The Horse Eye Cavalli

Having grown up in Ontario I knew little about fish other than the fresh-water trout, perch and bass I caught when fishing with my father in Muskoka. My mother would pan-fry the fish but I was never a fan – I liked catching the fish a lot more than I liked eating them! It wasn’t until I moved to the Caribbean in the 70s and tasted saltwater fish for the first time that I fell in love – first with a man, then with fish!

The very first fish I ate on Bequia was cooked by Mac shortly after my arrival, and I was hooked from my first bite of the delicious barracuda. It seemed incredibly exotic to be living on a small tropical island dining on a salt-water fish I had never heard of except in books, a fish that had been caught that very afternoon by Mac’s father. I had caught and cleaned fresh-water fish as a child but had never cooked one (or anything else for that matter!), and asked Mac if he could teach me how.

“Sure – just bring de fish and I’ll show you”.

A few days later I spotted a boat being pulled up on the beach outside the sail-loft, and stopped to see if I could buy a fish. There were several different fish in the vessel, and, in my ignorance, I decided to buy the biggest; I knew nothing about fish in the west indies, but figured the largest would be the easiest to fillet, and in that respect I was correct. What I DIDN”T know was that I had just purchased the one fish in the boat no-one else would want – a horse-eye cavalli.

Knowing that Mac was working with his father in the sail-loft, I lugged my impressive fish up the stairs. I felt fortunate to have snagged such a prize, and wanted to see if Mac would teach me how to cook it. Mac took one look at the fish and made a face;

“gurl, dat’s a horse-eye cavalli, they’re full o’ worms! Daddy, you want to use dis for bait?”

Bluesy, making a face similar to Mac’s, said;

“Nah! Dat fish ain’t good for nutting’, nutting’ at all!”

I felt like a fool standing there with my “good-for-nutting” fish. Evidently it wasn’t going to be cooked, eaten, or even used as bait to catch other fish! I had wasted money because I hadn’t known anything about fish in the Caribbean, and vowed then and there to learn which were good to eat and which were “good for nutting’”. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about salt-water fish, and never made the mistake of buying a horse-eye cavalli again!

The horse-eye cavalli is a jack fish and, while many cavalli are good to eat, the larger, big-eyed ones are usually quite tough. It’s edible, but the flesh is coarse (and, according to Mac, full of worms!) and poor-tasting. It’s also been known to carry ciguatoxins, although I’ve never heard of ciguatera poisoning caused by a horse-eye in this region. Perhaps that’s because Bequia people know better than to clean, cook and eat a horse-eye cavalli..

I figure if an avid fisherman like Bluesy wasn’t willing to use the flesh of a horse-eye cavalli as bait it wasn’t a fish I was going to consume; to the best of my knowledge I never have, and hopefully never will…..