ron, lynne and mahi mahi

I suspect this is our unofficial Fish Face season: three times in the last nine days is not a bad average. This time I was joined by Lynne and Rocket Ron, who made it a quite special an enjoyable evening.

A few hours earlier I had picked up a very nice bottle of chardonnay by Farr, 2009; perfect for this, or I guess any, celebration of fish and seafood.

I initiated my fishfacing ritual with an incredibly fresh trevalli carpaccio. It almost felt as if it was alive on the plate, wishing to jump into my mouth...

After the previously successful shrimp ravioli digestions last week, the three of us went for it. Ron and myself shared an order as our second starter, before getting into the serious fish business. Before this, he had ordered a consome, which looked ideal for a winter day. I'm sure our dear Collin would love to exchange it for his cabbage soup while surviving his cold and dark winters around Lord Elgin's neighbourhood.

Besides the perfect company around the table, a fabulous mahi mahi was my highlight of the day. It's a hard to describe bite, but I'd say it is in some unclear zone between the sword fish and the blue-eye trevalla. Perfectly cooked to my specifications, somewhere in that always delicate territory of rawness and fine cooking, where flavour and freshness perpetrate the best possible communion.

Earlier today I was reading that mahi mahi means "very strong" in Hawaiian, and the fish l'd say looks like a submarine with rockabilly hair. Coryphaena hippurus is its less familiar name, somehow matching its unusual anatomy. 

That's how I like it, and it doesn't matter if we are talking fish or meat. I imagine my brain requires some sort of blood related stimulation, of course, in a very moderate way; gore is definitely not my thing.

Sand whiting with basil was Lynne's choice of the day. Perhaps not as interesting as mine, but full of taste.

Rocket Ron recharged his operating system with a quite sculptural reinterpretation of flat head. His plate almost looked like one of those Inuit stone signs you can find up North the Canadian domaines.

Sometime before we were done, we figured out we were meant to enjoy gelato. We left without any dessert straight to Messina, which always provides stimulating amounts of frozen material. I couldn't avoid their blood orange one, pairing a well deserved dark chocolate which covered my cone of volatile happiness.