Friday, July 22, 2011

Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!

Living on an island means the fish seems to practically jump onto our plates! It's fantastic!!!
About a week ago I had a neighbor knock on my door with a bag of his catch of the day- mahi mahi- in hand!
 "Hi, may name is Joe. I live just across the street from you. Do you like fish?"
me: "YES!"
Joe: "I thought this might be a good way to inroduce myself to a few of the neighbors... I have a lot of extra fish from my catch today."
Holy mackerel (gratuitous fish pun)!!! That is the BEST way to introduce yourself!!! We'll never forget Joe now!
And just like that I had fresh mahi mahi for dinner that night. My kids LOVED it! They even turned away the burgers I was originally preparing for dinner! And that was also the night that my husband brought home his own catch from deep sea fishing that day- grouper and mahi! Hooray!

And just when I thought we were getting low on our fish supply, yesterday evening we had a friend bring over about two pounds of freshly caught fish that were just given to her by a guy that didn't know what to do with it all! And just like that we created an impromptu get-together around the fish. It wasn't our catch that day, but we were glad to have it just the same! I had some limes sitting on my counter and so I decided to slice up some of the fish and prepared a quick ceviche while we chatted on my back porch waiting for the sunset. I sliced some red onions very thinly and layered it on top of the fish, a little sea salt and pepper and fresh cilantro on top and we let it sit covered for about 10-15 minutes. (some people call this lime- frying). Basically you let the fish sit in the lime juice, onion, and cilantro until the fish turns opaque in color. We enjoyed the ceviche while I grilled several more filets with a little more sea salt and pepper, and I smothered a couple of filets in wasabi just for fun... it was a very subtle wasabi flavor! The fish turned out very moist and tender... perfect! Black beans and white rice on the side and we had a perfect sunset island dinner!

We've only been here a month, but we are already living the island lifestyle! Stay tuned for more island eats... and I promise to include pictures next time. Let your imagination guide you for now...