We arrived at his house in Ternopil on the far side of the lake just as the barbeque was ready. His wife had already prepared the fish in a yummy marinade and they sizzled as he laid them on the grill. Now, what should we do while we wait for the fish to cook? Gut the catch of the day! He had just returned from fishing that morning and had a whole new batch to prepare.

Here I am gutting the little fishy.

Vova (Liliya’s uncle) offered to teach me a quick and easy way to gut the fish. I thought, why not? So we started to slice and dice the little fishies so juicy sweet! As the guts came out, (sorry for those with weak constitutions, I don’t know how else to put that) he spied the precious cargo and gently picked up the little sack of fish eggs. He smiled at me and simply said “caviar.” It had not occurred to me that we might be eating fresh caviar, I never even thought about looking for fish eggs. To tell you the truth I probably would not even know what to look for had he not picked them out first.

Ok, I guess I will be eating caviar. We finished gutting about half of the Pike, when the grilled Perch were finished to perfection. [Technical note: yes, you can argue that I did not eat “real” caviar since we did not eat sturgeon roe, but either way, I ate fish eggs and the locals called it caviar.]

Nice and fresh and so juicy sweet

We scooped up the caviar and headed into the house to enjoy our grilled fish and caviar. Now I am sure you are picturing a big pile of raw red fish eggs in a little dish with a fancy spoon. Luckily, there is more than one way to eat caviar. They rolled the little sack of eggs in some flour and fried them. Pretty much anything is good with flour and fried in oil and I can say that would be true of caviar.
Later that evening after fellowship and good food, we headed out. Vova gave us the rest of the fish he had caught that morning, so when we arrived at home we finished ripping out the guts and uncovering more caviar. Liliya then took all the caviar and blended them in the blender and mixed some mayonnaise in with it to make a paste, this was then put over toast. I like it better fried, just for the record.

If you think that anyone would like caviar fried, Joanne will tell you otherwise. She was not a fan of caviar in either form. So I will tell you that if you are ever in a situation where you might have to eat caviar, politely suggest that it be fried, it is really good that way! And if you just can’t wait to try some, I recently discovered that there is a caviar house in Seattle. Yep, The Seattle Caviar Company can help you out.

Jesus pulled a coin out of a fish, I pulled out caviar!