Fish Wednesday, Island Style

Fess up. Which one of you told me to grill mangoes? You are an evil genius. Now, I’m not sure I’m going to want to eat anything else. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, grilled mangoes. Good lord. Whew. You can scoop the mango out of the skin with a spoon after you’ve grilled it, and the places where it’s charred are crispy and the places where it’s not are like hot mango pudding in the best possible way. Oh my. A-hem.

Once I’d settled on mahi mahi, I decided to go island style with my chow. We had some pineapple leftover from earlier in the week, cleaned and peeled, and some Thai brown jasmine rice and big ripe mangoes were on sale just over there from the seafood case at our local supermarket. I basted the pineapple with sweet chili sauce. Then I used another 1/4 cup of sweet chili sauce and about the same amount of mashed very ripe mango to coat the fish. The mango – we cut big pieces off it along the pit, coated them with olive oil, and placed cut side down on the grill. The fish cooked for about 10 minutes on each side – I mashed more mango with sweet chili sauce on it every time I turned it over.

It was freaking incredible. No, really.

Sweet chili sauce is an essential kitchen item at my house. It’s great for marinating chicken, it’s perfect on fish, and hey, you can even toss tofu in it. The sauce is sugar, chili, vinegar, and some random stuff, nothing chemical or weird, no high fructose corn syrup, even, so I feel just fine about slathering it on, oh, anything that I’m going to put on the grill. If you haven’t eaten fresh pineapple grilled with sweet chili sauce, you should get right on that – I’m not sure why you’re still reading unless you’re standing at your kitchen counter cleaning a pineapple. You really should be watching this guy instead of reading me, he’s got a perfectly fine little video about on how to cut a pineapple.

The trick to good grilling, I am learning, is using plenty of oil on the grill. Yes, I know, it’s as though I have gone on an all fried diet but those Italians, you know the ones, they live forever and they eat plenty of olive oil and still stay trim enough to buzz around on the back of a Vespa in a tailored Armani suit. Whatever with Italy, though, our meal was all Hawaii, a place where Fish Wednesday, Island Style, could happen every day with almost no effort.

We were on the docks at Lahaina and there was a tremendous catch of mahi mahi lying on the pier. “Hey, what’s going to happen to them?” I asked. “Oh, we’ll try to sell them to the restaurants in town and then give what’s left to the crew.” Sport fishing, it’s a big tourism deal in Hawaii. When I have my restaurant in Hawaii – a casual place in Huloaloa on the Big Island, just down from the uke gallery – it will be called Fish Wednesday. I’m funding it out of the money I make off also island based and wildly popular Aloha Oy bagel chain.

I’m pretty sure grilled mango has hallucinogenic properties.

Eat your fish and your fruit, it’s good for your imagination.