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Cornfield Fish
Cut any small fish into 3-inch lengths, dip in oil or melted butter, season with salt, cayenne and a little minced onion. Roll each piece in green corn husk, tucking in the ends of husk to form a neat little package-that is, if you can master the trick known to all Mexican and Texan tamale makers. Or, to keep the gravy from running out, just tie a string around the loose end, after the manner of those tissue paper crackers out of which we get idiotic paper caps to wear at indoor parties. Get out your Scout knife if the husks are too long, and if any are too narrow wrap in a couple of husks. Bury everything in hot ashes and your fish, with a hearty way-down-yonder-in-the-cornfield tang, will be cooked quicker than you can imagine. Grapevine leaves also make good wrappings, imparting their own acid fravarieties, however, are bitter, so it's wise to taste one of the leaves before trying to use them. Those that are blue or bluish underneath are sweetest.
In the tropics banana leaves serve the same purpose for ash -roasting fish, fowl and very delicate meats. But outdoor cooks near the Equator, cover their toughest and biggest roasts, including alligator and ant-eater, with papaya leaves. Like the papaya fruit the leaves contain vegetable pepsin, a substance which hastens the cooking process and turns out the meat tender as young chicken.
Since cabbage leaves are always with us, they'll do very nicely to wrap anything in for ember cooking. That's an to wrap anything in for ember cooking. That's an old European custom, and the stiffness can be wilted out of them in a quick bath of boiling water; then they are ready meat or fish, or one of those dolma mixtures we have learned to like in Russian restaurants.
Dolmas are great for trailer camp cooking. They are Gipsy in origin and made differently in Turkey, Syria, in origin and made differently in Turkey, Syria, Greece and all the separate Balkan countries and sections of southern Russia. Just mix your favorite stuffing of bulk sausage or ground raw beef, add a little tomato juice to keep it from drying out and roll it up in cabbage leaves.
Or use either of these recipes:
A leaf-wrapped fish cooked directly in embers, with a digression on wrappers of every kind. The method is sound; what it lacks is any indication of timing or heat, which the notes below supply.
- Soak the husksDried husks of the sort tamale cooks use need a 20 to 30 minute soak before they will fold. Green husks straight from the ear are already moist, but a soak does no harm and helps them steam the fish rather than burn through.
- What "hot ashes" meansNot flame and not fresh coals, but the grey ash bed at the bottom of a fire that has burned an hour or more, with embers raked through it. If you can hold a hand six inches above for two seconds, it is right. A packet buried in that will take roughly 8 to 12 minutes for 3-inch pieces of small fish; turn once.
- Judge doneness by the flesh, not the clockThe claim that it cooks "quicker than you can imagine" is fair, and the risk is overshooting. Open one packet and check that the flesh has just turned opaque and flakes from the bone; 145F at the thickest point is the modern benchmark.
- Small fish means smallThis works with fish under about a pound -- perch, small trout, croaker, sunfish -- cut across into 3-inch sections, bone in. Thick fillets of large fish steam unevenly in a husk and are better on a grill.
- Grape leavesUse young leaves picked in early summer; older ones are tough and resinous. The advice to taste one raw before committing is good, and blanching them 30 seconds in boiling water makes them pliable. Avoid leaves from vines that may have been sprayed.
- Papaya leavesThe tenderising enzyme referred to as "vegetable pepsin" is papain, which does break down muscle protein. Treat that passage as travel description rather than instruction -- papaya leaf is not a standard food wrapper and is not something to seek out.
- Cabbage leavesTake the large outer leaves, cut out the thick rib, and dip them in boiling water for about a minute until limp. Two leaves overlapped hold a packet better than one.
- Tying the packetButcher's twine or plain cotton string only. Wire twists and anything with a plastic core have no place in a fire.
- YieldFigure two or three packets per person as a course, four or five if the fish is the whole meal.