Evening Edge

Back in the 1980s, a great deal of merit was placed on cooks who could crosshatch grill marks on fish fillets. Not only did a perfect, 90-degree crosshatch look smashing against the snow peas and baby carrots that were favored as garnish in those days, but it showed off culinary skill.

Only a cook who could precisely time fish would achieve even grill marks. The grill itself had to be impeccably clean or the fish would stick and the crosshatches would rip right off the flesh. The fish had to be oiled but not so greasy that it would cause a flare-up.

Special / National Marine Aquaculture Initiative Project (ENLARGE)

The texture of cobia falls between swordfish and mahi-mahi.

John Kessler writes food features and a column about food and more for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution E-mail John Kessler Recent Kessler columns [an error occurred while processing this directive] Related: John Kessler's blog: Food & More John Kessler's recipes Meridith Ford Goldman's Table Talk Jeanne Besser's Feeding Frenzy Evening Edge Atlanta Restaurant reviews and search Recipes from Atlanta restaurants Favorite Atlanta recipes

As one who incinerated, ripped and otherwise destroyed an Ocean Voyager exhibit's worth of sea life on the grill, I can attest. In the late 1980s, I was a cooking school student working in a restaurant for an externship, and soon found myself manning the grill. I had an easy time with tuna and swordfish steaks. Pompano and halibut were tricky but doable as long as I cooked them over the not-too-hot/not-too-cold sweet spot. Snapper and grouper were beyond my skill; I reassembled the torn, scorched fillets on the plate and covered them with lots of sauce.

As much sweat equity as I've put into grilling fish, I find myself doing it less and less. Sometimes I'll throw on some whole trout or sea bass if I know my dinner guests can deal with burnt eyes on their plates. Every once in a while I'll give in to the ubiquity of dyed, questionable farm-raised salmon.

But the reality is that fish has gotten too expensive. And too unsustainable. And, sometimes, too dangerous.

Sure, the swordfish looks tempting. But at $20 a pound for skin-on fillets, I'm not feeding it to eight people. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's seafood watch program (www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp), harpoon- or hand-line-caught fish from U.S. or Canadian waters is acceptable, but imported long-line-caught fish should be avoided because of the inadvertent bycatch of endangered sea turtles.

Then the Environmental Defense Fund (www.edf.org

/page.cfm?tagID=17694) warns that most swordfish contains such an elevated level of mercury that men should limit themselves to one portion per month while women and kids should swear off it entirely. Great. Not only will it cost $80, but it will kill my guests.

So what fish can I grill? Here are my criteria:

1. Cheap enough. Can I keep it under $40 for a table full of people?

2. Not scary. I don't want to be squeezing lemon over the species' demise, I don't want to eat dyes or mercury, and I don't want fish gassed with carbon monoxide to keep it looking fresh.

3. Crosshatchable! Self-explanatory.

4. Not dry. I've tried grilling marlin at home, and it seems the two choices of doneness are an unappealing and wiggly medium rare or fish drywall.

If possible, I'd also like a fish that doesn't have lots of hidden bones to get caught in people's throats, that has a mild enough flavor to appeal to kids and seafood wimps, and that has that nice fish-oily smell when it comes off the grill. Omega 3s wouldn't hurt. Omega 6s would.

Doable?

I knew this list was a little long for the guy manning the fish counter at my local market, so I went right to the folks at Inland Seafood — a major distributor headquartered in Atlanta. A nice sales rep named Jeremy took my call and walked me through an introductory course in fish taxonomy. Many species were discussed and dismissed.

But when Jeremy started talking about cobia (with "a texture somewhere between swordfish and mahi-mahi"), my attention perked up.

I've bought wild gulf cobia (Rachycentron canadum) a few times in Florida and always enjoyed it for its flavor (an assertive, sea-fresh mildness) and its texture (small flaked, with a little of that adhesive stickiness between your teeth that can be so appealing in swordfish).

What Jeremy was proposing, however, wasn't wild but farm-raised in Belize. I looked over some of the material from the aquafarm, and it looked as if the fish were raised in clean waters, fed a carefully controlled diet, not given any antibiotics and — since cobia has pearly white flesh — never given the pigment common in farm-raised salmon. Aside from the occasional barracuda attack, the farm looked like a fine operation.

I picked up a 3 1/2-pound side of this cobia (which Inland sells to restaurants for $9.99 a pound and retails for around $13). It had firm flesh and leathery gray skin, with a nice layer of subcutaneous fat. I cut the fillet at an oblique angle — right through the flesh, fat and skin. I tossed the pieces in a little seasoned olive oil, fired up the grill and invited a crew over.

Everyone enjoyed the fish, and a few even ate the crackly skin. I found that it had exactly the texture I was looking for. The flavor was, no question, milder than that of wild cobia, verging on anodyne.

That's fine. There were garlic, leeks and basil to perk up the flavor. There was that underlying thrum of unimpeachable freshness. There was that smell of sizzling fish oil. It was very, very good and just what I was looking for.

Alas, Inland Seafood says that only Fresh Market routinely stocks this cobia. (Other stores may occasionally have wild cobia from other sources.)

I'm planning to start asking for it at fish counters. If they can supply me with this fish for $13 a pound, I'll be a happy griller.

In fact, I can't wait to cook cobia again, because I did have one sad failure with my first attempt. My crosshatches were terrible.