to work wonders for the flavor. Something to play with! I served it all up with some very simply sauteed fish, in this case gatuzo, a local fish. […]
[…] We’d decided on a fish main course. At many dinner parties a risky proposition, it’s amazing how many folk out there aren’t big fish fans. And here Buenos Aires, even more so – there’s a cultural bias against fish that goes back to some unknown time (there was a recent article exploring this issue in El Gourmet magazine) – however, only two of the people to be at the dinner were Argentine, and one was the hostess. Sure enough, however, the other porteña who came turned out to be a non-fish eater. Also non-cheesecake (when we got to dessert), basically explaining that if it wasn’t beef and/or a dish she was familiar with, she doesn’t eat it. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this here. Thankfully she’d had risotto before, so she didn’t go away completely hungry. One of my favorite fish to use here is gatuzo, a type of small shark that feeds on crustaceans and has a firm, slightly sweet flesh. I picked up three decent sized fish and portioned them out, planning to saute them up. […]
[…] Next up, as you might recall, I’ve been playing around with some cured fish. Originally planned as a salmon gravlax, it turned out that one of last night’s guests was allergic to salmon, so I decided to try something different. I found some nice fat gatuzo fillets. While the process is the same as in the link above, the cure is a trifle different. First, the fish isn’t near as oily or thick as salmon, so only about 24 hours was needed to completely cure it. Second, I went with a somewhat simpler flavoring. I’m not sure why, but it popped into my head that “burnt orange” would be an interesting flavor with the gatuzo. So, caramelizing the peels of a couple of oranges became the first order of business. That, some chopped cilantro, and a splash of triple sec for the liqueur were the “inner” coating; the outer was a mix of light brown sugar and coarse salt. Then scrape the coating off, rinse lightly, and slice into thin slivers. I served the fish atop a dandelion green salad dressed with a mustard-orange dressing (the juice from the two burnt oranges, ½ teaspoon mustard powder; 1 teaspoon salt, equal volume of olive oil to the juice). Some finely julienned daikon and toasted sesame seeds topped the display. I liked the dish a lot, but I noted that only about half the folks who were here at the fish, so perhaps it wasn’t as good as I thought it was. […]
[…] medium bodied and a bit on the spicy side. For our non-red meat person, we offered up a steak of gatuzo, a type of local shark relative, a nice “meaty” style fish, done up the same […]
Please check out the excellent documentary Sharkwater. It will change your mind (as it did mine) about buying another shark-related item. Please spread the word about the slaughter of sharks and the danger sharkmeat poses to children and pregnant women (as it is extremely high in mercury). Even if you don’t care about the animal, you owe it to yourself and future generations to protect the sharks. When they get wiped out (and they are being killed at a dangerously high rate), our oxygen supply (and obviously, health) will be messed up, as well. There are plenty of other things for us to eat without threatening our environment and future.
[…] oil to get it to all blend smoothly. Poured that over pieces of fish, palo rosado, also known as gatuzo – the “Patagonian Smooth-Hound”. Hey, I didn’t name it. Left the fish to […]