grilled branzino
Another dinner from our honeymoon in Hawaii. This was our first attempt to gut and clean our own fish. It was a stinky mess. We removed the guts (yuck) and rinsed out the innards (also yuck). Then we cut open the fish enough to splay it open and stuff it with herbs, lemon, seasoning, and oil. Jackson severed his fish around the gills and I did not, which explains the different cut marks around the gills in the two fish photo'd.
We were unsure how to de-bone the fish, so decided to keep the skeleton intact while grilling. The spine of the fish popped right out after it was cooked. The ribs, on the other hand, were hard to remove. Based on youtube, removing the ribs appears to be tricky business. So in the end, we contented ourselves with picking out the ribs as we ate our fish. This was only mildly inconvenient.
As if this dinner weren't sloppy enough already, the cooking of the fish culminated with the gas grill combusting from all the fat leaking into its basin. The entire grill reached a temperature over 700 degrees, and both fish caught on fire. The picture shows Jackson with the fish, after the flames had settled down.
Despite all the chaos, the fish tasted great in the end. They had a generous amount of char, but we were both fine with it. We're both interested in cooking whole fish again in the future.