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.

I’m writing this post for Xiaofen, my girlfriend. She has the cooking skills but being a second language English speaker, her writing would be even harder to read than mine. Today she cooked bacon shrimp fried rice and we thought we’d post the recipe.

If anyone is curious fried rice in Chinese is chao mi. That’s the same chao (chow) as chow mein (fried noodles). Anyway in this one we used shrimp, bacon, wood’s ear and broccoli. Wood’s ear is a direct translation from the Chinese muer (wood ear). It is a type of mushroom you could find in a Chinese grocery store but really any mushroom is fine. Actually you can substitute anything (within reason) you have in the fridge in the fried rice. But Xiaofen says wood’s ear mushroom can, according to Chinese medicine, clean your lungs and blood and reduce arterial sclerosis. I say it’s tasty.

So for a dish for two people, get ~16 cleaned uncooked shrimp, 6 slices of bacon, a handful of wood’s ear (or substitute mushroom), 3 heads of broccoli, a tablespoon of soy sauce, two cups of cooked rice, and a half teaspoon of salt and chop everything into small pieces like the picture.

Chinese seem to worry a lot about the order and relative times of cooking for their ingredients. (It’d probably be a good idea to start the rice before you start chopping everything up.) Cook everything on high but if things start smoking, you’ll probably want to turn it down. First, add the bacon. Leave all the grease in. We’ll be using the bacon juice instead of other oil to fry everything.

Once the bacon is almost crispy, add the mushroom. Try to dry off all the water before adding ingredients (or the grease can start popping). Stir it for 2 minutes or so and then throw in the shrimp.

Keep stirring until the shrimp turn red. Then add the broccoli, soy sauce, and salt. It may be a bit broccoli heavy but you can’t eat too much broccoli.

Cook until the broccoli turns dark green but don’t let it get soft (~4 minutes). Then add the cooked rice. If you forgot to cook the rice, you could turn off the burner and come back later once your rice is done.

Stir it all together until it is mixed well.

That’s it. Hope it turns out well for you. Also, I don’t suppose any vegansvegetarians would have made it this far but we were thinking you could use bacon bits (I don’t think they have meat in them) and vegetable oil for the bacon and scambled eggs and tofu for the shrimp. The eggs would go in last even after the rice and the tofu would go in place of the shrimp (I told you Chinese worry about the order). Some other vegetable possibilities are bean sprouts, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, kim chee, bell pepper, onion, and cauliflower. As for meats, hot dog, sausage, beef, pork, squid, and chicken have all turned out ok for us. It really is the Chinese equivalent of leftover casserole.