The World That Was - Pan Fried Elamite Fish

Hello and welcome to the World That Was!


Today, I'll be making some simple grilled fish with dill - from Elamite cuisine. Much like my Elamite stew from a few months ago, this dish is recorded very fragmentarily - and is described incredibly literally. So, this is my reconstruction of how this dish may have been prepared in antiquity.

In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video above!


Ingredients

2 fillets of fish (whitefish, or catfish works best here)

handful of fresh dill sprigs

olive oil

salt

pepper


Method

1 - Season the fish

To begin with, we need to prep our fish. I used haddock here - but whitefish in general works well (whitefish here referring to the colour of the meat itself). Catfish would have likely been eaten in antiquity - as they were a common fish in the Tigris-Euphrates river system.

Next, sprinkle some salt and pepper over each fillet. Flip them over, and season the other side. Cumin may have been used to season the fish, so it might work here too!


2 - Chop the dill

Next, take a couple sprigs of fresh dill, roll them into a ball, and mince them with a knife. Dill was not commonly seen in the cuisine of Sumer, but was commonly used in Elamite recipes - suggesting that it was a cultural divide between palettes! In any case, when your dill is chopped, sprinkle them over your fish.


3 - Cook the fish

Next go pour some olive oil into a frying pan. Put this over a medium-high heat until the oil starts to shimmer. When the oil's hot, place your fish into the oil. Leave it to cook for about 5 minutes, before flipping it over onto the uncooked side. Let the other side cook for another 5 minutes, before taking it off the heat. Serve up hot, and dig in!


The finished dish is very herbal, and the fish meat is light and flaky. These fish would have likely been wrapped in edible leaves (like vine or fig leaves) before being cooked on a pan, grill, or over an open fire. I opted for pan-frying the fish here - given that this is an easier method for cooking fish today. Fish would have been a core part of the diet for much of the Near East in antiquity - given how fish is accessible year-round and is a good source of protein. Though records for fish are few and far between, this should not exclude them from the culinary practices of the region.

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