Archives for July 2010

Boiling fish heads to prepare soup stock has to be one of my least favorite culinary tasks.  A flotilla of eyeballs staring back at me when I lift the cover off my cook pot is gross.  Sure, I strain the broth after I’m finished boiling the heads and tails with celery, onions and herbs.  But my mind refuses to dispel the image of over-cooked, roly poly eyes.  No matter what ingredients I add to the finished broth, the name of the ultimate product has remained unchanged for over fifteen years.  My family calls my creation “roly poly fish head soup.”

Knowing the above, I’m sure you’ll understand my reaction on a recent family fishing trip at Odell Lake in Oregon.  We were trolling for kokanee, (land-locked sockeye salmon) when one family member reeled in his line.  No twelve-inch kokanee was attached to the hook.  Only a very small eyeball.   A fish’s eyeball.  Yuk! 

Poor Mr. Fish.  I really felt sorry for the little guy.  With the usual winged predators foraging for breakfast, survival chances for One-Eye appeared slim.  I felt as though I’d just participated in aquatic hit-and-run.  But I couldn’t exactly find him and administer first aid, now could I.  On the other hand, we had caught a number of scarred fish throughout the years that obviously had survived serious wounds.   Maybe One-Eye might possibly recover, after all.

My family caught ten kokanee that morning, all of them with two eyes apiece.  Our catch for the week totaled seventy.  Or, 70 heads, 70 tails and 140 eyeballs for the soup stock pot.  Yes, only 140 eyeballs.  We tossed the bonus eyeball back into the lake.   Names have a way of sticking in my family.  I wasn’t ready to become the chef of “hit-and-run extra eyeball chowder.”

Happy  Soup du Jour,

Laurel Anne Hill (Author of “Heroes Arise”)