Meals cooked in the kitchen in an oven like regular people is a thing of the past. I can't say whether I'm totally unhappy. Further food preparation adventures over the fire are now part of our homesteading reality. For those of you who heard about my Catastrophic Cooking we are settling into a weekly cook-up in our amazing pizza oven. We are beyond impressed with the variety of amazing dishes; baked, roasted or curried, that we have enjoyed out of the pizza oven. But we still need to occasionally whip up a meal fast. That's when a braai (barbeque) is the quick solution. Veggies roasted over fire are something to taste. This week, following a trip through a fishing town, we added fish to the fire.
Having grown up on the South African coast I know the difference between freshly caught fish, and frozen. You can't compare them. We now live inland. Fish is not part of our daily life. Unless you consider the dam full of tilapia that the children enjoy feeding. From the morning catch the boats offered a variety of freshly caught fish. We chose Red Roman.
A Red Roman fish is quite an oily fish. Red Roman belong to the sea bream, and are only found between the Namibian coast and Eastern Cape of the SA sea. Apparently Madagascar have similar sea bream varieties but the Red Roman is peculiar to us. It is rather a ferocious looking fish with the dorsal fin being dangerous spikes and equally formidable looking teeth.
While the wood was arranged and the fire lit I harvested herbs and veggie leaves from the garden for salad. I have just made goats milk feta and finished brining a batch of olives. Those went in. Of course.
It is almost impossible to find non-GMO potatoes (unless you can grow your own heirloom). So we seldom eat potatoes. No great loss to me because we have such delicious sweet potato and butternut. To accompany our fish we needed chips and so I bought a small bag to make potato wedges - our favourite form of chip. With a dash of olive oil, a good dose of salt and light sprinkling of smoked paprika, potato wedges are delicious!
While in the garden I picked a few of our wonderful rough skinned lemons. And a variety of herbs. The Red Roman was stuffed with garlic, a dash of ginger, lemon slices, black pepper and herbs. The herbs for the meal were fresh fennel, thyme and parsley.
Because is an oily fish you don't need extra olive oil or butter. We also added salt afterwards. You never know just how salty a sea fish is, until eating.
No matter what your form of cooking fish is always a quick cook. But there is a balance of just enough and too much. Once the coals were still hot but not flaming we put the fish in the grid.
It must be cooked quite high above the coals so that it doesn't burn. Fish is a rather sensitive meat and dries out quickly while the centre remains uncooked if you aren't careful. After a quick turn and equal cooking on both sides, for a total of about 15 minutes. The fish was ready!
The BuckarooBabies were more fascinated with the teeth of the fish than the actual eating of the meal. But we enjoyed an early evening outside in the garden with a chilled glass of Jun (water kefir). Another successful meal over the fire.
Bon Appetit!
