Friday Night Fish Fry

el sabalo- giant fish, found in Lake Nicaragua or the Rio San Juan.
las gallas- gills
las escamas- scales
la aleta- fin
el muelle- dock, wharf
el guapote-the good kind of fish round here

Just after I blogged about being gifted things, I got gifted something especially awesome.
My sitemate Christina and I were sitting at the muelle in town, hanging out, after teaching a group of 8th graders some English. A boat came in from one of the islands, and some very drunk sports' fishermen disembarked. One of them stumbled towards shore, carrying the largest fish I have ever seen. It was a biblically proportioned sabalo. Absolutely gigantic, supposedly weighing 130 pounds. Epic.

We had just met an American engineer, who's half Nicaraguan and half German, who visits San Miguel every few months, the night before. When he got off the boat and saw us, he offered us some fish from the rest of their catch. We tried to protest, because we didn't know how to gut and prepare fish, but he insisted. So we wound up with two fish. Since we were pretty clueless about what to do, we decided to enlist my host mom's help in preparing them. It was really interesting, and she was a good teacher. She helped us cut the fish, flavor it with salt, lemon, and garlic and fry it in lots of oil. We made a tomato and onion salad- the traditional accompaniment around here and a side of gifted plantains and ya- delicious, and completed unexpected Friday night fish fry.