Masgouf

Documented as Iraq's national dish since at least the 1930s in Baghdad's riverside restaurants along the Tigris. The name masgouf means 'covered,' describing the fish splayed open facing the fire as if shrouded in flame; a Baghdad district shares the name rather than giving rise to it. The technique — vertical fire-roasting of split carp — traces back through Mesopotamian cuisine to ancient Babylon and Assyria, and a nearly identical grilled-fish preparation is recorded in the 10th-century Baghdad cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh of Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq.

Iraq's national dish since at least the 1930s in Baghdad's Tigris-side restaurants; the technique itself goes back to Babylonian carp tablets. Vertical orientation is the trick — fish faces flames sideways so fat renders into the fire instead of dropping onto coals and producing acrid smoke. Apricot or tamarisk wood, never resinous pine.

A whole carp split down the back, butterflied flat, propped vertical on stakes around a riverbank wood fire. The skin chars black; the flesh stays moist, smoke-soaked, sour-bright with tamarind and sumac. Eaten by hand off flatbread with raw onion, lime, pickled mango. If the flesh tastes only of fire and not of river, the marinade was thin.

The vertical orientation is the trick: fish faces the flames sideways, never directly over, so fat renders out into the fire instead of dropping onto coals and producing acrid smoke. Wood matters too — apricot or tamarisk, never resinous pine. A thirty-minute slow roast at radiant distance, then the last ten minutes laid skin-down on the embers to finish.