Fabulous Free Fish “Fry”

One of many baskets of fish Destiny brought in for the feast.
Beautiful, isn’t it?

Once a month or so, Destiny cruises into Honeymoon Bay to generously share a substantial chunk of its cargo with locals and visitors in the know – hundreds of pounds of high quality fish.  On a Sunday eve, they BBQ it up.  All they ask is that those who take, also bring a dish for 6 to the potluck buffet.

Doing my part for the two of us, I brought the perennial picnic potluck favorite, deviled eggs (bit of a challenge with that) and cornbread (recipe follows).

Prepping the fish for the BBQ.

Destiny and their friends BBQed and served up 300 pounds of gorgeous red tuna, cut in hefty steaks.  Delicious and cooked to perfection.  Amazingly, there was leftover tuna!  Amazing because this feast coincided with Spring Break, and normally sleepy Honeymoon Beach was pulsating with hordes of 20-somethings whooping it up (more on that in a future post).

I wish my container at hand was bigger than the 2-cupper tupper for my deviled egg filling (learned the hard way to fill them where they’re being served rather than attempt transporting them in our dinghy).  Still we enjoyed a couple delicious meals from Destiny’s tuna leftovers.  What a treat!

The folks in the hats on the right kept
everything flowing and the gal in the
visor made a mean sushi.

Did I mention a mean sushi?  Tasted even better than it looked.

Cornbread

from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics -- one of only 4 cookbooks I brought aboard (not counting my own personal cookbook).  There’s a more custard-y cornbread I make when there’s easy access to lots of ingredients; this time I settle for simplicity and speed.  It’s still pretty darned good.

Ingredients

1 c cornmeal

1 c whole wheat pastry flour or whole wheat flour(1)

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

2 eggs

1/4 c vegetable oil (2)

1/4 - 1/3 c brown sugar, packed

1 c plain nonfat yogurt or buttermilk(3)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 F.  Butter a 9 inch or 7 x 11 baking pan.
• Sift the dry ingredients except the sugar in a large bowl.
• Whisk the wet ingredients and sugar in another bowl.
• Add the wet to the dry, taking care not to overmix(4)
• Spread the batter into the baking dish and bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

(1) I use regular white flour

(2)  I use extra virgin olive oil – gives the bread a full, earthy flavor

(3) I used nonfat Greek yogurt – if that’s not available, I use plain yogurt

(4) I use a rubber frosting spreader for this.  Super efficient for that and cleaning the bowl after, too!

This is more typical of what Honeymoon Beach looks like.

If you’re ever in St. Thomas, and looking for a small, peaceful, friendly slice of paradise, take the ferry from Crown Bay Marina to Honeymoon Beach.  Fish fry or not, it’s worth checking out.

To learn about movie night on Honymoon Beach, click here

For a short video from Jackie Lambertson’s Swordfish Sunday Honeymoon Bay experience, click here.