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The Gulf and Arabia · Volume 59, The Tigris Fire, the Shrine Kitchen and the Table That Left · Cooked by cue

Masgouf

Baghdad, the Tigris bank

Masgouf, a river fish split open and roasted standing at a willow fire: a whole large freshwater fish split along the back and opened flat, impaled on two thin wooden stakes and standing at the edge of a low wood fire at dusk.

Illustration

Masgouf is Baghdad's fish, a river fish split down the back and stood round a fire. The fish Iraqi speakers name for it are bunni, qattan, which Omar al-Eithawi, a masgouf restaurateur in Sharjah, puts at six to seven kilos, and shabbout. Al-Araby says carp dominates the trade now because it is the most abundant. The page does not write "Tigris carp" as the traditional fish: nobody we read checked the names against a fisheries source, and the Iraqi names are the fact. In Britain the fish will be a farmed carp or a large sea bream or bass, and the method is the same. Arabic press reports fish die-offs in the Tigris and in cage farms, and records fish prices; one headline in Al-Araby al-Jadeed called the masgouf of Abu Nuwas "the first victim" of the fish disaster. Those pieces reached us undated, so none is dated here.

As tradition built it

About an hour at the fire, for a fish that feeds four to six.

Ingredients

No cook gave masgouf by weight: it is cooked at the fire by cue, and the method is the one the Baghdad press and the restaurateurs describe, with the hour they state.

  • 1 large whole river fish, bunni, qattan or shabbout in Baghdad, a farmed carp here, 2 to 3 kilos
  • to taste salt, coarse
  • a spice blend, which no source names
  • willow or fruit wood for the fire

Method

  1. Split the fish down the back from tail to head so it opens flat, leaving the belly joined. Gut it and clean it with salt and water.
  2. Salt it.
  3. Build a fire of willow and let it burn to a steady blaze. Hang the fish, opened, on thin wooden stakes set in a ring round the fire, flesh to the flame, skin outward.
  4. Leave it at the fire an hour or a little more, until the flesh is cooked through and the skin has blistered.
  5. Ten minutes before it comes off, put the spice blend on. Serve it on the stake side, with bread, onion and whatever is pickled.

Notes

Nasrallah's Baghdad method, from Suad Salim: coarse salt and black pepper only, a fire of brushwood and date palm leaves, about an hour hung at the flame and the last ten minutes flat on the raked embers, then tomato and onion over it and bread beside.

What a modern chef changes

The ring of stakes replaced with a kamado, honestly

Rungs 3 and 5

Method

  1. A Big Green Egg will not stand a whole large fish upright, so the geometry changes: split the fish flat, pin it in a hinged basket, and set it at the side of a fruitwood fire, apple or cherry chunks over lump charcoal, with no plate setter, so it faces the fire and is never over it.
  2. Turn the basket once, skin to the heat for the last quarter, so the skin renders as it does on the Tigris.
  3. Finish with nomi Basra ground fine with salt, on ten minutes before the end, in place of the unnamed blend.
  4. Name the fish on the plate. What London's masgouf restaurants use is not on record, and the cook who names the species is already ahead of them.
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