live fish in a grocery bag/taco pop up excitement

june, 2016

the day of the mexican night pop up was manageable chaos. it had received a lot of hype- which by yangshuo standards means that about 13 people were talking about it. the pork was braising, the tortillas were ready, and everything else was on it’s way to being done before service. i’d planned to make grilled fish tacos, a food that sits high on my ‘happy food nostalgia’ list. the first fish tacos i had were at (stick with me here) a gas station on the edge of mono lake just outside of yosemite national park. now before you get your shorts all bunched up in your butt, i would like to defend my favorite little gas station in the united states:

the mobil gas station in lee vining houses a restaurant that serves lobster taquitos, buffalo meatloaf, barbecue chicken pizza, fresh sashimi plate, and mango margaritas by the pitcher (if you’re ever starving and in the eastern sierras, here is a place to check out the menu). thursday and sunday nights on the small grass field just behind the restaurant, different bluegrass bands play, and the lawn in front of the shop/restaurant overlooks the mono lake basin. behind the building is the head of tioga pass, a stunning road that winds up through dramatic scenery into yosemite national park via tuolumne meadows. after every long hike in the backcountry, every solo summit (of which i am proud to say i have completed quite a few), every long day climbing some 500 foot tall granite dome, i would go to the mobil gas station and get a plate of fish tacos with a giant mango margarita to wash it down. the elevation is still fairly high so even in the summer, as the sun begins to go down there is a faint chill in the clear air. this also means that if you aren’t used to the thinner air, the margaritas pack more of a punch than they might at sea level. the experience of fish tacos has turned into a memory of being happily finished with a body wrecking-and sometimes ego crushing- adventure. all adventures aside, though, fish tacos are just really fucking delicious.

present day (kind of): tao and i were almost done with prep, but i’d wanted to get some fresh fish for the fish tacos that i was going to be making that night. i sent him off to the market to get about 5 pounds of fish, to which he said ‘no problem’. the wet market (meat market) is comprised of tables upon tables of meat: the pork belly is barbarically staked to the table with what looks like a railroad nail, pork shoulder is minced using 2 large butcher knives and about 5 minutes of a farmer’s time. beef is a rare find at these markets, and usually has tough lean meat. in the back are dogs and cats skinned and hung on hooks. there are a few windows that peek into a buffet of cured duck, goose, fish, pork and something else that has been broken down to a spaghetti shape and covered in sesame seeds. there are cages of live chickens, rabbits, geese, ducks, and pigeons who are seeing their final days in environments more forgiving than most of the ones found in many factory farms. foreigners who wander in usually become squeamish with such uncensored butchery, but chances are very good that the creatures at the market have lived considerably good lives roaming the countryside up until that day that their owners brought them there. that being said, the animals have mostly traveled their from max 10 miles away, so if you ever wanted to eat like a true locavore, this would be the best way to do it. despite this, a lot of travelers who come into these markets as carnivores leave as vegetarians, if only for a week or two. most important to the narrative, though, are the large washing tubs full of fish, turtles, crawdads, eels, snails and frogs, which is where tao went while i cleaned up the diner.

tao came back about 15 minutes later with a large fish in a red plastic bag. now when i say ‘a large fish in a red plastic bag’, i mean a large, live fish that was pretty upset to be thrown into a plastic bag. tao had walked in with a very large smile on his face, saying ‘i got the fish’. he was expecting me to be happy that he had found one with so much life in it. at this point, my face looked something like this:

i’d never killed a fish before. i’d never gutted a fish before. tao was about to set the bag down on the counter and the words ‘HEALTH CODE’ blared in my head. i grabbed the bag and stood there, holding it for just a second. how the fuck do i turn this angry thing in a bag into delicious, nostalgia inducing fish tacos? in an attempt to stall, i decided it would be a good idea to let the fish swim around a bit longer. tao filled up a washtub with water and dropped the fish in.

i opened my computer and began to search: ‘how do i gut a fish?’ ‘how do i kill a fish?’ ‘fish bites during gutting process’ ‘how to restrain a fish’ ‘fish gutting safety’.

i would look at the steps on my computer and then glance anxiously over my shoulder at the fish who was now happily swimming around in the washtub at the bottom of the kitchen sink. a nightmarish vision came to me: blood everywhere, pure fish carnage lining the walls of my newly-cleaned kitchen, customers coming in and screaming, me with a butcher knife and a shirt covered in murderous stains.

i’d always said i wanted to learn how to kill and gut a fish, though, so now that the opportunity was at my doorstep it seemed a little silly to get cold feet. i’d already been a vegetarian for 3 years of my life, and i get little flashbacks occasionally to why i did it in the first place: you are killing another living thing. there’s no way around that. low iron levels pushed me back into eating meat (don’t start with the supplement talks, please), and i had made up my mind that i was comfortable with the idea of having to kill my own meat sources if the situation called for it. i was once working on a farm with a lot of vegans, and a duck had broken it’s neck in the fence while doing whatever the hell a duck does with it’s time. one of the men on the farm found it and decided to put it out of it’s misery. two of the vegans started crying, and i volunteered to help break down the duck while repressing the urge to slap both of them. i had some work to do in the garden that day, so i had missed a majority of the breakdown, coming in at the end when the nasty bits had already been taken care of.

while the menu i made is mostly meat-based, the food i cook for myself is still almost entirely comprised of vegetables. undeterred, i opened up my computer with a [sort of] helpful -but still kind of confusing- diagram of the cleaning process and grabbed my heavy butcher knife. just before grabbing the fish out of the washtub, the door opened and my friend tanxi walked in. i thought that maybe immediately telling customers about the ‘situation’ in the sink was probably not a good idea, so i put the knife down and we talked for a couple of minutes before i took his order. as i was turning on the grill, i began thinking: ‘tanxi is a handy guy. maybe he’s killed a fish or two in his lifetime?’ i looked at the diagram on my computer, which was losing it’s optimistic appeal moment by moment. i made him an offer: ‘breakfast will be free if you can show me how to kill and gut a fish.’

‘okay, no problem. when?’

‘yeah, like, now i think would be good.’

he looked a little shocked when i pointed to the washtub in the sink and said: ‘yeah if you could just show me how to kill this fish…because i’m planning on cooking it tonight…’ and without blinking he asked for a heavy object and a cutting board. i handed him my butcher’s knife and he reached into the tub to grab the fish. the fish, unfortunately, was not happy about being removed from it’s new home and began thrashing around violently. nearly all of the water from the tub was splashed onto the counters and floor the tiny, tidy chef in my brain was screaming HEALTH CODE and sobbing before passing out from stress. finally tanxi held it down and hit it in the forehead. he then began cutting into it, removing all the guts and walking me through the breakdown process. while this was a while ago now, i feel like a live fish in a bag might not elicit such a high level of anxiety.

lesson learned: yes, it is easy to say that you can provide for yourself and kill your dinner, but even with an animal that is by all standards kind of stupid the process is still barbaric. since this instance, i have cooked rabbit, duck, and chicken from the market, all of which came with heads on and guts in tact. i’ve become a little more hardened to the gritty details of basic butchery, but i don’t think it’s a bad thing to feel a little remorse as an omnivore. western markets generally make it easy for us to ignore the gruesome nature of eating animals- knowledge is always power, though. i’m not switching back to vegetarianism anytime soon, but i’ll stick with my predominantly vegetable based meals.

the fish tacos were delicious, but i think they might have been reaching too far into unfamiliar territory for a lot of people here. i make them occasionally for myself, because they still hold a special nostalgia that was strangely enriched by this ridiculous experience somewhere in rural china. and i mean…they’re still really fucking delicious.

FISH TACOS

2 pounds of fish (a white flaky fish like carp or tilapia will work)

1 lime, halved

1 orange, halved

1 tsp cumin

1/2 cup coconut milk

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/4 cup cilantro

1. Add all ingredients to a bowl, juicing the orange and lime into the mixture. Allow to marinate for at least 1 hour.

2. Heat a small amount of oil in a non stick skillet. Add fish filets to skillet, until slightly browned and fish flakes easily with a fork, about 4 minutes on each side.