In my past life ...

I can say with some certainty that I wasn't a fisherman or a fishmonger.

Last night, my brother-in-law dropped by and gave us 4 fishes he had caught fishing at the reservoir .. ie they were fresh water fish. He had called me in the evening to tell me that he was coming down later that night to pass them to me .. so at about 7pm. my maid was instructed to go downstairs to meet him with a empty pail.

She put the pail on the kitchen counter .. and man, I hate the smell of fish. I knew without asking my maid that she had never cleaned fish before. SO obviously, the unpleasant task fell on me to do it. DAMMIT. I told her to stand with me so I could show how it's done. Actually, it was a needless exercise since I ALWAYS buy fish from the supermarket .. all nicely descaled and cut and packed on nice styrofoam plates. Even if I did buy fish that needed cleaning, errrr, I usually ask the Cold Storage fish uncle to do it for me.

So ... I haven't cleaned a fish in YEARS. There is a reason for that. I hate doing it. I hate the smell, the icky stuff that comes out of them .. and later the stink that is left behind in my kitchen sink (not really, but I am sensitive when it comes to smells) ..

But this time around, there was no way out. I had to do it. I cursed my brother-in-law in my head while my maid lined the sink with a plastic bag and tipped the fish out into the sink. UGH!!! Plus what made it worse for me was knowing that barely a few hours ago, they had been ALIVE AND SWIMMING. AAAAAAAAAH! .. At least with the supermarket fish, I KNOW THEY HAVE BEEN DEAD AWHILE but these fish, who knows when they died. I'm betting it was under 2 hours ..

All, I can say is, thank goodness for the rubber gloves I had bought at Carrefour last week. It really helped a lot knowing my fingers weren't going to smell horribly after cleaning the fish out. My girls of course, were fascinated with the fish .. cos they were unlike any of the fish we had bought from the supermarket. Of course, for one thing, they were in ONE WHOLE PIECE, head, tail and all .. and for another, I've never seen this particular fish in ANY MARKET (ok, so the last time I went to a wet market was when I was 7) ..

I hope to high heaven they taste good when my maid fries them up tomorrow.

And yes, I'll take supermarket cleaned fish ANYTIME.