Bake and shark

As tradition built it

Bake and shark

Maracas Bay; fried at 375°F, 190°C

Ingredients

An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.

Bake dough

• 3 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp (margarine or butter) butter, rubbed in
• 1 cup warm water

Method

1. Rub the butter into the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder, then bring together with warm water.
2. Rest the dough 30 minutes.
3. Divide and flatten into discs at least 4 inches across.
4. Fry at 375°F, 190°C, spooning hot oil over the top as it cooks to help it puff.

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; this chapter treats that as the business's own, plausible, unverified oral history rather than settled fact.

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.