I am in Montreal and the Portuguese community here has a few grocery stores; Portuguese frozen fish is also for sale in quite a few places. It's very inexpensive and I think I now know why. I bought a kilo of redfish (with some research I think it's most commonly called ocean perch*).
It's described as bland fish and apparently best to cook in a sauce, but the steaks still have scales on them! I hate scaling, and during scaling the scales get all over the meat, I can't see them and after adding butter and orange juice and poaching the fish in the oven, they made it to the final dish and the sauce.
Obviously, the fish with scales is best to cook whole, but I have the steaks. Any advice on how to cook them unscaled and still use seasoning/sauce?
[*edit] apparently also known as rockfish
Best Answer
Assuming you're cooking the the fish in a sauce, cut the meat away from the skin, liberally (it sounds like you really don't like the scales). Put what remains of the skin in cheese cloth (like a bouquet garni) to get the flavor out of them. The cloth should keep the scales out. You may need to layer the cheesecloth. You can remove it toward the end of cooking.