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Fish Cooked in the Ashes
2-POUND FISH I LARGE ONION, CHOPPED SALT AND CAYENNE I TEASPOON CORIANDER SEED, CRUSHED TUMERIC POWDER, TO TASTE 2 TABLESPOONS OLIVE OIL Clean fish and cut into portions. Mix other ingredients and cover fish with this curry-like paste. Roll in cabbage leaves, fresh corn husks or other tasty thick leaves; turn leaves in at both ends to make neat package like tamales, enclosing each piece of fish separately. Cook in hot ashes and serve with baked or fried bananas.
A campfire recipe that relies on leaf wrappers to steam the fish while the ashes do the cooking. The original gives no timing, so judging the fire and the fish is the whole job.
- The hinge: ash, not flame"Hot ashes" means the grey bed left after a fire has burned down, with embers underneath but no visible flame. Live flame scorches through the leaves in a minute or two and leaves the fish raw inside; a deep ash bed cooks gently from all sides.
- TimingReckon on 15-20 minutes for packets holding 4-6 oz pieces, turning once halfway. Fish is done when it flakes at the thickest point and reads 145F; open one packet to check rather than guessing from the char on the leaves.
- Turmeric"Tumeric" is a common variant spelling of turmeric. The recipe leaves the amount to taste; about a teaspoon suits 2 lb of fish, and mixing it into the oil rather than sprinkling it dry helps it coat evenly.
- The pasteTwo tablespoons of oil with onion, coriander, turmeric, salt and cayenne is thin for 2 lb of fish. Crushing the coriander seed just before mixing, and letting the paste stand ten minutes, gives noticeably more flavour.
- Choice of fishA firm-fleshed 2 lb fish works best: snapper, mackerel, sea bass, tilapia, or thick cod fillets. Very delicate fish falls apart when the packet is turned.
- WrappersCabbage leaves need blanching 30 seconds so they fold without cracking; dried corn husks want soaking about 15 minutes, though the fresh husks the recipe calls for are already pliable. Banana leaves, if available, are the sturdiest option. Grape and chard leaves also work. A layer of foil outside the leaves keeps the ash off, though the leaf must stay next to the fish.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds of fish will stretch to about four modest servings, fewer if it is a whole fish with head and bones. The baked or fried bananas called for can be barely ripe bananas, or firm plantains, cooked in the same ashes or in a pan alongside.
The technique is an old and widespread one: wrap food in whatever broad leaf grows nearby, set it in the ash bed of a spent fire, and let the residual heat steam it in its own moisture. Related leaf-parcel and buried-cooking methods are found in the Mexican and Central American tamal -- a comparison the recipe itself invites when it says "like tamales" -- in Southeast Asian banana-leaf parcels, and in the Polynesian earth oven, though the last works from hot stones rather than ashes. The seasoning here, coriander seed, turmeric and cayenne bound with oil, is described in the text itself as "curry-like." The corn husks and cabbage leaves stand in for banana leaf, and baked or fried bananas are offered alongside.