Green Fig and Lionfish. Allen Susser
This simple guide can be as practical in fish cookery of snapper, grouper, mahi-mahi, or kingfish as it is with lionfish. The key to selecting delicious, top quality fish is using your nose. Fresh fish has a clean aroma, a little like the ocean or a salty breeze from a tropical beach.
Starting off with fresh, pristine fish is essential. Have the fishmonger skin the lionfish and remove all the venomous spines so you do not need to worry about any of this. Give your fish a good rinse under cold running water before you cook it. Many home cooks in the Caribbean often add a squeeze of fresh lime juice at this point too.
Baking
Baking is simple and mess free. You can keep your oven temperature moderate and cook the fish gently. I suggest using a pan or ovenproof dish that is just larger than the fish you are baking to catch the flavorful juices that are released close to the fish.
Stewing
Anything and everything is stewed throughout the Caribbean. One-pot cooking has its island traditions based on necessities of conservation and survival. Pot fish, usually a variety of different small fish including lionfish, often find their way into a stove top stew of spices, herbs, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and broth.
Braising
Braising is a common practice in Caribbean fish cookery. Simply place the fish in a pot full of fragrant spices, stock, and vegetables. Put it in the oven and the fish is cooked in those aromatic juices.
Poaching
Poaching is a classic way to cook fish and one of the easiest. It treats fish very gently and results in a tender, flaky, and moist fish. The intensity of the broth surely can make a difference. In the Caribbean, this can range greatly depending on the island’s culinary influences from the French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, or Dutch and how it is balanced by local Creole flavor.
Grilling
Charcoal and wood fire grilling will impart maximum flavor. Build a good fire and let it burn down to hot white ash embers. Clean and oil the grates and liberally brush the fish with oil or butter. When you put the fish on the grill, do not move it around. After a few minutes, just flip it once and, in another minute, off it goes, keeping the flesh moist.
Deep Frying
Deep frying has been a staple of Caribbean fish cooking for generations, yielding crispy, crunchy whole fish, fillets, and chips. This method has also been the most abused and misunderstood. Doing it correctly requires clean vegetable oil (peanut, coconut, or canola oil) to be preheated to a temperature of 375 to 400 degrees to start. Being careful not to overcrowd the deep fryer. Frying the fish golden brown and draining well will bring results that should be finger-licking delicious.
Sautéing
Cooking fish in a fry pan with just enough butter or oil is a simple way to get great tasting results. With lionfish, lightly seasoning the fillets and preheating the pan with the cooking fat will allow the fish to brown quickly. Sautéing is done over moderate heat to allow both sides to be cooked through and finish with a golden brown, moist, and flaky fillet.
Pan Roasting
Pan roasting may be a common restaurant technique, but I feel it serves the home cook well. As with sautéing, use an ovenproof pan that is preheated with just enough oil or butter. However, after sautéing the first side of the fish lightly, it is flipped, and the whole pan is placed in a hot, preheated 375-degree oven to finish cooking with a bit more general heat surrounding it to keep it moist. Aromatic vegetables are often added to the pan to marry the flavors.
Pan Frying
Pan frying is a lot like sautéing but with a lot more oil or butter. The extra fat prevents the fish from sticking while delivering a high-temperature cooking treatment for a crisp exterior.
Spicing the Caribbean
The Caribbean is a giant melting pot of flavors. Caribbean cuisine is influenced by the cooking of many other cultures including India, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Caribbean food is bold, flavorful, spicy, hot, and fresh, and it is truly a world cuisine that stands on its own. The spices that I discuss are not only used in abundance here in the Caribbean, but they were transplanted from their original habitat two or three centuries ago by the European powers of the day in their bid to control the lucrative world spice trade.
The Caribbean Islands constitute a massive archipelago located in the Caribbean Sea that can be subdivided into a few different regions: the Lucayan Archipelago (the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands), the Greater Antilles (including the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Haiti), and the Lesser Antilles or West Indies, including the Leeward and Windward Islands (St. Barthélemy a.k.a. St. Barts, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago) and the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao). There are thirteen sovereign states and seventeen dependent territories in the Caribbean, and the predominant languages are English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Antillean Creole. The Caribbean sprawls across more than one million square miles and is primarily located between North and South America.
Just as there are many different islands, there are many herbs and spices used in Caribbean cooking. Saint Lucia has a warm and sunny climate with a year-round growing season. Mother Nature is in charge of doling out a dry season and a wet season. Each offers its own unique tropical fruits, citrus, and vegetables, including tree vegetables and root vegetables, for distinct seasonal flavor. Learn to choose and use each season’s best.
With over one hundred spices, leaves, flowers, and herbs used in Caribbean cooking, it is difficult to narrow them down into a simple spice box. The most frequently used herbs include thyme, marjoram, basil, chadon beni, and green onion. Herbs and spices are regularly used for seasoning, and, to this day, they are also still frequently used in local bush remedies that have been passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter. You will probably find some combination of these five spices throughout island cooking.
Caribbean Spices
•Cinnamon is also known loosely as “spice” or “hard spice” locally. It has a sweet, fragrant, woody aroma. Its roots can be traced back to biblical days. It was brought to the Caribbean by the English East India Company.
•Ginger root, introduced to the West Indies by the Spaniards, is a must-have in every Caribbean kitchen. The fresh root is grated to release its sweet rich undertones to flavor several savory dishes with a slightly biting heat.
•Cloves are used in both savory and sweet preparations. One of the top uses of cloves is as an aromatic component in a curry sauce. The Dutch, by the way, held the monopoly on this spice from the 1600s. Cloves can be used whole or ground and have a tasty assertive dark aroma.
•Nutmeg is a pantry staple that is used for beverages such as Caribbean rum punch and other alcoholic drinks. The English planted nutmeg heavily in Grenada toward the end of the eighteenth century. Nutmeg is best when freshly grated. Its rich, fresh, and warm aroma is used to flavor sauces and bitter greens.
•Allspice is a spice that comes from the dried fruit of the allspice evergreen tree or pimento tree. This is the Caribbean’s native spice. It is not a combination of spices as is commonly thought. It is called allspice because when ground, the spice berries taste like a combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper, and cloves. It was this spice that Columbus brought back to Spain, thinking he had found the source of pepper.
Colorful, juicy, crunchy, sweet, bitter, herby, spicy… One of the great things about the Caribbean is that there are so many flavors and textures to put together, making it exciting to cook. The kitchen is freedom.
Caribbean Spice Box
Creole Spice
•1 teaspoon ginger
•2 teaspoons coriander
•1 teaspoon allspice
•½