Halibut: means holy butt. Haly (holy) and butt (flat fish).

Will someone please tell me why this fish, the halibut, costs so much money? I think I paid $17 USD per pound. That is a lot or money considering that the cousin of this fish is the flounder which costs, at its most expensive, around $9 - $11 per pound. That’s right, the halibut is essentially a flounder. It is a bottom dweller. Just like the flounder, the halibut is born with both eyes in the front of its head. It swims like a salmon at first. One of the eyes will migrate onto the side of the head placing it on the same side as it’s opposing eye making it look like a flounder. I know one thing, if I ever saw a halibut in its natural habitat, it would scare the devil out of me. I would probably think of it as a bizarro flounder as these fish grow to about 40 pounds and can grow as large as 900 pounds! Flounder is actually on the list of food stuff eaten by these monsters; as is salmon, crab, pollack, and cod! Well, this day, the halibut lost out on the food chain as we were alpha and put him on the list of food stuff. And it was good.



After finding a local farmer’s market close to me, I went a little shopping; kinda like Emelda Marcos shopping for shoes. The corn and peaches were abundant that particular weekend and I remembered reading in one of my foodie rags about this peach succotash.

So the assembly began with my grill being loaded with about 15 coals and mesquite hardwood chunks. Mind you, these chunks are the same that I use to smoke except this time I use them as the fuel. If I were to use them in a smoking application, I would soak them so that they would smoke for a significant time before burning. This time I wanted them to burn. The fire from the wood will provide the flavor as well as cook the food. With halibut having a unique sweet flavor of its own, it only requires salt and pepper, and a brush of olive oil, nothing more.

Onto the grill went the veggies. They were cooked until just soft. The corn was then removed from the cob, the peaches and pepper diced, and all was tossed with some good butter.

The halibut was grilled over the wood at high heat for about 4 minutes per side. It cooks pretty quickly. When using the wood as for smoking, the fish would have had to be exposed to the smoke for about 15 to 20 minutes before any significant mesquite flavor could be imparted. With the wood actually being used as the fuel, this is not an issue. Mesquite can quickly over power a delicately flavored fish like halibut, but with a high heat and quick cooking, the flavor infused by the wood is noticeable, but no where near over powering.

The fish turned out juicy and flaky. Topped with the succotash and add a side of rice, and ask yourself, do I really need a weekend to fire up the grill?