Lima Day 7: The Fish Market

Miercoles, 20 Agosto

Javier and I met at 7:30 in the morning and were on our way to the Terminal Pesquero in Villa Maria. This is one of the two places in Lima where all the Mercados and Restaurants come in the morning to pick up their fish for the day. Just about everything we saw was swimming around yesterday.

I've been here once before, but it was still overwhelming, and I didn't take a lot of pictures. Luckily, the internet did, and here's a few, courtesy of Mr. Google.

Our first purchase was at the Pez Espada (Swordfish) guy. I asked him for a kilo of Swordfish, and he hacked it off for me -- right on the money. All the photos from here on are mine.

Javier and I really wanted Tuna. It wasn't to be... Tunas are large, and they wanted us to buy the whole thing. We were wandering around, and some girl asked us what we were looking for. Javier's fluent in Spanish, so they talked for a while. I realized that the end of their talking was going to leave us fish-less, so I interrupted and told her to find us a Fish. We now had a 'casera,' in Javier's words.

We wound up buying a whole Bonito, whatever that is. What is cost was 27.8 soles... they sell the fish by the kilo, and this was 4.3 kilos. The lady doing the selling wanted to round it up to 28 soles (exactly US$10), so she threw in a small extra fish. Our girl's part in the whole thing is: She Cleans Fish for money. So we followed her to the cleaning area.

I didn't take a picture of the Fish when we bought it., but here's a video of the girl doing the cleaning. I don't recommend you watching the whole five minutes (although I am enthralled with every second), but you can see what ten bucks gets you in the first few seconds. The free Fish is at the end of the video.

Our last purchase was a dozen giant Scallops, and then we took a taxi to my apartment.

Fish for Breakfast! I took the Swordfish and cut it into chunks. It was really thick, and there was no way it would cook through otherwise. I also took out the Bonito.

I heated a frying pan with just a little oil and added a Garlic-based spice mix that I bought in a booth at the Mercado. I added some of the chunks and two pieces of the Bonito.

While they were cooking, I ate six of the raw Scallops.

Javier didn't want Scallops; I didn't argue.

He also didn't want Swordfish Chunks; just Bonito. I had a plate of Chunks.

After that, the Bonito was ready.

Boy, fresh, fresh Fish is really, really good. Javier left and I had his six Scallops. That was it for Breakfast.

I met my friend Garry for Lunch at El Mercado in Miraflores. I wasn't, um, bursting with hunger, so I kept it light.

While we caught up, we polished off the basket of Potato and Sweet Potato Chips.

Garry had a Whole Fish with Fries, and I had a Cebiche.

That was it at El Mercado. We passed on Dessert.

Around 7:30, it was Dinner time. I was going to go out until I remembered that I had a refrigerator full of Fish. I pulled out some more to heat up.

I prepared it pretty much the same way, but this time I didn't use the Seasoning packet. Just a frying pan, heat, and a little oil.

Even 12 hours later, still pretty damn fabulous.

At bed time, I read for a while and chomped down on some... Frozen Grapes. Just like home.

Here's my steps.