Wow, great story. Congrats. What do you do with the ribs and carcass or is it just waste?
There is very little waste with these fish. The spoon is used to scrape the tender bits of meat from the ribs--the meat just slides right off with very little effort and is typically used in maki (rolls) or just as little bits of sashimi. When the scraping process is done the rack comes out as clean as a whistle and is then discarded. Only the ribs/rack, skin, tail and guts get tossed. Even the heads have lots of wonderful meat. Behind the removed head there are two 'cones' of meat to be had with a little knife work. Then there are the cheeks and as Capt. Craig pointed out, the collar, or 'Kama', as it's called in Japan, is just wonderful grilled. Maguro (tuna) kama and hamachi kama are my favorites. I'd post a pic but crappy PB is down again.
Thanks for all the nice comments, y'all. Life's supposed to be fun, right?
CFT: last week's fish was larger than the one in my avatar, which if I recall correctly was 59" and around 150 lbs.
Wash the hat? WHAT? Sacrilege! When you wash a lucky hat or other garment you wash the luck right out of it. Everyone knows that and would be a big mistake! Preposterous? Yep. But that thing's not getting washed. Ever.
