Joe Bennett: Finally I got to have turbot

I fished not for the pot but for the fish themselves. Photo / NZME

The fishmonger had turbot. Turbot, I tell you. It was twice the price of the fish I usually buy - the ill-thought-of but fine-by-me sea perch - but what is money for?

Reader, I bought some. I bought 15 extravagant bucks worth of turbot. At 64 I broke my turbot duck.

I've fished for fish since the 1960s. I learned to fish from my 10 years older brother who had already started down his boozy path to the cemetery. There were few things he did well but one of those was fish. He had a nose for fish, thought like a fish. Show him water and he'd find the fish in it. We'd fish the same water with the same tackle and bait and he'd catch five fish to my one. Always.

I fished not for the pot but for the fish themselves. I loved fish, revered them. My delight was to catch, hold, admire and put them back. Nevertheless I caught fish that history had eaten. I caught carp. Medieval monks had lived on carp. I caught perch and roach and rudd. You would see perch and roach and rudd on fishmonger's slabs in France. But not on my plate. I put them back, these silvery scraps of flesh.

Such fish as I ate were mostly sea fish caught by someone else. Cod, haddock, halibut, deep fried with chips. And even then I was cautious. I dreaded bones. To sense a bone in a mouthful was to lose my appetite on the instant. (It was the same with picnics on the beach and boiled eggs. I dreaded getting sand or eggshell in my mouth. A grain or gram of either and I'd gag.)

The only fish I ate that I'd caught myself were plaice and dab and flounder, flat fish all. I fried them in butter then scraped the sweet flesh from the bone, one side then the other, and there seemed to be no little bones to lodge in the windpipe and horrify with a glimpse of death by choking.

But all the while, through all the years of fishing, I heard tell of another fish they said was best by far to eat, a flat fish like the plaice and dab and flounder, but a bigger, rarer and perforce a more expensive beast. I never saw one caught.

I never saw one in the monger's window. But I read of them in fishing magazines and fishing books and always they'd describe it as the king of eating fish, the fish beyond, the fish whose flesh was sweetest. It was the turbot. It was established in my mind as something almost mythological, the ideal of a fish to eat, transcending even trout and salmon.

Not that I had trout and salmon. Where I was brought up, trout and salmon were out of reach, were the province of people with vowels and land and horses. The only trout I caught as a youth was poached and as I landed it I shook with dread of being caught myself.

Then I came to this country aged 29 and found that every citizen could fish for trout in lakes and rivers, could fish for salmon in the river mouths. What fine fish and what fine fishing. Three pound, four pound, five pound trout, for even an incompetent like me. But I didn't eat them. I found the flesh uninteresting, the bones too numerous and feathery. I gave the trout away or put them back.

I got my eating fish still from the monger at the market, sea-fish always and filleted by one who knew to skirt the bones. And now, for the first time, the man had turbot.

I bore the prized fish home, the fillet of mythology, a great fat $15 piece of flesh. I floured and seasoned it, a few soft herbs, a good hot frying pan awash with molten butter, a squeeze of lemon juice, the way I cook all fish. It sizzled in the proper way. I boiled a few green beans, then fried them with - no matter what I fried them with. The beans were not the point. The point was turbot.

I flipped the god-fish in the pan, all browned and lovely on the underside. I sizzled it a minute or two more, then sliced it from the pan with - would you believe? - a fish slice, laid it on the plate, tipped butter over it, the beans beside it, took it to the table and ate. It was okay.