Cooking fish outdoors

Today actually started off yesterday evening when we built this tee pee smoke tent.
12 uprights. Tie three together to make a tripod, then stack the rest around it evenly spaced out. We also tied on two cross pieces, not for strength but to hang our meats to smoke today. Finally we hung a some material around the whole thing to help keep the smoke and heat in. We used a parachute but I'm sure anything big enough will do.

                                               
Here are the hangers a few of us made, and Irina hanging some sliced pork (seasoned) before the fire was lit underneath. Took a good few hours to smoke. It was started in the morning and the meat was ready in the afternoon.

Another veggie friend Ludo was proper loving chopping the heads off, and squeezing the guts out of some white fish in preparation of our first dish of the day. Jää silakat (Iced baltic herring).

Fari and Turkka getting busy with the bacon

A bed of two packets of bacon and onions to cook the fish on.
Then a round of ice cubes (no water). We went old skool, as they've done in days gone by in the winter by using ice from the ground.

Add the fish, season with salt, mixed peppers and bang it on the fire.
We had to use whitefish instead of the baltic herring because of whatever EU laws limiting the amount of fishing they can do in Finland, so no more baltic herring this year. Its funny listening to Turkka's stories, he says the EU is worse than the old Soviet Union.

And there you have it, Jää Silakat. Took maybe 30-40 minutes on the fire. Might have been my favourite of the day? We ate it with bread and it was dam good.

Prepping the fish

Next up was the Perch. I don't remember what this was called? so I'll call it perch in a pot.







The fish were de-scaled and salted.Then in the pot they went with some greenery, some nettles and dill.

Turkka stacked them in carefully, and with the fins up. That's so you can test when the fish is cooked if you can pull the fins off easily.

Fins came off easily, done and done.

Stuffed salmon next. One was stuffed with mixed veggies and the other with almonds and raisins.


The fish were split a little deeper than the spine to allow a little more room for the stuffing, then stuffed, pinned and tied up.

















We didn't catch the fish used today. They're all from the fish mongers, we would probably still be fishing and very hungry otherwise.

The fish were tied onto the frames and placed on either side of the fire. Turned as needed and took about an hour and a half in the end.














We were put to work making these shark teeth looking things during the day and no one knew why until it was time to prepare more salmon.

The wooden nails to hold the fish in place as it hangs next to the fire. They are that shape cos you have to make the hole first with your knife then the nail fits into the hole nicely.

 

Served with some lingonberry sauce. Very nice! And half of one of the fish was mixed with some bacon and onions and fried, cant go wrong with that really. I don't remember the name for this either but it's definately not what Silja called it.

Last up was the pike. I chopped the head off, then it was seasoned and wrapped in oven proof paper, a few layers of wet newspaper, put on some hot coals and covered gently.

Taken off the fire and carefully unwrapped. I usually like pike, but it wasn't my favourite today. Probably cos it wasn't surrounded by bacon.







Tomorrow we have the day all the veggies have been waiting for. Yes we're gonna cook the sheep we butchered on Monday.

I'm not going to have time to write anything tomorrow. So Thursday or Friday to find out what happens next.

Laters.