I’m not sure there’s an actual fishmonger in Nassau, but we don’t need one: the sea here is just teeming with life. Mr. R&R and I now invariably paddleboard, rather than drive, to the beach and from our high vantage point we see spotted eagle rays, trigger fish, lobster, barracuda, sharks big and small… Yesterday I paddled right over a 7 footer – I thought it was a cutely curled up ray and pursued it to have a better look but no, that surprisingly chunky black mark turned out to be a proper shark. After watching Discovery’s shark week, I half expected it to breech the water and snatch my paddle away. But it just ambled off into calmer waters – a nurse shark having the reef equivalent of a boozy pub lunch. It’s truly amazing having all this two minutes from our back door.
So a resolution – to start eating a bit more local and make better use of what there is in abundance in the Bahamas (game fish, lobster, conch, locally grown fruit and veg) rather than gripe about what doesn’t get here from Florida. We’re leaving for the summer, but when we return for the winter, my next project is to learn how to fish. In the meantime though, these are yellowtail snapper bought off the dock, fished that morning and cooked the same evening. Not quite stiff alive (I got there at 11 in the morning) but just look at their beautiful clear eyes standing out above the head, the sheen… fresh as anything. And bloody delicious.
This is Bahamian snapper but cooked as I ate seabass in Italy – whole, on a bed of potatoes with herbs.
Baked fish with potatoes, thyme and olives
Serves 2
- 2 “plate” sized round fish – mine were yellowtail snapper, about 500g each cleaned and gutted with head on
- 4 medium potatoes
- 1 lemon
- A handful of black kalamata olives
- A small bunch of thyme
Preheat the oven to 200˚C.
Peel the potatoes and cut into slices about 5mm wide. Dry them with kitchen towel and toss in a bowl with a glug of olive oil, salt, pepper and picked thyme leaves. Stone the olives and add those, whole, into the bowl too. Use a vegetable peeler to peel three or four wide strips of lemon zest and add these too. Find a baking tray big enough to take the fish and line it with greaseproof paper. Oil lightly, then tip in the potato mixture and spread it out so the potatoes are in one flat layer.
Bake in the hot oven for about 20-30 minutes until the potatoes are cooked and catching brown (see the picture above taken before the fish went in). Meanwhile prepare the fish for baking – slash them deeply a few times on each side, oil the skin and season. Put some thyme sprigs between the slashes.
Now take out the baking tray and lay the fish on top. Make sure the oven is up to temperature before returning the tray to the oven. Cook for about 12-15 minutes depending on the fish (my snapper were quite rotund and took more like 18, starting from room temperature) until the flesh is opaque and flaking away from the bones. Serve the fish whole, or fillet them before putting on the plate with a helping of potatoes and olives and a drizzle of olive oil.
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