Glover's Atoll Fish Curry

My favorite vacation destination is anywhere with palm trees and baby-blue water. So when we were planning our honeymoon, as soon as I saw pictures of Glover's Atoll in the guidebook, I knew we HAD to go. 

Our hut.

Glover's Atoll has everything I want in a summer getaway: clear Caribbean water, very few other people, hammocks. 
There is no electricity on the island, no running water. You have to bring all the food you want to eat while you're there, and can supplement it with all the coconuts you can crack and all the fish you can catch. Or, for the inept / inexperienced fisherman, you can buy fish from some of the workers on the island. That's what we did. 
I brought curry powder, lime juice, chili paste and soy sauce from the US, and one night cooked a big pot of fish curry with the freshest possible fish. The process had many steps. 
First, we bought a pound of fresh fish fillets. 

Barracuda and snapper.

Blegh!

 The island's workers would chop up and clean the fish on the docks every evening. They threw the unneeded guts, skin, tails, etc back into the ocean, and this created a FRENZY of sharks and stingrays beneath the dock. I called it the Shark Show. We drank sunset rum cocktails and looked down at the sharks (nurse, lemon, black-tip, and reef) churning up the water underneath the dock. 

Shark show!

So once we had the fish (placed into my bare hand), we needed coconut for the curry. This involved physical strength, so I let Adam do it. First, you had to find a coconut and husk out the nut with a pointy sticking-up crowbar.

Then, you crack the nut open and grind out the coconut meat, using a grinding thing.

So now, with both grated coconut and fish, I was ready to make some curry! 

Fish Curry Recipe 

Ingredients

1 lb fish fillet (ours was snapper) 

A small amount of cooking oil

2 onions, diced

2 tablespoons of curry powder

grated meat of 2 coconuts (to make at locations besides islands, use a can of coconut milk) 

2 tablespoons lime juice

dash salt or soy sauce 

1 tablespoon chili paste (or any spicy element: sriracha, cayenne, etc) 

What to do

Put the onion into a pan with the oil and heat it up. Saute the onion for five-ish minutes. Then, add the curry powder and cook a minute longer to fry the spices. 

Add the coconut gratings or milk and bring to a bubble. Allow to boil for 2-3 minutes. 

Add the fish and turn the heat down. Softly cook the fish in the liquid for about 6 minutes. Then, beak the fish into large chunks with a spoon. 

Add the lime juice, soy or salt, and chili paste. Taste and re-season as needed. 

Serve over rice. 

Finished curry. The coconut shavings made it a bit chunky.

This came out delicious. Plus, it took forever to make, so we were starving. 

We ate this curry sitting on the walkway of our hut in the dark. There were phosphorescent fish lighting up the water.

And to drink with it, we made coco-locos. You slice the top off a coconut, add rum to the water inside, and drink. 

This was a gorgeous, memorable night. 

Enjoy!