Raw fish, Korean-style

"강변회음" or "Eating Raw Fish By the River," Kim Deuksin (1754-1822)

Koreans have been eating raw fish for longer than the Japanese.  I’m not just being a Korean nationalist; it’s true.  It’s not just Wikipedia that says so.  The Oxford Companion to Food agrees that raw, fermented fish originated in the Mekong Delta, spread to China and then eventually to Japan, and everyone knows Korea is on the way from China to Japan.

But Japanese sushi/sashimi is more famous than Korean 회, hoe, and the annoyance I feel about that is nationalistic.  As I served 회덮밥, hoe dup bap to my guests this past Sunday, I found myself calling it a “Korean chirashi” when it’s not anything like chirashi.  I know it doesn’t really matter, but the little kid in me wanted to wail, “Why can’t the Japanese be eating Japanese hoe dup bap?”

Hoe dup bap literally means “raw fish on rice.”  Chirashi is also raw fish on rice.  The two dishes are similar because the cultures have a lot in common—oceans and rice fields—but ultimately, hoe dup bap and chirashi are only as similar as pasta and spaetzle.  Same ingredients, different flavors, different food values.

Chirashi is just barely seasoned—the slight vinegar flavor of sushi rice, the fish maybe touched a bit by soy sauce and wasabi.  The Japanese revere raw fish.  Koreans—I’m not sure what emotion we feel for raw fish, but it’s definitely not reverence.  When we see a bowl of raw fish on rice, we want to drizzle it with sesame oil and then squeeze on a spicy-sweet-and-sour red pepper sauce.

The lack of reverence continues in how the hoe dup bap is eaten.  According to this Chowhound thread, the bowl of chirashi should be left relatively undisturbed.  Korean hoe dup bap, though, is supposed to be mixed up.  Koreans have long-handled spoons for a reason, and even if it’s not so pretty, the rice, the fish, the greens all take on the red tint of the spicy pepper sauce.  Each spoonful should include all the flavors and textures, the smoothness of the fish, the crunch of the vegetables, soft texture of the rice, and of course, the fragrance of sesame oil and red pepper sauce.  It’s another example of the Korean love of things “bibim” or “mixed.”

What I do appreciate in both dishes, though, is the rawness of the flavors.  Even with all that heat and sesame oil, hoe dup bap is one of my favorite things to eat when it’s hot and sticky.  If I’ve been traveling, especially in a country that cooks mainly with cream and butter, the first thing I want to eat when I get home is hoe dup bap.  Hoe dup bap is practically a salad as much as a rice dish, with all the shredded lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, sprouts and perilla leaves.  It’s incredibly cleansing and refreshing at the same time.

Last night was the first time I made it at home, and now that I know how easy it is, it’s going to be my go-to summer dish, especially on those nights that it’s too hot to turn on the stove.  There’s literally nothing to cook except the rice, which can be done with the press of a button if you have a rice cooker.  It’s easy to make for one or for two, or for twelve.

Sashimi-grade fish is available at Japanese stores, and often at Korean groceries as well.  I found mine at Sunrise Mart, a Japanese grocery in the East Village, and then ended up finding and buying another block of tuna at M2M, the more Korean-focused store a few blocks north.  It can get expensive buying sashimi-grade fish, but you don’t need as much as you might for chirashi, since you have so much else going on.

If you don’t have a reputable fishmonger or don’t eat fish, you can substitute tofu.  I made a marinated tofu version for a guest who can’t eat raw fish.  I got the idea from Maangchi, who recommends that you fry the tofu, but I thought leaving it uncooked would better approximate the texture, if not the flavor, of raw fish.  I used the leftovers to make a bowl of “dubu dup bap” for my Monday dinner.  I was surprised, it was quite good.

Hoe dup bap (for one)
1.5-2 cups of cooked white rice
¾ cup of raw fish cut into one-inch cubes, about a quarter pound—I used an assortment of tuna, salmon and hamachi or yellowtail
1 teaspoon of fish roe
handful of shredded lettuce, like romaine or green leaf
¼ cup of julienned carrots
¼ cup of julienned cucumbers (try Persian if you can’t find Korean, something fairly seedless)
3-4 perilla leaves, cut into thin strips (optional)
sprouts (radish or pea, anything thin and crunchy with bright green tops)
a couple of thin strips of roasted seaweed
drizzle of sesame oil (about 1 teaspoon)
chojang, or spicy sauce, to taste

1.    Place the rice in the bottom of the bowl.
2.    Add the lettuce, the julienned carrots and cucumbers, the perilla leaves, and sprouts.  The perilla leaves are optional, as they can only be found in Korean and Japanese grocery stores, but they’re so good and fragrant if you can find them.
3.    Top with the raw fish.  Sprinkle the fish roe on top of the fish.
4.    Garnish with a few thin strips of roasted seaweed, drizzle with sesame oil, and add chojang to taste.

Chojang or spicy red pepper sauce
3 tablespoons gochujang, or red pepper paste
2 tablespoons vinegar (white wine, rice or brown rice)
1 tablespoon sugar

Mix thoroughly and taste.  Depending on your brand of gochujang, you might want to add more or less vinegar and sugar.  It should be much thinner than gochujang, though not as thin as a hot sauce, as easily pourable as sriracha sauce.  I’m planning to play around with the chojang recipe a bit, as there are some interesting variations I’ve found in different sources, but it’s totally serviceable if you are craving a simple, fresh Korean raw fish dinner now.

Variation: Replace the raw fish with cubes of marinated, uncooked tofu.  I cut up a package of firm tofu and marinated it in a mix of soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, and lemon juice.

First 48 hours in Sydney

The surfers at Bondi Beach

I’ve been in Sydney, Australia, for about 48 hours.  I feel like I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole.

I arrived at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.  My friend Bianca picked me up, and after I showered and changed, whisked me off to lunch at The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, a swank and beautiful restaurant with an incredible view of the water, and surprisingly, food to match.  Then we walked from Coogee Beach all the way to Bondi Beach on a curving trail that goes through about five of the 80 beaches in Sydney.  We had dinner at Govinda’s, a vegetarian restaurant run by Hare Krishnas, finishing right before I almost fell asleep into my soup.  The next morning, I woke up completely refreshed and ready to go to 9 a.m. yoga class at Bianca’s favorite yoga studio, after which we went to yet another breathtaking beach for lunch with some of her friends.

I don’t live a particularly unhealthy life in New York, but so far, Sydney makes me feel like I might as well be that woman in black chain-smoking outside a bar at 4 a.m.  As we walked along the coast of eastern Sydney, we were constantly passed by runners with torsos so chiseled, you could see every muscle rippling as they ran.  The members of the Icebergs swimming pool by Bondi Beach swim everyday of the year, rain or shine.  Even the Central Business District, which is a lot of corporate sparkle and glass, has Olympic-size pools filled with bionic men in tiny Speedos.  Two of Bianca’s friends, who work in finance and are not at all New Age-y, offhandedly told me they had completed the 40-Day Revolution, a course of yoga and meditation that is supposed to change your life.

I could never live here.  I eat too much bacon, and even though I like yoga, I like sleeping in after a late night even more.  I know I’m an incorrigible New Yorker because I can look at the gorgeousness of Sydney, its greenery and its unending coastline, and sigh, “I miss grit.”  But for two weeks?  Sydney life is the life I want to live.

If you’re wondering what I’m going to write about on this blog when I’m eating Hare Krishna food, don’t worry, I’ve been eating very, very well.  Sydney is so healthy, it’s balanced.  It’s not like New York, where the macrobiotic restaurants seem to be full of diners competing about how much they can deny themselves.  The Hare Krishnas are eating delicious food with plenty of heat and spice, and my pizza at the Bathers Pavilion was topped with duck confit, beets, and ricotta.

And The Boathouse serves the best oysters I have ever had in my entire life.

Eating an oyster always feels like a minor miracle to me.  The idea that someone years ago picked up what looked like a rock, pried it open, found something essentially slimy and decided to eat it!  Thank you, unknown ancestor, for discovering how good it feels to eat something so cold, soft and slippery.  I love oysters, whether I’m standing on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx at the sidewalk shellfish bars, or whether I’m on Hog Island doing that Northern Californian thing of drinking white wine while wearing a fleece jacket.

But now I know I really really love oysters when they’re served on a large platter, each oyster in the circle representing a different region of Australia.

We worked backwards because Bianca likes the Claire de Lunes best, and she is not the kind of girl who gobbles up first what she likes best.  I didn’t mind, especially because the Moonlight Angasi literally turned to butter in my mouth.  How can saltwater end up tasting like butter?  That is the more-than-minor miracle of the Moonlight Angasi oyster.

Each oyster had its own particular flavor.  There was minerality in one, a sharper citrus note in another.  Even the En Surface, which I didn’t like at first, left a flavor in my mouth so good I wasn’t sure I could move on.  I wanted to take notes, but I’d left my pen at the apartment and Bianca thought I was crazy anyway for slurping the juice of each oyster as well the meat.

I could have happily left that restaurant with just the taste of oysters in my mouth, but I’d ordered the signature dish, a red snapper pie.  It was a joke in a way, a classic English pot pie, and a funny one because it was so much better than a doughy pie normally is.  The waitress broke open the lid to reveal snapper fillets in a slightly sweet, creamy sauce.  It should have been overwhelmingly rich, but it wasn’t.  It was just perfect, as perfect as the buttery crust.

I’m in a different world, an upside down world where everyone is fit and buttery pastry tastes like it might actually be good for you.  I will not be surprised if suddenly, at our next yoga class, I find my inflexible body in some impossible pose.

Gyeongju sundubu

A quick update: We’re in Gyeongju, one of the larger cities in South Gyeongsan Province, and a major center of Korean history, as it was the capital of the Shilla Dynasty.  People throw the word Shilla around like it was yesterday, and South Korean identity is tied strongly to the scientific and artistic achievements of that era, but the dynasty lasted from 668-918 A.D.  This is a very old country.

Diane’s family spent a lot of time here while she was growing up, and so we’re using the city as a base to explore the southeastern coast.  We spent a day and a half in Jeonju, in North Jeolla Province (about which I have a lot more to say in future posts), and would have liked to spend more time in Jeolla-do in general, but we couldn’t figure out an itinerary that wouldn’t have involved driving nearly all day between the southwest and southeast corners.  In any case, I wouldn’t give up any of the meals we’ve had so far in Gyeonsannam-do.

I’ve divided them up into three posts that follow.

Our first meal in Gyeongju was 순두부찌개, sundubu-jjigae. This is one of my favorite things to eat, one of the foods I start to crave if I haven’t had Korean food in awhile.  It’s usually made with a clam broth, spiced to the gills with red pepper, and filled with a very soft, fresh bean curd, one step before becoming full-fledged tofu.  We chose to eat at a restaurant called 맷돌순두부, Mehtdolsundubu, but the whole area was crawling with sundubu restaurants.  Koreans really love trends, and food trends especially.  Clearly, one person had had a bright idea to sell sundubu in this area, and everyone had followed suit.

I couldn’t really blame their entrepreneurial spirit, though.  The bean curd was especially fresh, almost closer to 비지, biji, a soybean puree, than soybean curd.  I’m not sure how and why this locality became known for its sundubu-jjigae, but its proximity to the ocean probably helped the clams and the clam broth taste clean and clear.

And I got to try 빈대장아찌, bindaejangajji, a strong-tasting fish, like anchovies on steroids, pickled with burning hot green peppers, which is what you see here in this little jar.

Korean foods I do not like

The older I get, the more intensely Korean I feel.  For years, I could go months without eating kimchi.  Now, something in my DNA cries out for it week after week.  I’ve also started to feel more nationalistic, very proud and sometimes defensive, especially about our food.  When someone says Korean food smells bad, I feel this little kid urge to spit back, “Oh yeah? You smell bad!”

So it hurts me a little to admit there are Korean foods I do not like, and even more, to admit that they smell bad.  I wouldn’t tell you, except I want always to be truthful in everything I write, whether it’s a cookbook or a story.  And this way, when I tell you that acorn jelly, in all its slippery glory, is really delicious, you’ll know that you can trust me.

Diane and I had dinner a few nights ago with our parents at 두레, Doorei, a lovely, traditional restaurant in Insa-dong, a lovely, traditional neighborhood.  Despite the title of this post, I have no complaints about the restaurant.  Other than the three dishes described below, I liked their food very much, like the salty and chewy dried 민어, mineo, or croaker fish (photo above).  And even including these three dishes, the kitchen was cooking with an honest and quiet restraint.  The flavors were clean and clear, whether they were bellflower roots in a spicy sauce or perfectly cooked rice dotted with dark beans.

I should also note that we ordered foods we were pretty sure we wouldn’t like.  I don’t believe in extreme eating (I hate when Westerners brag about eating “gross” things that are totally normal to other people) but I do believe in education.

홍어찜, hongeojjim, was very educational (photo above).  Hongeojjim is fermented steamed skate fish.  In other words, fish that’s been allowed to rot before it is oh so delicately steamed.  A specialty of the southern region of Jeollo-do, it’s beloved by the people there. Most Koreans outside the area won’t eat it.  Koreans are obviously big fans of fermentation—kimchi, doenjang, booze—so that tells you something about how fermented this skate is.

At Doorei, the fish came hidden under a pile of blanched bean sprouts and wild parsley.  It was very, very soft, gray and slippery, almost disintegrating as my mom cut it into pieces with a big spoon.  It tasted like ammonia you can chew.

I’d eaten a couple of bites, trying to ignore the feeling of being assaulted in the back of my throat, when my father finally noticed I wasn’t dipping it in the spicy red pepper sauce.  “You’re supposed to eat it with this!”  It helped mask the flavor, but not enough for me to want to keep eating it.  Our parents assured us that this wasn’t even that bad.  There was skate out there that was way more fermented.

The night of fermentation continued.  We’d chosen this restaurant because it’s well-known for its 청국장찌개, cheonggukjang-jjigae, also a regional specialty, but from Chungchong-do, where my father is from.  Cheonggukjang is a fermented soybean paste, like doenjang, which is a pantry staple for Koreans all over Korea.  Cheonggukjang-jjigae is a stew made from that soybean paste (photo above).  But that’s pretty much where the comparison ends, at least for me.  Doenjang is earthy.  Cheonggukjang is muddy.  Doenjang is delicious.  Cheonggukjang is not.

Others say that doenjang cheonggukjang is like Japanese natto, which sounds right to me since I don’t like natto either.  But I can appreciate that the level of fermentation in hongeojjim and cheonggukjang, like natto, is an acquired taste, and that both dishes might be quite delicious and delightful to other people.  There are people out there who like Vegemite!  And I myself am very, very fond of super-stinky blue cheese.

But the last thing we had, I don’t think even Koreans would say that they like it.  At the end of our meal, we were given complimentary cups of 삼지구엽차, samjiguyeopcha, a medicinal tea that translates into “tea made of 3 branches, 9 leaves.”  That’s exactly what it tasted like, barks and leaves.  Koreans have always believed that the food you eat is the most important medicine you can put in your body.  This was a very literal interpretation of that idea.

But all in all, it was a wonderful meal.  Diane and I learned so much more about what Koreans eat and drink.  And lest I feel any waning of love for my native country, as we were drinking our tea, the men next door began a drunken yet enthusiastic rendition of the national anthem: “May God bless our country for ten thousand years and years!”

Santiago de Compostela is the rainiest, grayest, most beautiful city I’ve ever seen

(Just arrived in Bilbao, so I’m only one city behind now!)

For all my bravado in Salamanca, I arrived in Santiago de Compostela a little sad and pensive. I’d had too much time on the bus to think and I dreaded what I might think about for the next couple of weeks. But from the moment I first started walking around the city, I felt happy. At the risk of sounding hokey, I felt at peace. Santiago is famous for being the destination of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago for over 1000 years, and even though I didn’t walk for three months to get here, it feels right to be in a city where I’m just another solitary traveler looking for something.

And the food! I dare Bilbao and San Sebastian to beat the food memories I’ve made here.

Galicia is another corner of Spain that isn’t quite Spanish. They speak galego (or “gallego” in Castilian), which looks like Portuguese and sounds like mushy Spanish. So “plaza” becomes “praza,” “iglesia” becomes “egrexia,” and “jardin” becomes “xardin.” It also has a strong Celtic heritage, which means you hear Riverdance music everywhere and junk souvenirs with Celtic symbols on them. Their traditions are peasant traditions of square-shaped men and women fishing and working hard on the land to grow the biggest cabbages I’ve ever seen, judging from what I saw at the Mercado de Abastos. Thus, their food is peasant food, my favorite kind.

My first taste of Santiago was a café con leche and a piece of tarta de Santiago, their famous cake made of almonds, at Hostal Girasol’s café, across the street from my own lovely little pensión, the Casa Felisa. Eating anything so deliciously nutty makes me think of my sister and even though I missed her more than ever, I was happy to be eating something that reminded me of her.

And then I moved on to lunch. Casa Manolo is tucked into a corner of Praza de Cervantes and is clearly in more guidebooks than Lonely Planet, as there were plenty of pilgrims in walking sandals and Gore-tex clothing eating there. But just because a place is popular with pilgrims is no reason to sneer at it.

For 8 euros, I was given my choice of an appetizer, an entrée, dessert, and bread. Wine was extra, but a “copa” for a 1,80 euros turned out to be a carafe with a good two glasses worth of the light, bright local white, albariño, that was a true pleasure to drink. I’d been curious about white asparagus ever since I saw it in jars at gourmet shops in Madrid, but the white asparagus I had with olive oil, mayonnaise, and boiled eggs was nothing particularly exciting.

The bread, though, was the best bread I’d had in Spain. It was my favorite kind of bread, a good brown, floury crust with a slightly tangy, tender crumb, not as tough of a levain but as flavorful. It didn’t need any butter or olive oil, it held up so well on its own.

I had a typical Galician dish for my entrée, merluza or hake cooked with paprika and olive oil. The boiled peas and carrots were very peasant in being tasteless, but I was so impressed by how good a white, firm fish could be. It was simple, very clean, and so so good. Even the boiled potatoes were good.

I wrote in my journal as I ate, “I am so happy! I am so happy!”

Arriving in Sevilla

(Now I am really behind–I’m in chilly Salamanca, having left sunny Andalucía behind, but just starting to blog about Sevilla.)

Arriving in Sevilla was a joy. My flight left Barcelona before dawn, but when I arrived in Sevilla at 9:30 a.m., it was sunny and just starting to get warm. The apartment Becca and I rented was in the barrio of Macarena, a formerly working class neighborhood on the western edge of the old city that is being colonized by hipsters, complete with hipster dads pushing strollers through the nearby park, Alameda de Hercules. I had found it online at Embrujo de Sevilla, and it went beyond all expectations, with its soaring ceilings, sparkling clean, bright IKEA furniture, a dishwasher and washing machine, AND a roof terrace. It was nicer than my own apartment.

In many ways, Sevilla reminded me of Mexico, and Becca agreed, it was the most Latin American of the Spanish cities she’s been to. The buildings were low and brightly painted, and you knew there were sunny courtyards in nearly every one. Even the machismo was the same; after two weeks of walking unnoticed, I started getting catcalls and kissy noises again. People spoke even more quickly than they had in Madrid, and they swallowed the ends of their words like Caribbeans, but they smiled more easily than their compatriots in Madrid and I felt happy again that I could speak Spanish, más o menos.

And being outside Spain’s biggest cities, I began to see and enjoy the little mistranslations I saw everywhere. Growing up in Korea, we’d always gotten a big kick out of the way Korean words were translated into English, and it was strangely gratifying to see the Spanish were as bad as the Koreans. The best, or the worst, was definitely at Taberna del Alabardero, a restaurant in Sevilla, where at the end of our meal, we were presented with an evaluation form, including a place to rate the “saw-off” we got.

But the meal itself was one of the loveliest Becca and I had in Andalucía. It looked like a favorite of moneyed Sevillians, judging by the way the other guests were dressed, but the happy waitress was warm without formality, as the restaurant itself is. When you walk in, you see a classic Sevillian space, a light and airy courtyard brightened even more by its yellow paint. The dining rooms are off the courtyard and have beautiful Moorish tiles to look at while you eat.

The food was also classically Spanish, simple, a bit too salty, and very flavorful. I loved my appetizer of “maccarones con salsa de tinta y calamares,” the pasta and squid so perfectly toothsome.

Becca also loved her “crema de puerro con salteado de verduras y langostinos,” a creamy leek soup with deeply caramelized vegetables and shrimp.

Our favorite, though, was the “merluza en salsa verde,” or hake in a herby green sauce, served with a poached egg. The fish was obviously fresh, the sauce very bright and it managed to be delicious in and of itself, without needing to resort to heavy flavors.

Becca didn’t like her “chuleta de cerdo con col y melocoton,” or pork with caramelized cabbage and a peach sauce but I loved it. We realized Becca doesn’t really like the texture of most Spanish meat, but I liked the way it was both flavorful and chewy without being dry, and I loved the peach sauce which was more tart than sweet.

We couldn’t miss dessert—the whole three-course meal only cost 12,90 Euros! I also learned that Becca doesn’t like soft desserts, other than whipped cream, as she wasn’t too fond of the “flan de naranja con magdalena tibia y salsa de menta,” or orange flan with madeleines and mint sauce, or the chocolate mousse cake that was the special of the day. It was a happy realization for me, since I got to eat almost all of both desserts.

But as always, the best meals aren’t only about the food. Our young waitress, more blonde than you would ever expect a Spaniard to be, was so happy and kind. She spoke fairly good English and only laughed when we started to confuse her by speaking English and Spanish simultaneously. When she saw me looking at the little bottles of olive oil on the table, she brought me 4 more to take home, which went immediately clinking into my bag. (I ended up leaving 3 in the apartment for future tenants, but took one in case I saw a good tomato on the road.) There was no question, we rated the “saw-off” as excellent.

Hot baked fish at Marco Polo

So my maniacal devotion to Rick Bayless continues, and I am going through his Oaxaca list of recommended restaurants like a pilgrim on the trail to a sainted relic. Monday was my day to eat fish, to give my body just a bit of a rest from the picadillo I ate on Sunday and the big pot of quinoa, chorizo, potato, and carrot I made on Saturday. So off I went to Marco Polo.

The restaurant has several locations, but it’s generally accepted that the best one is on Pino Suarez, the east side of El Llano or Parque Juarez, as it’s known on all the maps and to no one else. Given how far inland Oaxaca is, seafood is very popular, and the restaurant was crowded at four in the afternoon.

My first regret, as I looked at the menu, was that I was alone. So much I wanted to try, and yet how much could one woman eat? Shark (cazon) quesadillas, shark tostadas, shark all kinds of things, not to mention a whole section for cebiches and pulpos. I took a deep breath, told myself I could come back, and calmly ordered one dish: a filete de pescado al horno, or a filet of red snapper baked in their outdoor, wood-burning oven.

Honestly, when it finally arrived and I had already eaten half the bread basket, it didn’t look like much. But then I took my first bite and smiled. The fish had real flavor, its own flavor and more. I could taste the fire in which it had been cooked, the slight bite with the ground chiles sprinkled on it, and when I smeared a bit of chipotle mayonnaise on it, the fish just took off into outer space. It wasn’t at all undercooked, and of course, it wasn’t overcooked, just the perfect texture to give you something to chew, even as it melted away.

The little mound of rice it came with was very good, too, and I was sorry there was so little of it. Instead of tortillas, there was a dry bolillo, or torpedo-shaped hard roll, that did nothing to change my mind about Mexican bread, and then some flat tostadas, crispy and perfect for dipping into the darkly spicy salsa.

Sadly, because I had scraped every last bit of fish off its foil, I was too full to try the platanos baked in their oven, drizzled with a little crema. I am going to strong-arm my friends Mimi and Alex, who arrive this Saturday, into going with me again.

¡Oh, la playa!

I have almost a month’s worth of posts to catch up on, including all the food I ate in Mexico City and the mole negro cooking class that literally brought tears to my eyes, but I have to gloat a bit about where I am, here and now.

Erin, Elena, and I are in Puerto Escondido. It’s a surfer’s paradise, which means there are many bare-chested men walking around. Sadly, surfers are not our type, but there are many other natural wonders to observe and enjoy, including, of course, very fresh mariscos or seafood and other culinary delights. And even if the food wasn’t that great, even I could be happy just swinging in a hammock on the roof terrace of our hotel“, drinking Dos Equis and reading Rebecca West’s amazing “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.” But on this first day of our stay here, the food has been happily surprising.

Life here feels even sweeter because we survived a 9-hour overnight bus ride from Oaxaca City to get here. Erin had to knock herself out with sleeping pills, and Elena got some serious cricks in her neck, but as soon as saw the beach, the memory of the bus ride just melted away.

While you sit in your lounge chair under a straw palapa, you can get almost anything you want from the peddlers walking up and down the sand. You can buy a blessing or a wish from a giant clay pig (at least, I think that’s what he said), you can get your name engraved on a grain of rice (isn’t it weird what tourist-things travel all over the world?), and you can eat a delicious ceviche-like shrimp cocktail with a freshly tart, picante flavor, served in plastic dixie cup with fresh wedges of lime.

Or you can get nieve de coco, or coconut ice cream, from a sweet man who is so proud of his product that even after we had asked for two cones, he insisted we taste it first. This nieve, with a sorbet-like texture, would not have been out of place at the foodiest of foodie NY restaurants, with its rich, pure, and salty-sweet flavor. I have another great photo of Erin with her ice cream cone, but it’s a tad too bodacious for this blog.

And at least so far, even your run-of-the-mill, random lunch place knows how to cook a fish with respect. At Vitamina, on the Adoquin, the pedestrian street lined with your usual flip-flops, crafts, and caftans, I had a lovely whole huachinango, or red snapper, that tasted as rich and fatty as bluefish or mackerel. It had been prepared “al Diablo,” in a creamy, just slightly spicy sauce. With some hot tortillas and a neverending pitcher of watermelon agua, how could I be anything but muy satisfecha? How could I be anything but satisfecha on a beach in Mexico?

One messed-up fish

Tonight was one of those nights I was really glad to be eating alone.

Fort Greene Park’s Greenmarket, despite being small in the summer and miniscule in the winter, has a very nice fish stand where they sell a surprising range of stuff, from tender calamari to mussels and clams, as well as several kinds of fish fillets and whole fish, all at very reasonable prices. I’m very fond of seafood, but it’s definitely a weak spot in my cooking repertoire because I have a deathly fear of overcooked fish.

Unfortunately, tonight was not the night that I suddenly blossomed into a fabulous fish chef. I wanted to do a simple pan-grilled fish with chermoula sauce, from Claudia Roden’s recipe in “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.” But since I’m generally suspicious of fillets, I decided a whole striped bass, just over a pound, would be a good substitute for the cod or hake fillets she recommends.

The chermoula sauce itself was delicious, to the point that I kept dipping a spoon into it and getting intense raw garlic breath, another good reason to be eating alone. So easy, another food processor wonder–I just whirled 1/2 cup of cilantro, 4 garlic cloves, 1 t. of cumin, 1 t. of paprika, 6 T. of olive oil, and 3 T. of wine vinegar (or lemon juice). (Next time, I might use a bit less garlic.)

I then let the fish marinate in half the sauce while I did my laundry, reserving the other half for serving. The problems began when I tried to actually grill the damn thing. I was so excited to use the other side of my reversible grill/griddle, but I didn’t heat it enough before laying the fish on. Then, I was so scared of overcooking it, I turned it too soon, ripping the skin off completely, and then I turned it too early again on the other side. I ended up just cooking the top layer on each side, leaving the insides translucent and gray. I didn’t even realize what was wrong until I scraped away the top layer and then couldn’t get the rest of the fish to fully flake away from the bone. For a moment, I even wondered if this fish had an alien skeletal structure. So stupid. I ended up throwing it back in the pan to finish cooking it through, ending up with a mauled-looking whole fish missing its skin and top layer of flesh, but still edible. I got impatient and started tearing at it with my fingers, even gouging out the tender little cheeks. In the end, the fish was a mess, bones and bits all over the place. I didn’t look too good either.

Despite all the abuse, the flavor was great. Bass is such a tasty fish, and in the end, I didn’t overcook it. The chermoula sauce didn’t overpower it either, as I’d feared it might. And with some bulgur and chickpea salad and some halved radishes, it made a very fresh, spring dinner.

And since I don’t have a pretty picture of my dinner, here’s a picture of some of the stunning tulips I saw this weekend at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.