Fresh fish

Home delivery

We bought some really fresh fish − probably caught the same morning − from a Garífuna lady who delivers to our neighborhood.

El Jefe saw her entering the colonia one day with a big tub of fish on her head. He asked to buy some but she said they were already spoken for. She delivers by order so J ordered some for a future date.

She showed up one day with a big tub of fish on her head. Drat! I didn't know or I would have gotten a photo. Just so you can picture it in your mind, she would have looked something like this photo. Hey. I've tried this and it hurts. I don't know how they do it. The towel rolled up into a circle helps to pad and balance the load.

Her husband is a fisherman and she delivers the fish to her customers by bus. I could see from the fish eyes that these were really fresh. It was about 14 pounds of fish for L.700 (about US $37).

The fish were cleaned but not scaled. ;-/ I would gladly pay extra to have them scaled or even filleted. I asked J to ask her if she would be interested in doing that for us next time. Fish is normally cooked whole with the head on here in La Ceiba. I don't much care for eating anything that looks back at me. I'm kind of a wuss that way. But people don't like to waste any meat, so they serve the whole thing.

I cooked one of the smaller ones whole (after cutting its head off so it would fit in the pan). The skin was incredibly tough. I didn't know that. So the next one, I filleted. What a job that was. It took me almost 30 minutes. I made kind of mess of it but the eating was much easier. I cut the heads off the larger ones and cut them into two or three meal-sized pieces. I guess I'll try to filet them or at least cut the skin off before I cook the others.

I'm terribly inexperienced with whole fish. I'm so spoiled by the serving-sized steaks and filets that we could get at Whole Foods in the U.S.

Does anyone know what kind of fish these are?