I loathe waste. Particularly, the wasting of our natural resources. The idea of killing a living creature and not making use of it, infuriates me. I recently had the displeasure of seeing several rockfish carcasses on a beach. It appeared that only the fillets had been removed and the rest discarded. Here is a fairly easy way of utilizing the whole fish.

Nothing wrong with filleting a fish. Everyone loves eating large chunks of boneless, flaky meat. Just don’t stop there. Once you have removed the fillets, sever the head and remove the internal organs. Now simply cook the carcass. You can bake it in the oven, poach it, or grill it, it doesn’t matter. There is no right or wrong here, you just want to cook the flesh. Once it is done, allow the carcass to cool enough so that you can handle it without burning your fingers. Now just pick the meat off of the bones. Don’t forget the head. There is a lot of meat in the head, including the cheeks. Now you can make fish cakes. Here is a simple recipe.

•  2 cups cooked, flaked Rockfish
• 1 cup of mashed potatoes
• 1/2 small onion, finely grated
• small carrot, finely grated
• 1 small summer squash, finely grated
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp. of Old Bay
• 1 tsp. of prepared yellow mustard
• salt and pepper to taste

We are not done yet. Place the bones in a large pot or slow cooker and cover with water. Bring to boil and simmer. It doesn’t take long with fish bones, because they are not very dense, but I like to let it go for 12 hours.

Pour through a fine mesh strainer and now you have fish stock that you can use to flavor anything you want. The bones end up on our compost pile.