Eating sea-food when coming to the coast is a given. And even though most restaurants in Mazunte freeze their fish, it doesn’t take a lot to find the freshest catch possible: One of the towns nearby, Puerto Angel, is where you can buy fish straight from the fishermen, if you manage to be there around 5-6 a.m. when they land their boats. Or at least, this is how it used to be before the lockdown.
Once Covid hit (or rather the town’s response to it), things changed drastically: restaurants closed, and the roadblocks at the end of each village generally opened at 8:00 a.m. which is way too late for the fishermen. However, people are quite good at adapting to circumstances, especially when they have to make a living. So if Mohamed can’t go to the fish, well, then the fish will have to come to Mohamed. And that's exactly how it happened.
Insane Price Fluctuations
The free market does some funny things, especially when there is a lockdown in place. Beer, all of a sudden, started to climb from 30 pesos for a liter to 45 pesos, which was about the price you’d pay at a restaurant. Then it passed the double-mark of 60 and still kept climbing. Last time I decided to indulge in a refreshing brew, I paid 90 pesos for a liter. This all makes sense, given the dry-law that was passed in this township, as well as the restricted transport of merchandise.
Interestingly, when it comes to fish the exact opposite could be seen. The barrilete used to go for anywhere around 50 pesos upwards, but recently it started coming right to our door, for incredible bargain prices. Fishermen trying to sell their catch desperately could be seen riding their motorcycles right up to our property, and a “no, thank you” was simply seen as an invitation to negotiate. One day we may have been celebrating our luck of having scored the kilo for 20 pesos, the next day we could buy two fish (of around 3 kg combined) for the same price.
Every Fish Recipe in the Book
With such regular influx of delicious fish we had no other option but trying every recipe we knew, and then some new ones. We fried it, we baked it, we put them in paella, in pasta, in a salad, we even made sashimi, and when all the rest was gone, we made a fish soup out of their heads.
The barrilete is also known as skipjack tuna, bonito, victor fish, or properly Katsuwonus pelamis in scientific Latin. The meat is a beautiful red color, with hardly any scales, so eating it is not such a tedious affair. And the taste... mmmmmm!!! I don't even know which preparation method is my favorite one. Plain and raw, just with a bit of soy sauce, wasabi, and ginger it's a pure delight. But even a Hungarian fish broth with lots of paprika keeps its original fish taste, even though we just boiled the heads and fins down to the bone.
Thanks to our frequent barrilete lunches and dinners, I will always remember this type of fish as one of the most defining foods of the Covid-19 lockdown.