Finally came the grilled dorade--head, fins, and tail included.
Most Tunisian food is pretty spicy. I don't have a high spice tolerance, but I have been trying harissa, the popular spicy paste, and as I get used to it I can eat more and spicier foods! My lips and tongue tingled with the spice in salata mashwiya. The fish was juicy and succulent, with juice and oil dripping off. We used the plentiful baguettes (another common feature of Tunisian food) to soak up and eat everything left on our plates!
I got the pleasure of watching dorade prepared in a Tunisian home shortly after the meal in La Goulette. My friend's mom stuffed a paste of chili, oil, garlic, and cumin into narrow slits in the fish. She coated the fish with plenty of olive oil and baked the three daurade and two other fish in a small countertop oven for 20 minutes. The fish is prepared and cooked whole--skin, fins, bones, and all. We picked the bones out and snapped off the head and tail as we ate. Salata mashwiya requires grilling the vegetables whole over an open flame, then grinding them up in a food processor. Oil is added during the grinding process. Brik is prepared in a pan at a high temperature in plenty of oil. The filo dough is laid out flat in the oil, tuna and parsley are added and a raw egg cracked on top. The filo dough is then folded in half and it fries in the oil until the egg is somewhat cooked (but still runny).
