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"Clay Pigeon" Fish
Of course if you want really to go native you'll barbecue. First scoop out a hole bigger than the fish. Line it with stones or just wet and tamp down the earth as in the old family recipe for mud pies. Pile up a regular election bonfire and heap on big flattish stones to heat for a few hours. Clean the fish and remove the gills, but leave heads and scales on. Do a little interior decorating with the pepper grinder, salt shaker, chopped parsley and herbs, dash with lemon juice or white wine and fold in a slice of bacon and a sliver of onion thin as a platinum watch. Then back to your mud pies. Mix up a nice batter and hold all openings of the fish shut so the mud won't get inside while you plaster him thickly. The job is finished when the fish resembles a clay pigeon. Rake the oven hole clean, put the clay fish at the bottom, cover with earth and the red-hot stones, rebuild the fire over all and keep it going as long as hunger permits. When finally you crack open the clay molds, scales and skin stay with them and you have the fullest flavored fish you ever tasted.
A pit-baked fish sealed in clay, written in the breezy sporting-camp style of mid-century outdoor cookery. The method works, but the original leaves out every number, so the judgement calls are yours.
- The clay is the whole trickIt has to be actual clay-bearing subsoil, tacky enough to hold a shape and about the consistency of stiff bread dough. Loose topsoil or sand will crack off in the fire and you will be eating grit; if the ground where you are camped won't hold a pinched edge, wrap the fish in wet parchment or a double layer of large leaves first and use the clay only as an outer shell.
- Coat thicknessAim for roughly an inch of clay all over, worked smooth with no thin spots at the tail or fins, which are where it splits. Sealing the belly cavity and mouth before plastering, as the recipe says, keeps the interior clean.
- Choose your stonesUse dry, dense stones. Water-saturated river rock and porous shale can fracture violently when heated for hours, and a pit fire gives them plenty of time to do it. Flat granite or fieldstone that has been out of the water is the safer pick.
- How long is "as long as hunger permits"For a fish of 2 to 3 lb in a well-heated pit, figure 45 minutes to an hour under the coals; a 5 lb fish wants closer to 90 minutes. Longer does little harm inside the clay, but the instruction to keep the fire going indefinitely is rhetoric, not timing.
- Judging donenessYou cannot poke the fish, so crack one shell and check: the flesh should flake from the backbone and read 145F at the thickest part. If it is underdone, the clay is broken and you finish it in a pan rather than resealing.
- Preheating the pitThe few hours of fire the recipe calls for are not padding. The pit walls and stones are the oven; a short fire leaves you with a cold hole and raw fish.
- Scales stay on for a reasonScales and skin bond to the clay and peel away with it when the shell is cracked, which is why the fish is not scaled beforehand. The recipe also has you remove the gills; gills are traditionally said to go bitter over a long bake.
- YieldA whole fish of about 2 lb feeds two; plan on 3/4 to 1 lb of whole, ungutted fish per person, and bake a separate parcel for each pair rather than one very large fish, which cooks unevenly in a pit.