Bangus is a beautiful and delicious fish, one of the most delicious there is - but there's a problem - bangus has bones. Officially 180 "intermuscular spines" but some of them branch.

I just destroyed 2 2-pound bangus (milkfish) trying to figure out how this "spine structure" is designed and how to pull it out. I may be starting to figure it out but I'll have to destroy at least 2 more bangus before I've got it down.

The bangus is a highly competent fish, extremely suspicious, strong and lightning fast making it very difficult to catch. Well, it didn't make it all here the way from the Cretaceous by being easy to catch now did it. But that may be the problem - they must have built fish different back then.

Fortunately I can get plenty of bangus to practice on and at a good price because it's a major aquaculture fish in the Indo-Pacific region. Bangus apparently doesn't like the Atlantic because it doesn't live there, but there's plenty around here.

Also fortunately, it's still plenty tasty fried or poached even after having been experimentally dismantled in five or six different ways.

I have grocked the architecture of bangus and have mastered not one but two paths to the "boneless bangus".

I have learned to avoid the myriad paths of error which bring one to, in the words of a less persistent seeker, the "fleshless bangus".

I will post guidence under "milkfish" - in a day or so, but I shan't trip all over myself to publish - I seriously doubt anyone reading this board cares one way or 'tother about it.

I shall now move on to fry other fish before I return to bangus.

I must return because there is yet another path. I must learn to pop him out of his skin, poach him, debone him, combine him with exotic seasonings and stuff him back into his skin to bake. Only when I have done this with casual grace will I have truly mastered bangus.