Don’t Try This at Home: The $250 Recipe for Fish Turducken

(Bloomberg) -- When a fishmonger who’s been in the business for 20 years tells you he’s never seen a recipe like this before, your reaction is mixed. On the one hand you might think this dish is the equivalent of a golden ticket, one that will change everything. Think no-knead bread or boiling scrambled eggs.

On the other hand, a more sober response is to consider whether the recipe is worth attempting, especially if it entails cooking a couple hundred dollars’ worth of top-quality fish.

Meet the Hot Smoked Fish Turducken, an attention-getting dish in The Whole Fish Cookbook (September 2019; Hardie Grant Books) from Josh Niland, an Australian chef and seafood booster. The upcoming book highlights unconventional ways to consider a subject Niland is passionate about. One of the chef’s chief principles is to treat fish like meat: Urging readers to try dry-aging some varieties to heighten the flavor, he also devotes a chapter on seafood offal that promotes skewers of hearts and spleen, as well as fried fish skin and, even more unorthodox, eye chips.

Niland, who heads Saint Peter restaurant and Fish Butchery in Sydney and was named Chef of the Year in 2018 by GQ, has provided some truly insightful tips into fish preparation. He gives readers detailed instructions on fish butchering; even if you’ve seen a hundred fillet how-tos, these are marvelously thorough. And his “fish-as-meat” schtick sticks: Among the 60-plus recipes are swordfish bacon and kingfish cured pastrami-style. It’s the kind of gorgeous book you want to curl up with and learn from.

The most intriguing recipe in the book, however, is Niland’s fish turducken, a dish that pays homage to the original Thanksgiving fantasia—chicken stuffed inside duck stuffed inside turkey. His version features yellowfin tuna loin, wrapped in a cod fillet, wrapped in an enormous tail-on ocean trout fillet. Each piece of fish is brined ahead of time, and then the whole concoction is smoked for a couple of hours. It can be served chilled or hot with the enveloping ocean trout skin crisped before “carving.”

In the book, Niland promises that the “deboning of the fish is the only fiddly part of this recipe.” With all due respect to a chef who spends his life working with seafood, a recipe that comprises more than 9 pounds of fish that need to be aligned in a specific way, then trussed to secure that alignment with no small amount of kitchen twine, and then smoked, has more than one challenging step. Not to mention, unlike Niland’s fillet how-tos, it comes with the kind of minimal instructions familiar to anyone who’s ever ordered furniture from Ikea.

In this case, the recipe calls for the three very distinct fish to be brined in salt water “overnight,” which means very different things to different people. Then the recipe instructs you to arrange the tuna on the cod (we used hake, a recommended alternative) on the ocean trout and to truss the fish together, “ensuring that each fish remains in position and the bellies of the fish join up creating a seamless finish.”

The recipe doesn’t provide rough dimensions for the fish fillet, so a tester is not prepared if the salmon trout doesn’t fully enclose the 2-pound piece of tuna. (Important note: Our ocean trout was not tail- and head-on; to score one would have entailed buying an 8-plus-pound fish and doubling the recipe, which would have meant almost 20 pounds of fish turducken to deal with, before and after.) Likewise, hints on how to truss a fish turducken are missing, as is the tip that you need a friend who isn’t afraid to smell fishy and hold the whole thing together while you tie it up. A third friend, to hand over kitchen twine and scissors, is even better.

To cook the fish turducken, readers are told that “an oven can be used set to the lowest temperature,” which isn’t very helpful—though the following instruction, “make sure the kitchen is well ventilated,” is key. The fish is then smoked for two hours, or until its internal temperature reaches 104F. Tester’s note: An 7-inch-tall package of three fish has more than one internal temperature. While it’s cooking, a not-perfectly enclosed package will drip juices. Exposed pieces of tuna will turn an unappetizing beige. As visual tests go, the assorted fillets look either overcooked or undercooked, but as with Goldilocks, nothing appears “just right.”

Finally, following an overnight chill, comes the service. Cutting through the solid mass of seafood, there’s no photogenic slice to brag about on social media; the three fish stick together but not in a compelling way. They offer distinct flavor experiences: nicely smoky ocean trout; too salty, mushy hake; and tough chunks of tuna. The recipe costs about $250 and no small amount of manpower to produce, and, as promised, it’s definitely a showstopper. Guests will gawk and tell you that, truly, they’ve never seen anything like it. Then they’ll reach for the tomahawk steaks that are also on the table.

We checked with Niland to find out what went wrong. “Reading that the fish you cooked was without a head or a tail is to me one of the reasons why this dish hasn’t come together as it is pictured,” he responded in an email. “Yes aesthetically it looks better but that aside, the head shields the fillet from direct exposure to heat as does the tail.”

Another testing misstep was that the brining should last 8 to 12 hours, according to Niland. (Ours sat for closer to 15 admittedly a long “overnight.”) He acknowledges that providing a specific oven temperature would be helpful but notes, correctly, that what’s key is the internal temperature. Niland also points out that “all the recipes in this book I cooked personally for the shoot itself so any images of fish in the book of cooking degrees and aesthetic all represent the actual final outcome.” So the gorgeous dish pictured at top is achievable, at least for a professional. 

For anyone who wants to try Hot Smoked Fish Turducken for themselves, here’s the recipe with a few clarifications, via Niland. Best of all, though, would be to order it at his Fish Butchery and have him prepare it for you. His version looks delicious.

Hot Smoked Fish Turducken

Serves 12

2kg (4 lb. 6 oz.) boneless, butterflied ocean trout or sea trout, head and tail on
1kg (2 lb. 3 oz.) boneless, butterflied Murray cod or hake
1kg (2 lb. 3 oz.) yellowfin tuna loin, trimmed
100g (3.5 oz.) soaked hardwood chips

Brine

400g (14 oz. / 1 1/3 cups) fine salt
8 liters (270 fl. oz. / 32 cups) cold water

For the brine, combine the salt and water and stir until the salt has dissolved. Place the fish in separate bowls and pour the brine over each. Refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.

The next day, thoroughly dry the fish with a paper towel. Lay the trout out in front of you, skin side down, with the tail closest to you. Place the Murray cod on top of the trout in the same position, the tail end closest to you, then place the tuna in the center of the Murray cod. Enclose the tuna in the cod and ocean trout; there should be no fish sticking out. Using kitchen twine, truss the fish together in multiple places, ensuring that each remains in position, with the bellies joining to create a seamless finish.

To smoke the fish, set your oven or grill to the lowest temperature, around 200F. Make sure the kitchen is well ventilated. Place a saucepan full of soaked smoking chips in the bottom. Light the chips and allow the smoke to flood the oven. Smoke the fish for about two hours, or until the internal temperature reaches 40C (104F) when tested with a probe thermometer. Let rest, then chill overnight. Serve chilled—or brush with a little oil, season with sea salt, and return to an oven preheated to 240C (464F) for 10 minutes to crisp the skin. Rest, then carve and serve hot.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Gaddy at jgaddy@bloomberg.net

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