Who said Saint Peter was only a saint?

Fresh calamari, king prawns, and John Dory: our food repertoire for a BBQ Sunday.

The dull brown grey sky and the soiled rain of a couple of weekends ago did not disrupt our plans for the first fish barbecue of 2011. Chris was not really enthusiastic about waking up early for preparations and I did not render him any better. I woke up knackered. I had barely any voice, was stuffed with sinus and had a brown under eye colour. At the moment, we have our days loaded with errands, meetings, and thoughts about our wedding and it was more ideal to have a relaxing Sunday rather than head early to Marsaxlokk. Yet, my passion for food makes me insist and persist.

We met our hosts and another couple at Rita’s fish shop in Marsaxlokk. The display was quite abundant considering the bad weather of the other night. Fresh anchovies, tuna, live clams, king prawns were amongst the lot. One particular species caught the attention of all of us: the flat, ugly-headed, green hued John Dory (Pesce San Pietro). We needed fish for a party of 12 so that was a couple of kilos calamari, 48 king prawns, and 4 John Dory. We probably created an anomaly in the fish shop’s sales that Sunday!

The John Dory is no cheap fish. Maybe it’s because of the particular dark beauty spot on its back or, more rightly so, because of its firm textured and exquisite meat. If you happen to cook this fish keep it simple. There is no need of any elaborate condiment, sauce or herbs. Just grill it on some hot charcoal or lava, throw some sea salt, and serve it with lemon wedges and good quality extra virgin olive oil. By the end of your portion, you will be like a cat plucking any left-over meat on its bones and digging into its gills.

The strong wind did not permit the use of the roof for the barbecue. So we propped up our barbecue set in the sheltered balcony and executed our planned menu was as follows:

• Starter: Grilled bread slices with calamari, roasted garlic, basil and cherry tomatoes
• Primo: Vodka marinated king prawns with ginger and citrus juice
• Main: Grilled John Dory with lemon and extra virgin olive oil
• Dessert: Banoffee Pie and Frozen chocolate mousses with strawberries

First things first — in a large pocket of foil we combined the chopped calamari with a glug of white wine, fresh basil, salt and pepper. We closed the pocket and cooked the calamari on the bbq al cartoccio stlye. Then, we roasted some whole garlic bulbs, also wrapped in foil, and seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary. We served the calamari mixture amalgamated with quartered cherry tomatoes and the garlic pulp extracted from the roasted bulbs spooned on grilled bread and dressed with some olive oil.

[caption id=”attachment_2048" align=”aligncenter” width=”500" caption=”Calamari bruschetta”]

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We marinated the king prawns in a mixture of vodka, ground ginger, rind and juice of a lemon and an orange, salt and pepper. These were grilled on the BBQ covered in foil. We could have eaten them head and all they were so juicy!

[caption id=”attachment_2052" align=”aligncenter” width=”500" caption=”Sizzling juicy prawns”]

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Finally, the sacred fish — the Pesce San Pietro — grilled plainly, rubbed with sea salt and some olive oil. Poor neighbours! They must have got green eyed with envy as the smell of grilled fish penetrated through their windows!

[caption id=”attachment_2053" align=”aligncenter” width=”500" caption=”Pesce San Pietro”]

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And to conclude this fishy feast we had a home-made banoffee pie by one of the guests and a frozen dark chocolate mousse with fresh strawberries prepared by me. Superb creamy and refreshing desserts!

[caption id=”attachment_2050" align=”aligncenter” width=”500" caption=”Frozen chocolate mousse”]

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As they say in Italian, everything was: Da leccarsi i baffi!