Feasts of Faith is a series of cooking videos posted on You Tube. An Italian Chef goes to the Holy Land to walk where Jesus walked and to prepare the foods that would have been prepared during that time. I have really enjoyed the videos and have enjoyed preparing the foods demonstrated. If you would like to see the videos you can get to them from this link FEASTS OF FAITH VIDEOS.
The fish recipe demonstrated in the video is wonderful and simple to prepare (even though I cooked it too long, it was still pretty tasty). For me, getting the fish was no simple affair. It started with my son and I watching the videos and deciding we wanted to prepare one of the meals. He had come home from school to help take care of me on the weekend as I was recovering from surgery. While we were out we decided to visit an Asian market we kept passing on the highway on a regular basis always saying we were going to stop and take a look, finally we took a look.
The market was different than I was used to, I was completely out of my comfort zone. There was food I did not recognize labeled in a language I could not read. We took a look at the housewares, the vegetable section and worked our way to the back where the fish market was located. I was impressed with the variety of fish being sold there. That is when my son said we should make the fish recipe. OK, which fish are we going to use? We needed a whole fish and there were many to choose from but none of the fish on ice had labels, at least not in English. We both stood there obviously lost. As we looked around I noticed that the live fish tank was labeled, sea bass. Well we could use sea bass so I pointed them out to my son and he said yeah, that will work.
I told him to ask for the fish, he said he didn't know how. I replied that I didn't know how, so we stood there a little while longer. Finally I told him that if he wanted to make this recipe he had better go get the fish. He wanted to know how many? I didn't know! I told him to get three. He asked the gentleman behind the counter for three sea bass. The man reached for his net and stuck it in the tank, it reminded me of Finding Nemo, when the huge school of fish were screaming "run away, run away". He finally got hold of a fish, pulled it out of the tank and whack, slammed it on the floor and put it on the scale. Well that was new. He got out two more fish in the same manner and put those on the scale as well. The fish were still moving a little, I then noticed that the big box of crabs I was standing in front of had a lot of moving critters in it, this was certainly an interesting place. I whispered to my son that if that man puts those fish in a bag and hands them to us, he was going to have the pleasure of eviscerating and scaling them when we got home, he said "no problem". Well after weighing the fish, we were asked if we wanted them cleaned? Yes!
After acquiring the fish we headed to the vegetable section to choose herbs to stuff the fish with. We settled on watercress, chives and parsley. Next, we went to BJ's to purchase olive oil. We needed regular olive oil not extra-virgin, we were going to fry the fish in the same manner demonstrated in the video. Once we got home we had to remove the fish heads, my frying pan was too small for the entire fish to fit into. We also added slices of lemon along with the herbs we were stuffing the fish with. Next time I will use smaller fish, these fish were large and we needed bamboo skewers to hold the herbs in before frying.
Ingredients:
Whole fish (gutted and scaled)
Fresh Herbs (we used parsley, watercress and chives) I would have used fresh dill but could not find any.
Fresh Lemon slices
Olive Oil (do not use Extra-Virgin, it is too delicate to fry with)
Skewers or kitchen twine if your fish will not stay closed and the filling is falling out.
Sea Salt
Fresh Pepper
Directions:
Rinse and pat dry the fish. Rinse your herbs and mix them together, make enough bunches for the number of fish you have. Stuff the herbs in the fish and place in lemon slices. If the herbs are falling out of the fish, secure with skewers or kitchen twine. Salt and pepper the fish and fry until done.
