Gulf Grouper, Cooked the Turkish Way

Grouper is the fish that convinced me Florida was going to work out.

When I moved here I expected to spend a year learning an unfamiliar market. Instead I found a fish that behaves almost exactly like the levrek I cooked for twenty years in Turkey — firm, clean, enough fat to take heat without drying, and a skin that crisps properly.

Different ocean, same technique.

Knowing what you bought

Gulf grouper comes in several varieties and they are not interchangeable.

Red grouper is the sweeter one, finer in texture, and the one I prefer for anything where the fish is the whole point.

Black grouper is firmer and meatier. Better for grilling and for thick-cut portions, and it holds together in a braise where red grouper would flake apart.

Gag grouper sits between the two and is usually the best value.

Ask your fishmonger which one you are looking at. In Venice and Englewood, the boats come in daily and the answer is usually specific — which day, which boat. That information is worth more than any label.

What to look for: clear eyes, firm flesh that springs back, and no smell of ammonia. Fresh fish smells of the sea and almost nothing else.

Four rules, whatever you do with it

Dry the surface. Pat it thoroughly with paper towel before it goes near heat. Wet fish steams instead of browning, and browning is where the flavor is.

Salt it early. Fifteen minutes before cooking, not at the table. Salt on the surface draws out moisture, which then reabsorbs and seasons the flesh itself.

Do not move it. Grouper skin releases from the pan when it is ready, not when you want it to. Leave it alone for the first three or four minutes.

Pull it early. Fish carries a lot of residual heat. At 125°F at the thickest point it is done — take it off then, because it keeps cooking on the plate. Every dry piece of fish anyone has eaten was cooked thirty seconds too long.

Three Turkish approaches

Grilled over charcoal, Aegean style

The simplest and the hardest to beat. Score the skin two or three times, brush the fish with olive oil, and grill it hot.

The dressing is what makes it Turkish: olive oil, lemon juice and chopped oregano whisked together, spooned over the fish the moment it comes off the grill. On the Aegean coast this is called zeytinyağı-limon sos, and it goes on almost everything that comes out of the sea.

Nothing else. No butter, no cream, no sauce underneath.

Buğulama — Turkish steamed fish

The technique for a thick fillet, and the most forgiving method there is.

Lay sliced onion, tomato, garlic and parsley stems in the bottom of a wide pan. Set the fish on top, pour in a splash of white wine and olive oil, cover tightly, and steam on low heat for 10 to 12 minutes.

The fish cooks in its own moisture and the vegetables underneath become the sauce. In Turkey this is what you make for someone who has been unwell, and it is also what I make at home when I have been cooking all day and want something clean.

Fried, with tarator

Grouper cheeks and smaller cuts, dusted in cornmeal and fried, served with walnut tarator.

This is the Turkish coastal formula applied to a Florida fish: fried seafood with a sharp walnut sauce. I wrote about tarator separately — it is four ingredients and it does more for fried fish than any tartar sauce.

What I have learned here

Two things surprised me about Gulf fish.

The first is how good it is straight off the boat. Grouper landed that morning needs almost nothing done to it, and the temptation to do more should be resisted. In a kitchen you learn to add. With fish this fresh you have to learn to stop.

The second is the season. Grouper is available most of the year here, which is a luxury I did not have on the Turkish coast, where the good fish come and go by the month. It changes how you plan a menu — less about chasing what is available, more about what the fish is doing that week.

Chef’s note

Save the bones and head. Grouper makes an excellent stock — twenty minutes with onion, celery, a bay leaf and peppercorns, no longer, or it turns bitter. That stock is the base of a fish soup that is better than anything you can buy.