Fishburgers with a side of fried fish filets and fish soup

Standing in the inn's kitchen, I leaned over as I watched the owner of this inn, the boy's mother, process the parasite-filled fish. The moment when I had come out of my room, I headed down to find the boy and was instead met with his mother, the owner, named Candice. She had immediately asked us whether we were fine eating Piscus cuisine, to which I assured her that not only was I fine with it, I wanted to learn it! Then, with a very bright smile, she led us to the kitchen which was the room right underneath our room.

With her son, Ken, accompanying us, the three of us watched Candice's action.

She first placed a pot of water to boil on the stove. Then she took the parasite-filled fish she had gotten from outside the barrier, and dissected it into four parts, the head, the two sides and the spine. Grabbing her sharp kitchen knife, she expertly cut the fish as Sazzy explained beside me.

[Different from fish in your world, fish do not usually have scales. Instead what we call fish in this world actually have a slightly thicker and more resilient skin. This skin, on this planet, is usually where most parasites anchor themselves to. The fish also have rock bones present as well so they have to be soaked in certain liquids to remove them, or you have to physically remove them.]

Candice used a bit of strength to chop off the fish head, which came off cleanly. Then, positioning her knife to the side, she put the tip of it right against the spine of the fish and then followed the spine to cut off the side of the fish. As she slid her knife, you could hear the clean sounds of the knife blade hitting the fish bones.

Once she separated the sides of the fish from the spine, she laid all the parts down and pointed for us.

"You see these white lines that appear from the red meat of the fish? These are common fish parasites. Most of the parasites on this fish are pretty common so we do not need too special techniques to deal with them. These big fat white lines here are the easiest types of parasites to remove, we call them silk worms. You just have to grab the slightly larger head of the parasite over here, then carefully pull them out while making sure you do not break them. These silkworms do not anchor themselves to the fish skin, but instead anchor themselves to the meat near the spine and then burrow outwards."

Pinching a small white dot on one of the white lines, Candice skillfully pulls out one silk worm for us to see. The silk worm was incredibly fat near its head, before drastically slimming down and branching out near the ends.

"Taking them all out one by one is very ineffective so what we do is that we pour a solution that these silk worms and some other parasites hate and soak the meat in them until they escape the meat on their own."

Taking a jar that was sitting on the side of the kitchen counter, Candice placed one slice of the fish meat inside.

Then she continued to show us the other types of parasites that existed in the meat.

"This slightly different white line with a rougher texture is the chalk worm, and to remove it is similar to how we removed the silkworm. In fact, most worms that are white usually follow similar removal procedures."

Flipping the fish over, she cut off a small piece of meat near the tail of the meat, careful to not cut the skin, and used her bare hands to physically peel the thick skin off the whole fish. Then she showed us the peeled off skin.

"Other common types of parasites that anchor to the skin are tough enough such that physically pulling off the skin also removes them from the meat. We can remove them anytime before or after getting rid of the other parasites."

She pointed at some thick yellow worms that were wiggling while on the skin. Then she put the skin to the side and showed us the meat that was underneath that skin.

"The parasites that are not strong enough to withstand the peeling process are also quite easy to get rid of. We simply have to sprinkle some clam powder on them and roll the clam powder on the surface of the meat. They will 'stick' to the clam powder and be 'rolled' out of the meat. Of course, most powders will do the same thing since we are taking advantage of the parasite's nature to stick onto small particles. This is also an alternative for the silk worms and chalk worms"

She generously sprinkles the powder onto the meat and 'massages' the meat until the powder turns a slightly yellowish color, which she then washes off before adding more powder until the powder remains white even when you rub it onto the meat.

"For the two dishes today, I am making Fish burgers as well as fried fish filets and some fish soup. The fried fish filets need to be made from the fish meat that is soaked, while the Fishburgers will be made from minced fish. The fish bone soup will be made from the spine and bones."

Taking the spine, which had very obvious parasites wriggling on it, Candice first washed it with water before cutting it up into small pieces then leaving it out in the sun.

"We leave the fish bones to dry in the sun to kill the parasites. About 1 hour should do. Then, the reason why we need to soak the fish meat is because there are actually still some parasites that live inside the meat."

Candice sliced a piece of meat to show us the wriggling mess that was inside.

"The only way to fully get rid of the inside parasites is to physically and chemically treat the meat. The fish meat will be soaked in the liquid for 30 minutes, then they will be dried for another 30 minutes, then the meat will be resubmerged in cold water before it is fried. That is for fish meat that we want to fry and keep its fish like shape. Another method is the one to make Fish burgers, which is to turn the fish meat into minced fish."

As Candice talked, she took the piece of fish she was holding onto and cut it into small pieces.

"First, cut the fish into pieces as small as you can. Then, add lots of clam powder and roughly mix it with the fish meat, as if it is dough. Make sure you thoroughly mix the meat because we will not be sun drying them and any carelessness will lead to food poisoning. When the mixture turns color, put it in a bowl, add water, then continue to mix while occasionally emptying out the water. Stop when the water remains white. Then pour out the water, add slightly more clam powder, and roll and 'knead' the minced fish."

Demonstrating, Candice 'kneaded' the dough-like mixture until you could no longer see the individual meat pieces but just one red colored 'dough'.

"Now we add this liquid, starwater, which will dissolve the clam powder and give us our intermediate mixture. Finally, once we wash the mixture until the starwater is clear, we compress it and squeeze the starwater out of the meat, while forming a patty shape, and then we can boil it."

Dropping her minced fish patties into the boiling water she prepared, Candice turned the fire down low and then headed for the jar. Taking the meat out of the jar, she lightly rinsed the meat to wash off the parasites before placing them a slight distance away from the fish bones.

Once done, she sets a timer on her personal terminal, before telling us to sit down and make ourselves comfortable as we wait for 30 minutes to run out.

Sitting down on one of the chairs scattered around the large kitchen, Ken sits right next to me and tries to initiate a conversation.

"Hi! I'm Ken, the son of the owner of ribbon fish inn! Ah, but I guess you already know that!"

With infectious cheer, Ken starts smiling at me.

"Hi! I'm Alex, from Mors planet. I am an amateur chef."

As soon as he heard the word chef, his eyes seemed to bright up like tiny stars and an even larger smile formed on his face. It seemed we would hit it off very nicely.