Having attended food festivals before, I basically knew how this one would work. You buy tickets and these tickets will get you a plate of food, in this case, seafood. The amount of tents and stands with different types of seafood was almost overwhelming! Each tent had more or less 6 to 10 different seafood dishes, including ceviche, fried fish, breaded shrimp, shrimp in tomato sauce, fish soup, fish lasagna, fish cakes, shrimp cakes and of course-rice and beans. While I understood how to attend a food fest and how to eat at a food fest, I never had experienced all of the hard work and food preparation that actually goes into making a festival successful. I had also never really cooked or worked a lot with fish...that is...until now.
Friday and Saturday night, I spent with fish. Friday night began at about 6 pm with shrimp shelling. This job was fairly easy and did not leave my hands too smelly. Shrimp shelling and gossip telling was followed by onion cutting. I actually LOVE chopping onions, so I was disappointed when they told me they just needed the onions cut into quarters... Anyway, this job was also enjoyable. Next we had a dinner of fried fish, straight off the pan, with salad and bread-absolutely delicious. The shrimp we had been cleaning was being prepared for ceviche mixta-Ceviche mixta combines fish cubes and shrimp, which ends up being cooked by lime juice-the acidity of lime juice somehow makes the fish not raw. You then mix the lime cooked fish and shrimp with ground up celery, tomato, pepper and I think a little bit of chili. The ceviche is served with club crackers and tastes fantastic. This is a really great dish for a hot day because the fish is so fresh and cold. yum. The next task began at about 8:30 pm. This job was tedious, detailed and made my hands cramp up after about half an hour-de-boning fish. Did you know that fish have about a million or so tiny tiny bones in their small bodies? Millions. Each of those tiny miniscule spines have to be removed in order to make fish cakes. We spent about 2 hours removing these bones and when I left with my host sister at 10:30, there was still a huge amount of fish to debone. The people who actually were cooking all of the food were up until midnight, slept for about 2 hours and then woke up to start cooking. They cooked from 2 am until 2 pm...crazy. The next morning I arrived at the house at about 7 am to help cook. After peeling limes, it was time to use that annoying deboned fish to make the fish cakes. That same ground up celery, tomato and peppers mix that was used for the ceviche is added to the fish. You also mix in flour, rice, eggs and salt. You mix it all together with your hands until it is a sticky consistency, like that of a hamburger. A fellow fish de-boner and I formed (and to be honest I am not sure of the exact number) at least 150 fish patties. To say the least, my hands smelled like fish for 2 whole days and I even dreamt of fish on Friday night...My life for that weekend was taken over by the fish of Corinto.
Sidenote: If you hate fish, I recommend not coming to visit the last weekend of April, beginning of May, because your life will also be taken over by fish.
