day 49

February 17, 2010

 

Day 49:

 

 

            Today was yet another interesting day. Today was the day that John and I had set aside as the day that we would cook the fish that Russell gave us a week or so ago. Last night after the game we set the fish in the fridge so that it could start to thaw out. I checked it this morning before class and it was still frozen. When I came back to the trailer after class for lunch I noticed that the fish was starting to thaw but the smell of the fish was also spreading throughout the kitchen. My grilled cheese had a fishy taste to it. So I set the fish in the sink so that if we had to deal with the smell at least the food wasn’t what smelled bad.

            So John and I started cleaning the fish around 4:45. We decided that we would grill most of it, especially the Ruby Snapper we had and then fry the rest. So we had to barbecue grills and we had planned for me to just put a skillet on top of one of the barbecue pits so that I could fry it. Did I mention the power was out? That is an important fact because our cooking plans involved zero electricity so it worked great that it just so happened to be a powerless afternoon on the day when we were barbecuing.

            One great thing about this island being about a half mile wide at most points is that there is always an ocean breeze, or lagoon breeze; a water induced breeze of some sort. The bad part about being on an island this narrow, is that there’s always a breeze. Starting a fire over charcoal was impossible. We couldn’t find a place that was hidden enough from the wind. If it was hidden by a building or something from the ocean wind, then it was a perfect target for the lagoon wind. So we spent about an hour and a half trying to get the charcoal to catch fire and keep fire. Then, of course, the clouds came rolling in. The rain clouds came in and we were certainly not getting over those winds. So we eventually moved the grills into the World Teach dorms breezeway which was fairly free of breeze. We finally got the fire going, the rest of the fish cleaned and the skillet going in there. Right about the time the sun went down, the power came back on which was great because I could then fry the fish on the skillet on a stove.

            The fish turned out great. I was pretty skeptical about cooking the fish the way that we were cooking it. I had never cooked a whole fish before but everyone on the island does it that way and if they eat it then I’ll eat it, at least one. We had some grouper out on Bikrin with Senator DeBrum that one time that was a fish that we ate whole. The snapper that we had tonight was eaten the same way, except we gutted the fish before we cooked it tonight. Senator Debrum didn’t. So we roasted the fish whole, over an open fire. It was a fairly scale-less fish so we didn’t have to scale it, but the eyes, fins, tail everything still in tact. I got a great picture of it though, just to prove that we ate FISH. Real fish. The fish that I fried turned out really good too. I didn’t even bread it, nor did I filet it. I took the fish, gutted them and threw them in some vegetable oil; eyes, fins, tail, gills and all. There were a couple that we had cut the head off of when we were cleaning so I got to fry those as well. When I was done, I could pull the meat right off the bone. I had seen in movies so many times and even cartoons, fish skeletons; just the head, tail and ribs in between. The way I pulled the meat off of my fish, I just held the tail and the meat basically fell off the bone, so I was left with the skeleton that I had seen so many times on TV. I never gave too much thought to it, but I never thought the skeleton of a fish actually looked like that. I guess if I had any biological or anatomical intuition I would have picked that up but I just never thought of it. It was pretty cool. I got a good picture of that too.

            After the fish was done and we had eaten, I did some work in the library started a new mash-up and went to bed.