Pesce on the jetty: 6 Febbraio 2012

After lunch Joey convinced me it would be a good idea to go out on the jetty and see if we could buy some pesce for dinner. We had read that this was indeed possible but you had to buy it by the box. Do you know how many fish there are in one box? No? Well neither did we.

So off we go. There wasn't any action on the far jetty so we went to the inner one. Sure enough there was a fisherman on the jetty, next to a boat, next to a refrigerated truck with a box fish.

"Five Euro", he said.

Sure we thought.

"Per (making the shape of a box in the air and, pointing at the box)?" "Si?"

"Si." he said.

We then asked what the name of of the fish was. He told us. We immediately forgot. Remember when asking someone to name something, ask them to write it down for you.

Anyway without any bargaining we bought a box of small and shiny pesce from the first fisherman we came upon. Mission accomplished!

We carry "our catch" home and begin the gutting and cleaning process. We left some with heads (innards missing) and tails but most we cut the heads off. Joey decided to scale them, so she took them out on the stoop, and in the process made a friend of the neighborhood cat.

So how many 8" fish are in a box? About 60! good thing we are here for a month!

We cooked them in various ways to see how they would taste:
- Dredged milk, flour with salt and pepper, egg, breadcrumbs with Romano
- Fried
- Baked
- We also boiled some to see what would happen! Fish stock! Joey made a fish chowder a few days later using this little bit of knowledge!

We did have an excellent meal of fried and baked pesce fresco. Very flavorful and the ultimate in Slow Food, making sure we didn't choke on all the tiny bones while eating our we can't remember the name* of pesce.

*If you know the name of this pesce please tell us in the comments.