Tiny fishies - A treatise about tiny fish with a fish soup recipe

The Italians, as masters of word-art, call these pesce minuto, minutaglia. This concept names all the small and tiny fish, that are caught in trawls or surrounding nets on fisher boats and do not have any selling value. The most beautiful and pricey fish can always be sold, but the tiny fishes are mostly sorted out by fishers and made into tasty spread for lunch or brought home to feed the hungry mouths of their families. The tiny fish, which are caught, are tiny by nature – in their whole life-cycle they do not grow more than some centimeters or they are offspring that didn’t have the opportunity to grow up completely. The first group of tiny-grown fishes consists normally of Mediterranean sand smelts (Atherina hepstetus, Atherina boyeri), the Italians call them by a more witty name of cento or bocca, which means “100 in my mouth”. The Slovenian vernacular gave them the name girica (pl. girice), but this name should not be mixed with the more robust girico, giro, gero (Spicara smaris), which is called menola in the dialect of the people living in the Gulf of Trieste, or more commonly known as zerro. The second group of offspring is larger; it consists of all the other sorts of fish that got caught in the nets as “underage”.  Fishermen can fish these very precisely with densely woven nets, but mostly they are caught as bycatch when fishing for bigger fish. In the fish markets, we often see Poor cods (Trisopterus minutus capelanus) , only as big as a hand,  Merlangius merlangus (Merlangius merlangius), European hakes (Merluccius merluccus), Red mullets (Mullus barbatus), Piper gurnards (Trigla lyra), Atlantic horse mackerels (Trachurus trachurus), Atlantic mackerels (Scombrus scombrus) and the related Spanish mackerels (Scombrus japonicus), Sea spiders (Trachinus spp.), Atlantic stargazers (Uranoscopus scaber) and some more, which could be added to the list. The bycaught of young fish or frys is still a harsh reality in the fishing word (this can be seen in the lineup of fish I listed above), but the growth of industrial fishing after the Second world war before started to decrease the already scares biomass of the Adriatic sea, if we only limit them by nearest marine ecosystem. Younglings are the future of every animal breed, because they are potential and necessary conditions for further reproduction. The world stands on the backs of the young; this very sentence of Ivan Cankar reminds us of the importance of the younger generations, which sooner or later, replace the old ones. The definition of the word small fish or fry itself tells us that it stands for fish, which aren’t sexually developed yet. With the catch of the fish in their youth, we hinder a series of spawns, that would have occurred 1 to 2-times in a year (depending on the sort), from the beginning of their sexually activity, to the end of their life-cycle. The consequences of such practices are not only the shrinking of the fish-biomass of the future, but also these false fishing methods lead to a shortage of the fish population itself,  which leads to older and tinier fish in the future. These facts can be verified when asking any fisherman, who worked or is working in this business for 5 years or more. The trend can also be seen by conscious consumers, who regularly buy Adriatic fish. Fishermen warn us about this problematic state all the time (just why are their less fish in the sea?). The dynamics are observed by marine biologists and with one eye even by the politicians, on levels of the state, as well as the whole European Union. There have been countless measurements installed, from the ban of strategic catching of frys with too tight nets (Italians are crazy about the young fish of the Clupeidae and European anchovies, which they call neonata, translated literally into “young birth”), till the widening of the nets and more frequent bans of fishing during the mating season of a certain species. In the more and more colorful fish offerings all over the world, the quantity and structure of the Atlantic fish population are a bit cloudy (the lack of locally caught fish is often replaced by fish caught in the more untouched parts of the world), the frightening state only mildly recovers with the strong developed horticultures of European sprats (Sprattus aurata) and European seabasses (Dicentrachus labrax). And how can we, as consumers, help to carefully chose fish? How do you stop supporting bad fishing practices and choose the right fish for you dinner? In foreign countries this is much simpler than in Europe. Fish caught under tight consistency gross margins are marked with a special MSC code. These are given from a non-politician organization Marine Stewardship Council (www.msc.org) and their set standards of good fishing practices are based on scientific controls and recommendations of marine biologist and other experts. For a better understanding – not even one of the fishing techniques in the Mediterranean Sea has gotten this certificate, only the fishing of Clupeidae and European anchovies are in the process of marking, caught with pelagic fishing nets on the north side of the Adrian Sea. The application was filed by the Italian ministry of farming and fishing. Then there is only the personal preference of each and every consumer left for us. It is good to know, which minimal regulations laws of selling caught fish are. With the Clupeidae (Sardina pilchardus) they have to be 11 cm big, European anchovies (Engraulis engrasicolus) 9 cm, if we concentrate on the most commercial fish sorts of the Adria. The European hake can't be smaller than 20 cm when buying, the Atlantic horse mackerel 15 cm, the Atlantic mackerel 18 cm, the Red mullet 11 cm, the Gilt-head bream 20 cm, the European seabass 25. Fish, which are noticeably smaller than the law prescribes, we simply do not buy. Following the awareness of fishing, the state is at it is, within the prescribed laws. Tiny fish, where the length is not set by law, we take into our own hands and prepare them in a careful and appropriate manner.  We can start with the preparation of the Poor cod, which are one of the biggest biomasses in the Adriatic Sea and are sold throughout the whole year. The price of 1 kilogram is low, between 4 and 12 Euro, depending on their size. On the main Ljubljana fish market I recently bought them for 5 Euro per Kilogram, the fresh fish came from around the island Krk. I counted 38 of them, really tiny fishies! And what did I do with the tiny fellas? I cleaned them diligently at home. I snapped their head off with my fingers and removed the innards, which have a strong sent (typical for this fish). The cleaned fish were then salted, coated with flower and fried in oil (the taste of fried Poor cod is one of the most gentle and beautiful tastes that can happen in a kitchen), and I removed the bones in their remaining heads and cleaned the heads under running water. And because I had leftover chickpeas from yesterday, I decided to join the components and make the following soup dish.  

CHIKIES

A nutritious fish soup with cooked chickpeas Ingredients for a 4-member family or 2 really hungry eaters

• 1/4 kg fish heads of Poor cods or some other white fish (leftover parts from 1 kg of cleaned fish)
• 25 dag dry chickpeas
• 1 liter liquid left from cooking the chickpeas
• 2 carrots
• 1 thin slices of celery tuber
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 smaller onion
• 1 green-parts of a leek
• 1 pinch rosemary
• 1 dcl dry white wine
• 10 dag round-grained rice
• 1/2 dcl olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper, if you wish

  Rinse the dry chickpeas under running water and leave them to soak through the night in a bigger quantity of liquid (it needs to soak at least 8 hours). Drain the soaked chickpeas, rinse them under running hot water and put into middle-big pot. Fill the pot with about 2 liters of cold water, a bit more than usually, because the liquid will be used later in the recipe. When the liquid starts to boil, reduce heat, salt and close with a lid. Cook for 2 hours. During cooking, remove the access foam emerging on the surface and discard. Leave the cooked chickpeas in the liquid and start with the preparations of the vegetables and cleaning the fish. Cut the onion in stripes. Peal the garlic cloves and cut roughly. Rinse the leek under running water, remove the outercoat and cut into small pieces. Peel the carrot and peal the celery. Remove the gills from the fishes heads (the heads of the Poor cods) and rinse under running water. Pour the liquid from the pot, where the chickpea was cooking, into a bigger pot. Put the cut vegetables and fish heads into it and season with a pinch of fresh or dried rosemary. Turn on the heat and when the liquid starts to boil, reduce the heat and leave to cook open for 20 minutes. Strain the soup, remove the vegetables and the fish heads, but leave the carrots and cut them into slices. Put the strained soup again on the heat, add a handful of rice, and add the chickpeas and the cut carrots. Cook on medium heat for 15 minutes or so long, till the rice cooks. At the end of the cooking process, try how it tastes and add salt if necessary. Pour 1 dl of a good white wine into the soup (we can also add 2 spoonful of freshly squeezed lemon juice) and season with olive oil and freshly grained black pepper, if you wish. Serve the soup into deep plates and whiles hot, together with a good slice of home-made bread and seasonal salad.