thai golden mackerel with lime, chili, and onion

Mackerel is a general name applied to many types of fish, and the thing I love most about the varieties in Africa and Asia is their virtually scale-free body; it makes cleaning in the kitchen so much easier, with no need to track down transparent discs that disappear in every direction.

An interesting feature of these mackerel is their ‘scutes’, a bony external plate/scale running along each side of the body. It is extremely sharp on the back third of the fish, and should be removed as part of the cleaning, by sliding a sharp knife underneath its point on the tail end, continuing towards the head until it thins out and can be pulled off (see photo illustration). The arrow-like pattern will continue the length of the body, and you may find some thin scales over it that can easily be removed by running the knife over them.

I learned to prepare this simple dish from three street vendors in Bangkok, named Rai, Ying, and Jumpa (none of whom speak English). In what was probably built to be a garage, they taught me to make everything on their stand: 13 recipes (including pastes from scratch), in about five or six hours.

To cook the whole fish, they wrap each one individually in banana leaf, and grill them until golden brown. When I don’t have a grill or banana leaf available, I’ll use aluminum foil, though the texture is not the same (the fish steam rather than grill). The closest answer I’ve seen for the common kitchen is a technique used by one of my teachers in Japan: in a dry frying pan, she would place a sheet of wax or parchment paper (I’m not sure which one, as I couldn’t read the writing on the box), and lay the fish on it to cook with no lid. The result doesn’t have the flavour of being cooked on coals, but the golden colour and crispy skin are there.

thai baked/grilled fish with lime, chili, onion

fish (whole), salt, a lot of lime juice, sliced red onion, fresh whole chillies

– sprinkle a bit of salt on the outside of the fish, then cook/grill until golden
– garnish with lime juice, onion, chillies*, and more lime juice
– serve with fluffy white rice, leaving no sauce behind

*unless you have a really strong stomach, don’t eat the fresh chillies if they’re powerful ones (I made the mistake when I first went to Thailand, then I noticed that the tiny ones were left on the plate by locals too). If the flavour doesn’t pass on to the onions and fish, you can cut one or two chillies open length-wise and lay them on the fish (removing the seeds to ensure you don’t bite down on one). Then simply move the chillies to the side of your plate when you’re ready to eat.

Enjoy!