milkfish 𓆟

When I am burned out, or when I am going through a pain flare; when I need a reset, or some pause and some care, I take time to cook myself a big pot of milkfish soup. I peel and cut daikon into cubes to boil with slabs of fresh ginger until the radish turns tender. Next, bonito dashi and ground white pepper; petals of napa cabbage cut into flags. Then, in goes the milkfish; plus salmon scraps, barbed ribbons streaked with fat. When the soup comes to a boil, I add rings of scallion; I snip cilantro, stems and all, straight into the pot; jalapeño, thin-sliced. A handful of dried goji berries, as medicine. Finally, I spoon miso paste into a ladle, and gently whisk it into the clear fragrant broth. I serve myself milkfish soup with kimchi and ochazuke wakame and a side of hot white rice. Roo scoots close as I eat, eyes wide, begging. So I relent. My cat is a fluffy mackerel tabby, her coat tiger-striped like a fish’s skeleton. Eating milkfish is a practice in deep patience, its flesh woven with intricate spines resembling feathers, witches’ brooms, or forked divining rods. Placed at odd angles; ethereal, fractal, pervasive. I prod the chunks of fish with a pair of chopsticks, flaking away shards of meat, excavating the splinters. The bones pile up, as if pruned from a fairy’s garden, and I recall the daily special of a canteen simulacrum as I dream up the fortification I am here to assemble. Growing up, I had only eaten milkfish soup on occasion. It is tough to convince a child, but I had been willing to sit with milkfish, to sift through its thorny terrain like an archaeologist. To be rewarded with milky flesh and pads of creamy belly fat. “The meat is always the sweetest around the bones,” as my mom liked to say. The sole surviving descendant of its prehistoric lineage, whose ancestors spawned in the age of dinosaurs, milkfish thrives in bands of tropical waters, where a convergence of intrepid eaters have crowned it their national fish. Along the southwest stretch of my parents’ home island, milkfish is farmed in salted pools, flushed into fields roaming with wild dogs. As a child, my dad scooped baby milkfish from the sea to make extra money. At harvest, they leap from nets, emptied by fright. Their bodies get curled into bouquets, packed into ice. In nearby towns, milkfish headlines festivals, menus, museums. Dilated pupils of an uncanny mascot gleam roadside. Here, you can buy milkfish belly deboned, tweezed of its curses and gifts. Springy fishballs float in piping vats; local diners tuck into bowls of fishhead porridge, unmoved by its bony trials. My brother-in-law once bought one by accident. “Never buy milkfish. It’s impossible to eat.” Periodically, I head to the market to buy milkfish. At the seafood counter, I point at their firm silver bodies piled on ice. The fishmonger guts, cleans, chops them into cross-sections, keeping the head and tail. A customer asks me if I’d recommend milkfish. “It has a lot of bones,” I warn them, picking up a tray of salmon scraps. Once I am home, I partition the fish into containers, each portion enough for a pot of soup. Stacked in my freezer, they shall await me, ready for the next time I am in need of a spell.

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milkfish
Helen Shewolfe Tseng
for The HTML Review 05

Milkfish soup is one of my ultimate comfort foods. It is relatively easy to throw together, which is helpful when I am sick, or going through burnout or a pain flare; when my executive dysfunction rears its head, or when my digestive system needs something calming and nourishing. Milkfish is also a difficult fish to eat, its flesh embedded with hundreds of tiny odd-shaped bones. It forces me to slow down, and to be mindful and deliberate in the act of consumption.

This piece is a love letter to milkfish; an ode to persistence, both of Chanos chanos, who dates back to the Early Cretaceous, and of the handful of us who have insisted on making a meal of them; and a tribute to hard-won pleasures, things that take time, and all that we choose to do despite significant frictions. The text of the poem is revealed through meticulous mouseover excavation and the plucking of numerous bones, much like the process of eating milkfish.

References and images, in order of appearance: A bowl of my milkfish soup; a (simpler) recipe that mine is based on. My cat Roo, who loves milkfish. The restaurant scene (and fishbone gun) from David Cronenberg’s 1999 sci-fi horror film, eXistenZ. Milkfish arranged in florets to show its freshness, from this video. Saba Milkfish Museum in Tainan, Taiwan, formerly known as “The Milkfish Palace”; this building now houses a Honda motorcycle dealer, since the museum has relocated to Yugang Island. Milkfish Kid, a mascot once compared to Chucky, who has spawned a sofubi toy. Boneless fried milkfish belly and milkfish ball soup in Chiayi, Taiwan. Milkfish on ice at my local market.

On mobile and touch screens, tap the fish to reveal the poem. For the best experience and additional features, please view on a desktop screen.