A la Yani-in fact years ago when Yani was a bass kingpin in the Dana Point area, his first recipes were of whole Calicos with their skin sliced open for herbs and lemon slices.
So today I filleted up my bass from Sunday after keeping it chilled and I tried something different tonight, not letting anything go to waste since it was such a large bass. The fillets are still destined for fish tacos. But I saved everything except the guts and the skin that was attatched to the fillets, and baked it all, the head, the rib meat, the collars and the backbone w/tail. Everything except for the backbone still had skin attached so I scaled those sections, then put slices into the skin for the seasoning to penetrate into the meat. I seasoned it all with Tony Chachere's salt-free seasoning and lemon pepper, then baked at 350 for about 40 minutes. I was really surprised at how much meat I was able to pull off each section as I removed the bones and skin. I'd say for any bass or rockfish 2 lbs or more it's worth doing this. It was all delicious. And for the 1st time in my life, I tried a cooked eyeball. I've seen so many TV shows, especially on Bizarre Foods, where it seems like they're salivating waiting to eat them. Well they can have them. While I found the taste not so bad, much like the meat itself, the texture or lack of it, was enough to put me off. I don't see the point in eating fishy snot, which is how I can best describe the substance. I hope your'e not eating now. Anyhow, the 2 photos show the baked results, and the bowl of meat I pulled off of those pieces, sorry that photo is rather blurry. When I was pulling the meat off of the head, which was quite a bit, it was surprising how easy the whole head came apart exposing many areas of good meat, all juicy and tasty. In fact, except for the topside of that backbone which came out a little dry (the underside wasn't) everything was cooked well and was moist.
After cooking:
After decimation:
