Buying fish for my Sunday bbq in Jimbaran Bali

Saturday has been one busy day for me.

My upcoming bbq on Sunday promises to be a good time but I had a lot of things to take care of before then, starting off with a drinks run to Bintangs supermarket on my motorbike. Bintang is only a minutes ride from my house down Jl. Legian so its very easy for me to pick up last minute extras.

My goal today was to get the satay fish reciepe from the cook at Warung Gossip and pick up some tuna for marinating. Riding out to Gossip at 10.30 am I knew they would be cooking but have no customers. My friend Katut was working and I asked her the receipe. She was having a hard time describing the items so got the cook to make me a reciepe ‘bunkus’ ( to go) in a paper bag. It wasn’t expecting them to give me the ingredients too but they refused payment. Connections!

Back at the house Wayan #2 suggested Jimbaran which is the most obvious place for fish. I was hoping for somewhere a little closer but agreed it was a smart move to go right to the source.

The ride down the Bypass took only about 20 minutes from Seminyak and I was at the beachside fish market checking out the stalls in no time. I asked for tuna but they were out so I bought 2 kilos of mackeral and 3 kilos of snapper. Total price 54,000rp.

Jimbaran has quite a fleet there in the harbor and its great to see all the locals out shopping for the lovely fresh fish they bring back. This kid had enough of shopping for one day.

Riding back with 5 kilos of smelly fish in my backpack I was thinking how I was going to cook it. The tuna I had planned to chop up and bbq on skewers and this fish would take more work to get off the skeleton. My kitchen counter was turned into a fish dissecting table and you can’t believe the effort I put in getting the meat off the snapper. Snappers are scaley, boney, have sharp dorsals and a tough skin. I can promise that this will be the last snapper I buy, lets hope it tastes good.

The cook at Gossip told me to cook the ingredients of the packet which included garlic, ginger, some nuts, coriander ( cilantro ), red onion and a mystery orange thing. She then said to grind them up. The way I did it was to finely chop everything, then cook in an inch of oil, then grind the cooled remains in my wooden fruit bowl using the bottom of a glass.

I added some more oil and this will be the marinade. With both fish destroyed and the meat safely in 2 tupperware boxes I went about cutting them into cubes and getting them onto wooden skewers. I then rolled them around in the containers adding the sauce. For the second tray I used some of the same but tried a slightly different one with salt, pepper, lemons, garlic.

One thing here in Bali is you never have to worry about what to do with the leftovers from cutting up a fish. Wayan saw I had a big fish head and asked for all the spines and extras to make soup.

This whole thing took hours and after one more trip to the supermarket for supplies I’m ready to head down to Kuta and watch the English FA Cup soccer final.

Will see how the bbq turns out tommorrow.