Fresh Fish

(above, Simon's catch of the day: la dorade in the background, and poisson perroquet in the foreground)

The in-laws and I stopped by the market in Basse Terre today for some produce. I didn't mention in my first post about the market that fish mongers can also be found along the promenade. M. and I have bought from one in particular, Simon le pecheur. Today, he had a decent line of customers, waiting patiently while fish were sorted, scaled, and chopped up into pieces. We were interested in purchasing some dorade, more commonly known in the U.S. as mahi-mahi. Normally sold as thick steaks, mahi-mahi is a great white fish that eats like meat.

Mahi-mahi is an impressive-looking fish. Its an incredibly large fish, dark blue green in color with a flash of yellow, crowned with an imposing forehead. Nevertheless, I was struck by the other type of fish Simon was selling. They were all skinned, but I could tell from the beaked mouth that they were poisson perroquet, or parrot fish. They resembled skinned rabbits at the butchers.


The wikipedia entry for parrot fish notes that "Their meat is rarely consumed in the US; however, it is considered a delicacy in many other parts of the world." I have not yet seen parrot fish on any menu. But that may be due to tourists distaste for such exotica rather than a general dislike of the fish in Guadeloupe. They were certainly not selling as briskly as the mahi-mahi, but at least one customer purchased three parrot fish. In any case, its apparently a bad idea to eat parrot fish.

At some point, though, Europeans in the Mediterranean region apparently liked parrot fish quite a bit:

The best known is the parrot fish of the Mediterranean (A Cretemis, Rond.), of a red or blue color according to season, highly esteemed by the ancients ; it is about 15 inches long, of a general purplish color, roseous below, and violet brown on the back; the pectorals orange, ventraia with transverse lines of violet, and dorsal violet gray with golden spots and bands. There is more said' of this fish in the ancient writers than of any other ; in Pliny's time it was ranked as the first of fishes, and large sums were expended to stock the Italian waters with it from the sea between Crete and Asia Minor. By the ancients it was believed to have a voice, to sleep at night (alone of fishes), to be very ardent in the pursuit of the female, to release its companions and other fishes from nets, and to have the power of ruminating ; the last belief naturally arose from the backward and forward movements of the jaws rendered possible by the mode of articulation, and necessary for the complete mastication of the sea weeds upon which it principally feeds. Its flesh is tender, sweet, and easy of digestion, and the intestines and their contents were highly relished ; the modern Greeks call it scaro, and consider it a fish of exquisite flavor, eating it with a sauce made of its liver and intestines, as the moderns eat plover and woodcock ; its liver entered into the composition of the famous dish called "the shield of Minerva," with the brains of the peacock and pheasant, flamingoes' tongues, and the milt of the murena eel (1).

Such decadence...

*EDIT* (April 26, 2009) I was mistaken. These are not parrotfish. What they are, however, I am not sure. Simon simply called them bourse, but this is an incomplete name. From this page detailing the fish species of Guadeloupe, I narrowed bourse down to two possible families: monacanthidae (filefish) or balistidae (triggerfish). The fish here could possible fit both descriptions in wikipedia. I would put my money on the triggerfish.



(1) Ripley, George and C. A. Dana. The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. D. Appleton and Company, 1862.