So my halibut trip ended up being more of an Atlantic cod, hake, and haddock trip but that was still pretty interesting because I had never seen them up close before. This gave me the ‘opportunity’ to gut a couple thousand pounds of these groundfish. I had never noticed before how different similar species can smell. They each had their own distinctive smell and I could tell from across the boat whenever someone opened up a haddock. This made me wonder how I had never noticed any smells when I was up observing in Alaska. I realized the only fish anyone ever gutted was halibut so I missed out on the olfactory differentiation of the guts of the Alaskan fishes. Or maybe I was just too cold, hurried, stinking of fish and tired to notice. If I’m ever up that way again I’ll have take the time to appreciate the bouquets.

Anyway since I had just been out for the ride and had managed to help out slightly more than I had gotten in the way (and since they’re really nice guys), the fishermen offered me some of their prized cod tongues. I had never realized anyone ate cod tongue before. But here in Nova Scotia and, I gather Newfoundland, all the fishermen take extra time to cut out each cod’s tongue and save it in a special bucket for themselves. This is a little odd since it takes about as much time to gut a fish as it does to cut out its tongue. I gather they really look forward to eating the tongues.

So I took my bag of cod tongues and set out to taste the culinary delights of Cape Breton. If you ever find yourself in possession of a mess of cod tongues and want to fry them up, you’ll need:

• Bisquick (or flour)
• Pepper
• Salt
• Egg
• Cod tongues, of course

After dipping the tongues in egg and covering with Bisquick, salt, and pepper, I fried them until they were white all the way through, about 7 minutes if I remember correctly. Now all I had to do was take the plunge and give them a try.

It turns out cod tongues are pretty tasty. To me they tasted a bit different from the rest of the cod although the girlfriend was not convinced. The texture certainly was different. Half of the tongue is like jelly. This is a texture I am not at all used to having fish flavored and after the novelty started to wear off, I have to admit I didn’t really care for this part of the tongue. I learned later that this part is called, unsurprisingly, the jelly and most of the fishermen don’t like it all that much themselves. The non-jelly part was definitely tasty and had a nice texture so I definitely would recommend trying cod tongues if the opportunity ever arose.