Whenever Lorry and I get antsy here on Pine Island, we get off the island. But we never get very far. Yesterday we got as far as Matlacha, a neighborhing island. That's a distance of about six miles from our doorstep, if you're driving, which we were. But if you were paddling a canoe, it would only be a lot less. You'd cross Indian Fields and follow the mangroves until you got to "The Fishingest Bridge in the World."

Fifteen years ago my neighbor, Dick Newman gave me a T-shirt he created. In bold black letters it asks -- Where the Hell is Bokeelia? On the back, it resolves the problem -- "It's ten miles northwest of Matlacha." I love dearly love this T-shirt but it's getting holes in it and Dick doesn't have any more, not holes, T's.

So I'm wearing my T-shirt and Lorry and I stop in at The Old Fish House Marina where a very smiley lady chef named Jesse serves the best fried mullet you could ever eat. We ordered some, then went out back. It feels like you're under the bridge. The pelicans get as close as they can to the dining area. The palms are wind-battered and beautiful and the canal seeps through Matlacha, greenly and darkly on its way out to the sailboat-sunken Sound. The smell is salty and mangrovy and lowtide lovely, if that's the way you like it.

The mullet comes golden brown and so pretty you could eat them. Lorry and I share the basket. There are two brown crabcakes and three hushpuppies the way grandma used to make 'em. The fries are good too. Anyway, the first bite of that mullet and you know why you're here and not somewhere else. And the conversation -- that's something else. Two old salts are talking low about -- not fish -- but their latest songwriting contracts! They're dipping in and out of musical bylaws and gigs and the best and the worst guitar strings when the guy next to us says in a loud voice, "You see all them dead fish last winter?"

The talk moves from musical enterprise to how these guys really make their living, as fishermen. Algal blooms, redtides, they discuss it all including the fresh water releases from Lake Okeechobee, the Big O, and how this water affects our estuaries, and that sidelong talk between tables brings the subject to, well, what we were anticipating -- mullet.

How DO you cook mullet and get it gold as Goldilock's curls? I've cooked it many ways. Steamed it. Grilled it. Fried it. You ask most cooks how to fry a mullet, they'll shrug. "Few minutes on a side, hot oil." You can't draw them out any more than this, but I managed to corner Jesse and I looked right into her pretty blue eyes and asked, "How many minutes? Exactly."

She said, very crisply, "Three and a half. No more."

"So that's it?"

Jesse's face clouded for a second.

A secret, I'm thinking. And I would be right.

"You can't fry a mullet properly unless you roll them in this." She walked over to a big glass-front fridge and brought out a nice one pound bag of Bob's Red Mill Organic 100% Stone Ground Whole Grain Corn Flour.

Well, I never. "That's the trick?"

Jesse looks a trifle dreamy and then says, "Yes, that's about it."

"And the three-and-a-half each side?"

"In about one inches of hot, very hot, but not smoking, oil."

"Any kind of oil?" I ask.

"Any kind," Jesse replies.

"Where do I buy Bob's Red Mill?"

"You got one in your hand." She smiles.

"Well, thank you very, very much."

She met my eyes again, this time with real serious intent. "You know," she said, "mullet has the highest percentage of Omega fatty acid of any fish there is, except maybe anchovy, but we don't care much about them. And the mullet, as you know, is an estuary fish, lives in the fresh mostly but also in the salt, and it is a vegetarian, too, so you don't have to worry about the mercury content because there is none to be had in mullet."

I nodded with each fact, my appreciation rising.

"The fact is," I told her, "we just love to cook them and eat them."

"You say that after you just ate a big old fish basket full of mullet and crabcakes?" she said with a laugh.

"I'm still hungry for mullet," I told her. And because Old Fish House Marina sells freshly caught mullet, as well as other fish, Jesse was only too happy to sell me my dinner, two fine large mullet fillets.

As we left Jesse said, "One more thing. I know I said three-and-a-half minutes on each side, but that's here in my fryer. I don't know what you have."

"Big black Dutch oven," I told her.

"Love those," Jesse said. "Used to have one. Well, for one of those, maybe a little more time."

"How much more?" I asked.

She looked away. "Until they're golden brown," she said.

She wasn't going to say more. So I took my Corn Flour and my mullet and, after thanking her again, I turned to leave.

Jesse said, "Ever eat the gizzards?"

"Mullet has a gizzard?"

"Best part."

I shook my head. There's always something new you can learn. I guess you haven't lived until you've had a plate full of mullet gizzards by the bridge with the pelicans almost underfoot.

So we went home and I fried the fillets just right. Bob's Red Mill Corn Flour is, as they say, good enough to eat. Four minutes on a side, folks. They were golden brown.

I'll tell you the rest when I have the gizzards next week.




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