Our Nigerian friend has been telling us that she would show us how to make Nigerian-style tilapia for a few weeks now, so we finally had a weekend without obligations to take her up on it. Ruwais has a good fish market (we are on the gulf) so that's where Ben took her first.
They will fillet it for you if you want, but since she wanted to fry this fish and the meat is so tender it will disintegrate easily if filleted, she left it with bones and skin.
When they brought them home they looked like this. I'm not used to working with fish at all, especially fish with eyes...
We washed and salted the fish and prepared a puree of garlic, ginger, chili powder and red onion.
She made two diagonal cuts on each side of the fish and rubbed the puree into them as well as in the inside of each of them.
After frying, they looked like this. We served it with "chips" and a salad. I made the dressing from yogurt, avocado, lime and cilantro and it went well with the fish.
It was delicious! Everybody enjoyed it and we really liked learning something new.
In addition to food, she has taught us the following words in Yoruba:
Right next to the fish market is a fish-cleaning center. It cost 4 dirhams for 5 fish, or about a dollar. They gutted and trimmed the fish.
They will fillet it for you if you want, but since she wanted to fry this fish and the meat is so tender it will disintegrate easily if filleted, she left it with bones and skin.
When they brought them home they looked like this. I'm not used to working with fish at all, especially fish with eyes...
We washed and salted the fish and prepared a puree of garlic, ginger, chili powder and red onion.
She made two diagonal cuts on each side of the fish and rubbed the puree into them as well as in the inside of each of them.
After frying, they looked like this. We served it with "chips" and a salad. I made the dressing from yogurt, avocado, lime and cilantro and it went well with the fish.
It was delicious! Everybody enjoyed it and we really liked learning something new.
In addition to food, she has taught us the following words in Yoruba:
Eja- fish
Ediye- chicken
Bawoni- hello, how are you
Osheh-thank you
Coshelo- go away!
Eshegoma- thanks so much
Kotope- you're welcome
