Ugly fish, lazy fish, poor man’s lobster. These are the phrases you commonly hear about to describe mild-tasting, firm, and delicious fish. It’s the grotesque look of monkfish, the meaty texture of its boneless tail, and its lazy way of luring prey into its enormous mouth that spawn such epitaphs. Americans didn’t eat much monkfish until 1980, around the time Julia Child introduced us to a hulking specimen on one of her TV shows. But it’s been popular in Italy for much longer than that.
Carrettin draws a picture of the fish, which is sometimes displayed on ice in the windows of restaurants here. It has a big, wide head and mouth that make up half its length and a body and tail that are proportionately puny. Montin’s kitchen removes the backbone, chops the tail in half lengthwise, seasons it with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and grills it. Ironically, the grill marks make it look very much like Atlantic lobster. And although it has earned a reputation in America as poor man’s lobster - because the texture of its meaty boneless tail is closer to lobster than to other fish - it is not as chewy nor does it taste like lobster. It has a more mild, neutral flavor.
All of which makes monkfish versatile.
Across town in a quiet area of Venice near its north shore, Tony Serantoni, owner of Trattoria Storica, throws open the doors to his restaurant’s dining room to find a quiet place to talk. Serantoni opened this trattoria nearly six years ago, and he is the man behind its good food. I have just eaten his terrific monkfish with polenta. The dish consists of 1-inch chunks of springy monkfish tail in a spicy sauce, served on top of a soupy polenta. It is flavored with lots of fresh herbs, white wine, tiny red chili peppers, and cooked with the backbone of the monkfish. The bone flavors the dish in much the same way a ham bone might; the fish bone is solid enough to throw in and take out of the dish before serving.
