Filleting tips
For the first cut, place the fish with the belly facing you and the head to the left (or the right if you are left-handed). 1. Pull the pectoral fin outwards and make a cut behind these fins to separate them from the fillet, then cut around behind the head until you hit bone. By doing this you are effectively separating the fish collars from the fillet.
2. Turn the fish so the belly is facing away from you (head on the right, tail left) then, starting from the cut at the top of the head, cut along the backbone from the head to the tail, cutting smoothly along the length of the fillet.
3. Angling your knife towards the bones, keep running it along where the flesh meets the bones to open out the fillet until you feel your knife reach the raised spine in the middle. Using your knife, stay as close to the spine as possible and go over the bone.
4. Place the knife flat against the backbone and push the point through to the other side of the fillet. With the knife protruding out the other side and pressing against the spine, cut all the way to the tail to separate the tail section.
5. Turn the fish so the belly faces you and lift the tail section to expose the ribs.
6. Snip through the ribs with kitchen scissors up to the first cut.
7. You can now remove the first fillet. 8. Flip the fish so the belly faces away from you and the head points left. Hang the head off the edge of the board so the fish lies flat (this way you’ll be able to cut evenly and preserve more flesh). Repeat the first cut, then cut along the back through the rib bones and, guiding the knife by pressing it against the ribs, cut towards the pin bones. 9. Turn the knife the other way and, using the bones as a guide, cut up and against the ribs, gently peeling away and slicing as you go.
10. Cut the second fillet away from the frame using scissors and wipe clean with a paper towel. Note: The fish used to demonstrate the filleting process is a Murray cod, aged seven days.
illness, the cooking bug had bitten deep. “I’d try using flatbread for toasted sandwiches, oyster sauce instead of tomato sauce, and I’d get mum to buy really silly, expensive, exotic mushrooms.” By the end of Year 10, he’d already worked in local cafes and had his parents’ blessing to do an apprenticeship.
He started at The Brewery in Newcastle, where a charity lunch for children’s cancer opened a door for him. Peter Doyle, chef at upscale Sydney restaurant est., was there to cook at the fundraiser and apprentice chef Niland was the opening speaker.
Doyle still recalls meeting him. “I was very impressed with the way he projected his life journey in front of such a large crowd at the age of 16,” says Doyle, who retired from est. in 2018. When Niland moved to Sydney, he worked his way up in a number of high-end restaurants, including Doyle’s.
All the while, Niland’s fish fascination was growing. “Big kitchens are set up with stations where people do their thing. I was always watching the fish section. It seemed like the most intelligent, the most creative, the most accurate, the guy with the sharpest knives. It was just this allure.”
Doyle introduced his young chef to Stephen Hodges, who had 34-seat Darlinghurst restaurant Fish Face. After only a few weeks, Niland was made head chef. Over three years, “I had the privilege of cooking just about every species of fish in Australia – it all came through the doors at Fish Face, and Steve told me a method of cookery for every single one of those fish.”
Niland’s focus began to narrow on the potential for the whole fish, and he and Julie were dreaming of their own restaurant. When they took the plunge in 2016, they called it Saint Peter, a nod to the patron saint of fishermen and St Pierre, the alternative name for john dory. Its plates carry the single black spot of that fish.
From Saint Peter’s tiny kitchen, Niland and his team quickly attracted attention.
After a New York Times review in January 2018, getting a reservation was like finding a pearl in an oyster.
“I’ve worked with a lot of chefs who can push on, and many who are creative, but never someone who could do both to the standards he holds,” says Alanna Sapwell, who became head chef for Niland at Saint Peter and is now head chef at a Brisbane riverside restaurant. “He looked 14, but he is still to this day one of the most thoughtful, mature people I know.”
In 2019, he was awarded Gourmet Traveller magazine’s chef of the year and named a finalist in the Ethical Thinking category of the inaugural World Restaurant Awards.
FISH AS MEAT
“You can use more savoury, complex ingredients with wellhandled fish, especially aged fish. The longer you push out some of these oilier, dense fish, the more savoury they become. “
Fish-eye chips, which look something like a prawn cracker, and john dory liver pâté on toast got the headlines, but the backbone of Saint Peter’s success has been the personally procured and expertly handled fish, as well as the inventiveness of Niland’s dishes.
“I look at fish more as meat,” he says. “If you think of it only as fish, then you’re very limited to what you can put with it, or how you can cook it. Whereas if you