Bake and shark

As tradition built it

Bake and shark

Makes 5. The dough rests 45 minutes, the shark 30.

Ingredients

The bake

• 720ml plain flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp instant yeast
• 1 tbsp vegetable shortening
• 1 tbsp margarine or butter
• 240 to 300ml warm water
• 480ml vegetable oil, for frying

The shark

• 900g shark
• 1 lime or lemon
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp green seasoning
• ¼ Scotch bonnet, finely chopped
• 240ml plain flour, for dusting
• 480 to 720ml vegetable oil, for frying

To serve

• to serve tomato, red onion, pineapple and lettuce
• to serve sauces

Method

The bake

1. Work the flour, salt, baking powder, yeast, margarine and shortening together with your hands until it looks like peas.
2. Add the warm water a little at a time and knead about 5 minutes, until smooth.
3. Cover the bowl and leave it in a warm corner for 45 minutes.
4. Divide it into 5 balls, each the size of a tennis ball. Set them on parchment, cover with a towel and leave 15 minutes.
5. Oil the counter and your fingertips and stretch each ball out from the middle into a round about 15cm across. No rolling pin.
6. Heat the oil to medium high. Lay each round in gently, away from you, flip it straight away, and fry about 3 minutes in all, turning several times, until evenly golden and crisp. Drain on paper.

The shark

7. Fillet and skin the shark, take the meat off the centre bone and slice it thin.
8. Wash it in cool water with the lime juice, rinse, and squeeze it dry. Shark holds a lot of water.
9. Season it with the salt, pepper, garlic, green seasoning and Scotch bonnet and leave it in the fridge about 30 minutes.
10. Heat the oil on medium high. Dust each piece in flour on every side and fry 2 to 3 minutes a side, turning once. It toughens if overcooked. Drain on paper.
11. Split the bakes and fill them with the shark, tomato, red onion, pineapple, lettuce and sauces.

Notes

The dish's own founding story, told by the Maracas Bay business Uncle Sam and Sons, credits its creation to Adelta Pierre, who began cooking sharks fishermen would otherwise have discarded on a coal pot in the 1970s; that stands as the business's own, plausible, unverified oral history.

The bake and the shark are Chris De La Rosa's, of CaribbeanPot. Foodie Nation makes a baking powder bake with no yeast, rolls it 5mm thick and fries it at 180°C for 2 minutes a side, and marinates the shark 4 to 6 hours in lime and green seasoning made from chive, chadon beni, garlic, ginger, thyme and hot pepper. No source spoons oil over the bake.

What a modern chef changes

Sustainable White Fish, Dehydrated Seasoning Paste

Method

1. Use a sustainably certified white fish, rock salmon or a similar dogfish relative, rather than shark itself, given Trinidad's own shark fishery is documented as under real pressure, with catfish and ray already substituted and mislabelled at some vendors, an honest substitution rather than a compromise.
2. Marinate the fish in a dehydrated version of the traditional seasoning paste, concentrated rather than diluted by drying.
3. Cook the fish sous vide to a precise, moist doneness before a final, very brief fry, so the bake itself, made and fried separately exactly as tradition does it, is the only part of the dish that needs real-time frying attention.