Today on Monday Mysteries we solve the puzzle of what I got the day I bought a white fish dressed in black.

The problem started when I arrived early at the fish store one Thursday morning. More stand than store, actually, the fish place is  housed in a structure that looks like a portable trailer. It is set up permanently in the parking lot of a former gas-station, which is itself now an Italian deli and wine shop. While the Italian store is open Monday through Saturday, the fish stand is only open Thursday through Saturday.

I’ve only recently discovered that this store is really operational, actually, as I always walked by on days other than Thursday-Saturday. So I’d spent our first two years here thinking it was out-of-business. But, having recently discovered it, we’ve been regularly getting fish from there, mostly salmon, occasionally sea bream. But I’ve noted they have other types, and I resolved to branch out to try something new one day.

But on this particular Thursday morning, the fish had already been set out on top of the ice bed in  the refrigerated display case, but the woman manning the stand hadn’t yet put out the signs which indicated names and pricing.  There were a few long, black headless fish stretched out on one side of the case, and next to these almost-whole ones were a few pieces that were like filets from the same kind of fish. The whole ones were sporting a black skin; the filets showed off the black skin on top, the meaty white flesh beneath. It looked to my un-expert eye to be like an eel.

Now, I don’t know all the names in German for all the fish that they carry in the stand, but the German name for eel is easy: Aal. So, I asked the woman what that fish was.  I thought she said a name that started with a “k”,  pronounced “kreye”.

I hadn’t a clue what that was.

I asked her if it was easy to cook, and she said yes, you could pan fry it or bake it easily enough.  And she commented that she thought it was quite tasty.  OK, I thought, why not, I’ll try it.  I asked her again what the name of it was, and she again said what I thought was “kreye”.  I still wasn’t quite sure how to spell it, so I asked her as she was packing up large filet piece of it that I’d selected. I figured that if I knew how to spell it, it would be easy enough to look up a recipe for it on the Internet. She gave me a look reserved for people who you know are just asking questions that are too obvious to be believed,  sighed, and said once again what sounded to me like, “kreye.”

She then paused and added, with emphasis, “Winters kreye”.

OK. Now, in German, Winter means winter.  So, I figure she was saying it was some type of “kreye” — whatever that was — that was available in winter.  Since sometimes when you have an adjective and put it together with a noun like that in German, you insert an “s” in-between (it’s akin to the ‘s for possession in English.). So, I figured what she was saying was “winter’s kreye”, i.e. the kreye of winter.

OF course, that still didn’t tell me anything really, and it also unfortunately didn’t tell me how to spell it. But I went home, thinking I could figure it out easily enough on the internet.

So, I look up all the ways I could think to spell the sound of “kreye” in German: Krei, Krai, Kräi and … nothing.  I ask a German friend who is from around here, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She suggested that perhaps I misheard the woman, and what she really said was “Kra”, which perhaps was a shorted form of Krake which means “octopus.”  Chris also thought this could be the case, although both our friend and Chris couldn’t figure out which dialect would turn Krake into Kra.  Anyway, the consensus by the end of that afternoon seemed to be that the woman had said Kra, and I’d just misheard her, and that what I’d actually bought was Krake, octopus.

Off to the Internet I go to look up how to cook octopus. I’ve never cooked one before – and I had no idea that you need to cook it for hours, like some kind of slow-cooked beef. As I read the recipes, and ponder how much time I’ve got available to cook this thing, I start realizing that every single photo with these octopus recipes online looks like my concept of an octopus: tentacles, suckers on the tentacles, etc.

But what I bought has white flesh and a black skin … and it looks nothing like an octopus. Which is what I’d originally thought until I’d been convinced by the arguments made that I must have misheard the woman say Krake.

With the clock is ticking down toward dinnertime, I’m back to square one on figure this out. So, I make a  an executive decision: what I bought might not have been eel, but it certainly wasn’t octopus.  It really looks more like an eel, IMHO. So, when I notice an eel recipe online that seems easy and fairly quick (bake for 25 minutes with red peppers and lemons), I decide that’s how I’m cooking this thing, whatever it is.

And what do you known – the “kreye”, baked in this fashion, turns out to be delicious!

The next night when we’re out to dinner at a our favorite restaurant down the street, we mention it to the owner and ask if she has any idea was “kreye” could be.  She doesn’t, but has another idea: perhaps the woman at the store said Kai instead of Hai, Hai being the word for shark. Hmm, interesting idea. But the whole, headless one I saw was long, like an eel, not broad like a shark. And the woman definitely had a “k” sound, not a “h” sound, in the word she used.

The next morning is Saturday morning, and since Chris doesn’t have to go to work on Saturdays, he’s able to come with me to the fish store to ask the woman himself what it was that I’d gotten 2 days earlier.

But when we get there, we see they have some more for sale — and we’re late enough that the woman’s already put the signs out.  Write there on the sign is the answer: it’s Skrei, pronounced “skreye” with an initial S.

Looking that up on the internet revealed that Skrei in general means a particular kind of Norwegian “cod”. Winterskrei is a delicacy available only the winter months, or at least that what this highly entertaining and completely over-the-top short promotional video says:

http://www.salmonfromnorway.com/Articles/USA/Skrei/Skrei-Norwegian-Cod-in-Its-Prime

Check it out – it’s only a minute long, and will explain everything you always wanted to know about the romantic mating rituals of the arctic cod as they turn into Norwegian Skrei.

Anyway, the mystery of the white fish dressed in black  was solved. It was a mystery first  created by my (apparently) mishearing the woman (did she really say that “s”? How did I miss that?) Then, her further explanation of “winterskreye”  further confused things for me because it was possible, based on what I know of German grammar, to assume that the “s” in that utterance was the genitive ending on Winter, instead of the start of the name of the fish, Skrei.

Of course, this little mystery could have been avoided had I only waited a little longer that day to go to the store, when the signs would have already been put out.

I wonder …. they say the early bird gets the worm. Does this mean that it’s only the late risers that know which kind of worm they get?

Something to ponder until the next installment of Monday Mysteries. 😉