Masgouf

Tigris carp split flat, brushed with tamarind and turmeric, and stood upright beside an open apricot-wood fire for hours

Origin: Baghdad & the Tigris

From the journey of Tamarind.

Masgouf is Iraq's national dish and the method is half of it. A large river fish, traditionally a Tigris carp, is split along the back rather than the belly and opened flat like a book. It is then propped upright on stakes in a ring around an open fire of apricot or tamarind wood, skin outward, and cooked by radiant heat alone for an hour or more before being laid flat over the embers to finish. The rub is short and its centre is tamarind. Tamarind paste, turmeric, olive oil, and salt go onto the flesh, and the sourness is what the dish is built around: it cuts a fish that is oily and can be muddy, and it is the flavour Baghdadis identify masgouf by. Tamarind reached Mesopotamia from India along the Gulf trade and was absorbed so completely that the Arabic name for it, tamr hindī, the Indian date, records a misidentification the whole of Europe then inherited. It is eaten on the riverbank. The fish restaurants along Abu Nuwas Street in Baghdad, facing the Tigris, were the institution around which the dish's reputation was built through the twentieth century, and the fish were kept live in tanks and chosen by the customer. The practice survived war, sanctions, and the years after 2003, and the restaurants are open again, though the river's fish stocks are much reduced. It is served whole on the flattened skin, with flatbread, sliced onion, tomato, and pickles, and eaten with the hands. No cutlery reaches it.

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 1 whole carp, mirror carp, or sea bass, 2-3kg, scaled and gutted

Rub

  • 4 tbsp tamarind paste
  • 2 tsp ground turmeric
  • 5 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground black pepper

To finish

  • 2 onions, sliced
  • 3 tomatoes, sliced
  • 1 lemon, in wedges

Method

  1. Split the fish along the back, cutting either side of the backbone but leaving the belly skin intact, so it opens flat in one piece. Remove the backbone if you prefer, though traditionally it stays.
  2. Mix the tamarind paste, turmeric, olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper into a loose rub.
  3. Brush it over the flesh side only, never the skin, and leave for at least thirty minutes.
  4. Build a fire and let it burn down to a bed of hot embers with flames still licking at the edges. Fruit wood is traditional; apricot if you can find it.
  5. Stand the fish upright, flesh facing the fire, propped on skewers or in a hinged fish rack set on its edge about 40cm from the heat. It cooks by radiated heat rather than by contact.
  6. Cook standing for sixty to seventy-five minutes, brushing with more rub two or three times, until the flesh is opaque and firm and beginning to pull from the bone. Move it further away if the surface colours too fast.
  7. Lay the fish flat, skin side down, directly on the embers for a final ten to fifteen minutes so the skin crisps and takes smoke.
  8. Slide it onto a board, scatter over the onion and tomato, and serve with flatbread, pickles, and lemon. Eat with the hands, tearing pieces of flesh with the bread.

Notes

An oven will not reproduce this, though 190°C for forty-five minutes on a rack gives a reasonable domestic version if you finish it hard under the grill. The tamarind should be present and clearly sour; add another spoonful if the paste is mild. Rub the flesh only, since tamarind on the skin burns and turns bitter. Any large oily river or sea fish works, and sea bass or bream are the easiest substitutes.

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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