Fish Grilled in Wild Date Palm Leaves

Mahiag-e Pach-e Baluchi

Preparation info
  • Serves:

    6

    • Difficulty

      Easy

    • Ready in

      25 min

Appears in
Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets

By Najmieh Batmanglij

Published 2020

  • About

I made this with Usta Musa in Chabahar. We picked our wild date palm leaves/daz in the backyard of his house as shown in the photo opposite. After washing and thoroughly drying the leaves, we used them to wrap the fresh fish we’d bought at the local market. This dish is traditionally made outdoors at picnics.

Ingredients

fish

  • 6 whole, fish (large sardines or branzino sea bass are a good size for this), scaled, gutted, and rinsed, or lb/1.1

Method

  1. For the fish: Salt the fish, inside and outside, and set aside.
  2. To prepare the grill: Start a bed of charcoal 30 minutes before you want to cook, or preheat the oven broiler. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
  3. For the dusting: Combine all the ingredients for the dusting in a small bowl, then dust the fish all over inside and outs