The Alien's List #2 - Stuff to eat before you die... Eat your own catch

The Alien's List #2 - Eat Your Own catch

Welcome to the second episode of the favourite list on the web: The Alien's List. We'll be talking about eating your own catch. Eating your own catch or hunt is probably one of the finest food experience, not only because you are more than sure about the freshness of what you are about to eat, but also for the whole experience that lead to the catch itself.
I’ve never hunted but I’ve been out a few times for fishing, and it is really satisfactory when you get home and you cook what you just fished.
Despite the reliability of your fish monger, the freshest fish he can sell is at least 12 hours old. He goes to the market, which is probably Billinsgate if you live in London, he picks what you wants to sell he go back to the shop and starts trading. The fishes he just picked at the market are caught by the fish boats no later than the night before. Your own catch has definitely met his death later.
If I have to talk about my best experience I could go back in time last February when I was in Mexico and precisely in Puerto Escondido on the pacific coast. Here we met two guys from Italy as well who invited us for a day out fishing; they previously had a great deal with a guy in the harbour and they wouldn’t mind had another go.
When we left the shore the sea was almost flat but the farer we go the rougher it got; despite it seemed we were in trouble our guide didn’t look bothered at all, but was actually excited because he was told earlier that lots of little tunas and sailfishes were around.
We were navigating with about 15 dolphins running parallel to us jumping out of the water and if you stood at prow you could see them crossing their path in front of the boat. Then suddenly they disappear and about 100 metres far away we spotted two killer whales and when we were all excited for the view, taking pictures of the animals suddenly the fishing line started to go like crazy. Something took the bait. We stood up and the guy closer to the rod hold it and began to spin the reel backwards and moving the rod as you do in this moments. While he was rewinding the reel he could feel an extremely strong opposition, and after a good ten minutes we saw this sailfish jump out of the water with the fishing line in his mouth but as soon as he got back in the sea the hook lost it. Everything had been so exciting that we couldn’t believe we lost such a great catch. We start swear. We kept swearing for long time and with big disappointment we had to go back home but eventually we had our fish. We were just before Playa Zicatela where our shore was and a fish called Frel or something like that decided to make us a favour. Unfortunately I haven't found anything in english about this fish, and I don't know the equivalent in italian either so if someone has more information is more than welcome the sharing of them.

When the mum of the driver filleted the fish, plenty of blood came out from the flesh, which was really dark even darker than tuna.
With those huge bloody fillet we headed back to the hotel and start to think what to do with it. As good Italians we decided to make a sauce to toss some pasta with and I tried to do some carpaccio salad out of it and to grill the fillets.
So with the whole fish you just saw we had a three course meal.
We start with the carpaccio of frel with lime and salad, followed by pasta with frel and tomatoes sauce a finished with grilled frel fillet guacamole and tomatoes.
For the making of carpaccio all you need is a freezer and a very sharp knife, so if freezed the fillet which has to be quite thick and after an hour or so you start to cut as thin as you can. The knife we had was quite crap but the result was all right eventually.
For the sauce for the pasta you need olive oil and ripe tomatoes. We first wash the fillets under running water to get rid of the blood and I then cut in stock cubes sizes portion. I heated the oil in a frying pan and then I sauté the fish for a couple of minutes and add the tomatoes peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped. Cook the tomatoes for about ten minutes and the sauce is ready. Drain the pasta and add to the pan with the sauce. Add a knob of butter if you think the sauce is too dry. I was quite amazed to see how good the mexican tomatoes were, the sauce that came out was perfect as I never achieved, and the taste was great too; as a matter of fact tomatoes are originally from Mexico. The grilled fillet, which were more steak look like, I guessed they behaved as tuna do. I first marinated them in olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper and grilled them shortly on both sides to keep the middle quite as rare as possible and we prepare a tasty guacamole with all local products. In fact not only tomatoes are original from Mexico but also the avocados are. Apparently the word avocado comes from Náhuatl word ahuacatl from which we have aguacate that means avocado in spanish. During the Conquest times, Spanish men conceived it as one of the natives' favorite fruits, which was included in their food and was considered to have healing properties. In some restaurant guacamole is prepared in front of your eyes by the table; the original recipes included avocado, of course, tomatoes, garlic cloves, coriander and lime juice. All the ingredients are mashed in the traditional molcajete or with a fork until you get the desired consistency.