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Slew-Eat-Um
This method of cooking fish (or meat) beside a campfire or outdoor fireplace is best suited to a big whole pike, shad, salmon or what-have-you, weighing anywhere from 3-4 pounds to 13-14 pounds, for a fish that weighs as much as a turkey will be done all the way through in 30 minutes or so.
Scale your baby whale, slash off his head and tail and instead of opening the belly, slit him down both sides of the backbone and remove it through the back, together with the entrails. Flatten out your one-piece fish so it looks like a small sail, wipe it well and rub with salt and pepper (freshly ground or pounded whole peppers are best).
Then prepare your fresh wooden barbecuing frame from branches of sweet-smelling green wood, such as apple or willow. Find a branch that's about as thick through as your wrist, cut off a 4-foot stake of it and sharpen the end that's to be stuck in the ground after the fish is spliced onto it, still open flat. Split your thick stick from the top down, about a yard, leaving a foot or so unsplit at the pointed end. Then trim some twigs a few inches longer than the width of your fish.
Pick the fish up by the tail and insert it head down in the split stick, and fasten it there by putting the shorter sticks crosswise inside the big split one, first on one side of the fish and then on the other, about 2 inches apart, as though building the frame for a kite-which the fish looks like when fully stretched. Fasten the top of the split stake after the fish is in place, by tying with strips of bark, or wire.
Then it's ready for the fire. If your fire is built in the open, on river bank or beach, either on top of the ground or in a trench, as for Stick Fish (see under Cooking the Catch) just stick your fish on its kite-frame-grill into the ground and use it the same as any meat on a spit to turn it and cook it through and through, slanting the stick this way or that, toward or away from the heat as needed, cooking the flesh side first, then turning it around so it will blister the skin side.
The chief thing to remember in barbecuing fish in this fashion is to cook the flesh side first, since the skin shrinks when cooked first and in shriveling pulls the fish out of shape-also, if fish is not cooked almost through on the flesh side the skin side would require so much cooking that instead of being nicely browned and blistered it would be cooked black and dry as a cinder.
If an outdoor fireplace (or indoor one for that matter) is used, just hold your framed fish in place before it by resting the top of the stick on the stone front of the fireplace just above the fire, and then turn it like any other spit. When your fish is done to a turn lay it out flat on a bed of tasty leaves, such as those from sassafras, willow or fruit trees, or, in typical Indian fashion, use ferns or seaweed. Unfasten top of split stake, to release your sizzling barbecue, remove crosswise wooden ribs and you will find that they have nicely scored the flesh in 2-inch sections, which help mark portions to be grabbed, and also hold the golden overflow of melted butter you sluice on the slew-eat-um ad infinitum.
THE HUCKLEBERRY INDIANS Claude Bradner, an amateur chef of renown among the Huckleberry Indian Braves of the New York Athletic Club who don loin cloths and hold big barbecues and "piecing powwows' on their own Huckleberry Island within a javelin throw of Manhattan, contributed the following tribal snack to 10,000 Snacks:
A whole butterflied fish held open in a split-stick frame and roasted upright beside the fire — a spit-and-plank hybrid that works as well at a backyard fire pit as on a river bank. Almost everything hinges on the order of cooking.
- Flesh side first, alwaysThe author is right and this is the one rule that matters: skin exposed to the fire first contracts hard and bows the fish out of the frame, and it will then char long before the interior is done. Give the cut side roughly two-thirds of the total time, then turn to blister the skin briefly at the end.
- Boning through the backWhat is described is a standard butterfly: two cuts running the length of the backbone from the dorsal side, then the spine and viscera lift out together. A flexible filleting knife makes short work of it. Leave the pin bones in — they hold the flesh together on the frame and pull out easily once cooked.
- Choose the green wood carefullyApple and willow are named for good reason. Avoid resinous conifers, which deposit soot and bitterness, and avoid oleander, yew, laurel and any wood you cannot identify — the sticks are in direct contact with food. Never use lumber scraps, which may be pressure-treated or glued.
- Timing and donenessThe 30 minutes quoted for a very large fish assumes a hot fire close by. Judge by internal temperature rather than the clock: cook to 145F at the thickest part, at which point the flake should just separate from the bone. A 3-4 lb fish may need only 15-20 minutes.
- Wire over barkBark strips are authentic but slacken as they dry over the fire. Plain steel wire holds the split stake closed reliably; avoid galvanised or coated wire in direct contact with the fish.
- Fire managementCook beside a bed of settled coals with a low flame, not over open flame. If the fish begins to scorch, tilt the stake back rather than moving the fire — the whole point of the design is that the angle is your heat control.
- Serving leavesSassafras, willow and fruit-tree leaves are used as a platter and for aroma, not eaten. Sassafras contains safrole and should not be consumed. Rinse anything foraged, and skip seaweed unless it has come from clean water.
- YieldA butterflied 4 lb fish feeds four generously; the 2-inch scoring left by the cross sticks conveniently marks the portions. Have the melted butter ready before you unframe it, as it cools fast off the fire.