As I sit watching Battle Kobia on Iron Chef America is am puzzled by the secret ingredient. Kobia, a strange looking fish with a stinging spine in its dorsal fin and a dark stripe down the side. A salt water fish I have neither caught nor cooked.

It looks something like a flat head catfish, but it has scales... and is a bit slimmer.

The flesh is white and delicate looking. It does not look fatty.

I find that it is widely distributed throughout the world and valued for its fine textured flesh and mild flavor. It is being farmed in New Zealand and Port Aransas, Texas. It is being considered as a candidate for open ocean pen farming. It has a great growth rate and tremendous culinary potential.

It also has a vast array of common names... English language common names are cobia, black kingfish, black salmon, cabio, crabeater, cubby yew, kingfish, lemonfish, ling, prodigal son, runner, sergeant fish, and sergeantfish. Other names include aruan tasek (Malay), bacalao (Spanish), bacalhau (Portuguese), balisukan (Bikol), bonita (Susu), bonito (Spanish), cobie (Spanish), cuddul-verari (Sinhalese), dalag-dagat (Tagalog), foguesteiro-galego (Portuguese), gabus laut (Malay), gile (Tagalog), goada (Arabic), itang (Bikol), jaman (Malay), kadal-viral (Tamil), kobia (Afrikaans), kume (Visayan), kumi nu'aakhr (Arabic), langlanga (Maranao), mafou (French), mondoh (Javanese), mudhila (Sinhalese), ndjika (Portuguese), offiziersfisch (German), okakala (Finnish), pandauan (Bikol), pandawan (Cebuano), peixe-sargento (Portuguese), peje palo (Spanish), pejepalo (Spanish), rachica (Polish), sakalan itang (Bikol), seekel (Arabic), segel (Arabic), seheeha (Arabic), sikel (Arabic), sikin (Arabic), sungoro (Swahili), sugi (Japanese), takho (Somali), and tayad (Visayan)

Kobia, Rachycentron candum, is a fish I will learn more about.