Roasted fish and vegetables with aioli

It’s fish Friday so a fish recipe will be fitting. I’m currently in Zermatt, about to get ready to go skiing. I haven’t cooked a thing all week but I’ve eaten and drunk handsomely. The restaurants here are fabulous. I will definitely be recreating the saffron panacotta I had on Wednesday when I get home.

All the same, in the mean time, I am craving a light and healthy bit of fish. I bought a black headed bream from Marvellous Michael at The Chelsea Fishmonger last week but sea bass or any white fish, (whole) would work well.

ROASTED FISH AND VEGETABLES WITH AIOLI
for 2

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

FOR THE FISH
I white fish (big enough for 2) ask your fishmonger to gut, descale and score it
1 lemon
A handful of parsley
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

FOR THE VEGETABLES
1 fennel bulb, sliced
1 large potato, cut into cubes with the skin on
1 courgette, sliced
4 garlic cloves, skin on, slightly bruised
2 rosemary stalks
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

FOR THE AIOLI
2 heaped tbsp Hellmanns mayo
1/2 garlic clove, minced
Zest of 1/2 lemon

WHAT TO DO

preheat the oven to 200C

put all of the vegetables, except the potatoes, onto a roasting tray, drizzle with olive oil and mix with the garlic and rosemary. Season.

roast the vegetables for about 10 mins

par boil the potatoes in salted water for 5-7 mins

meanwhile slice the lemon and stuff the cavity of the fish with lemon and parsley, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper

lay the fish on a piece of baking parchment on a baking sheet

After the vegetables have roasted for 10 mins, add the par boiled potatoes to the roasting tray and toss. Return to the oven for a further 20 mins.

At the Same time, put the fish into the oven for 20 mins

Whilst the fish and vegetables are cooking, mix the aioli ingredients together

Remove the fish and vegetables from the oven. You will know that the fish is cooked when the eye goes white.

Remove the skin from the fish with a spoon and fork and carefully take the flesh away from the bones, working from the central bone. Turn the fish over and repeat on the other side

Serve the fish on warmed plates with the vegetables and aioli

Fishing, Pimms on the riverbank & mackerel in spiced breadcrumbs

I have written before about my fishing escapades as a child and the glee it brings to have a trout on the end of the line.  I don’t really have the patience (or skill) for fly fishing.  My aforementioned style of ‘thrashing’ away at the water is often detrimental to the cause, and does anything but lull the little fishies into a false sense of security or coax them to the surface to bite.

At University, my friend Franny and I went to watch Reevo and HB fishing one day.  Aside from the skill we witnessed on the river (of course), it was very nice to sit back sipping home made Pimms from an Evian bottle on the riverbank gossiping in the early evening sunshine.  That’s my kind of fishing.

The first time I went sea fishing was in Scotland with HB’s family.  It could not have been more different to the delicate art of fly fishing.  We chucked our weighted lines over the side of the boat, yanked them up and down a bit and began to pull out the fish.  Sometimes 5 would come up on the same line, sometimes 1; rarely none.  Perhaps less benign, skilled and sophisticated than fly fishing but very good fun. Also my kind of fishing.

We caught cod, mackerel and pollock.  We had the cod and pollock for supper and the mackerel for breakfast, all grilled.  Very satisfying.

Mackerel is one of my favorite fish and I don’t eat it often enough.  This recipe is delicious and very quick and easy.  Make sure you ask your fishmonger to fillet the mackerel for you.

MACKEREL WITH SPICED BREADCRUMBS
For 6

6 mackerel, filleted
4 handfuls of fresh breadcrumbs
1 handful chopped coriander
zest of 1 lemon
1 onion, finely sliced
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

WHAT TO DO

1. Preheat the oven to 180C
2. Lay the mackerel fillets skin down in a slightly oiled oven proof dish
3. Fry the onion and garlic in some olive oil until softened
4. Add the spices, lemon and breadcrumbs with some more olive oil and incorporate together over the heat for about 2 minutes
5. Finally add the chopped coriander, season and cook for a further minute and then pour over the fish
6. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until the breadcrumbs are crisp and the mackerel cooked, and serve

I think this is best eaten with a crunchy green salad and little else, some tomatoes will go down a treat with it too

The Great British Revival of Trout

My sister and I used to love going fishing when we were small. Granny has a lake in front of her house and we spent many a happy afternoon thrashing our fishing rods around ‘casting’ and trying to catch an infamous trout. More often than not, we’d return fruitless from our quest feeling more Swallows and Amazons than Jeremy Fisher. Luckily for us, Granny also had a fish farm from which she used to stock her farm shop with fresh and home smoked trout along with pates and other deli goods.  If the worse came to the worst, we could always go and catch our supper at the fish farm.

I now work at Finns and Bella at Smiths and I’m sure that our grounding at the Coniston Hall Farm Shop (which now exists in a different guise as The Coniston Hotel) has helped us along the way with our current jobs.  We’d often be found standing on stools in the shop kitchen preparing the fresh trout.  We’d have a production line going, me cutting the trout open, Bella gutting with a teaspoon and rinsing then me again on the wrapping. We were always very eager to sell our goods and were dab hands at the till (so we thought!)

I once did a school project on the trout farm and took a couple of the slippery rainbow coloured morsels into school to demonstrate the process from trout to pate.  My sheltered and squeamish London schoolmates didn’t much appreciate it.  When Bella and I caught our fish, whether from the farm or the lake, we always enjoyed and were expected to prepare and cook them for our supper, a very good discipline in retrospect and unfortunately one that is not commonplace today, particularly in the city. We’d cook the juicy rainbow trout wrapped in foil in the Aga with some, lemon, butter and white wine. We found it incredibly satisfying and all the more delicious to eat what had been swimming around only an hour or so earlier.

I was very pleased to see that The Great British Food Revival on BBC 2 was pushing the revival of trout as a British food staple.  Raymond Blanc spoke of very similar stories to those that excited me when I was young it has reignited my love of trout.  It’s cheap, tasty, sustainable and quick.

As opposed to the traditional lemon and butter combo I love so much, I decided to try a variation the last time I cooked trout.  The same concept would work with salmon fillets or any other whole fish such as seabass or gurnard.

BAKED TROUT WITH ROSEMARY AND CREME FRAICHE
Enough for 2 greedy people

It may seem strange to use a woody herb such as rosemary in this recipe but I found it worked incredibly well against the delicate trout, I think thyme or sage would be lovely too.  This would be great served with some stir fried garliky curly kale (very good at the moment) and buttered new potatoes

INGREDIENTS
2 whole rainbow trout, gutted (small enough to serve 1 person each)
3 sprigs of rosemary
Juice of 1.5 lemons
125ml white wine
125ml water
1/2 red onion very finely sliced
2tbsp creme fraiche
Salt and pepper

WHAT TO DO

1. Preheat the oven to 180C
2. Lay the trout into an oven proof dish and season with salt and pepper inside the cavity and on the skin
3. Divide the 2/3 rosemary and red onions between the cavities of the 2 fish and sprinkle the remainder around them
4. Pour the lemon juice, wine and water into the dish, cover tightly with foil and bake for 20 minutes.  You will know when the fish is cooked because the eyes will be white
5. When the fish is cooked, transfer to a warmed plate and pour the juices (along with any straying rosemary and red onion) into a pan
6. Simmer the juices for a couple of minutes until any remaining alcohol flavour from the wine has burnt off
7. Strain the sauce, stir in the creme fraiche, adjust seasoning and serve with the deboned trout

HOW TO DEBONE A TROUT:

1. Chop the head and tail off and discard
2. Carefully ease the skin off with 2 spoons and remove all the fins
3. You will see a line running horizontally along the middle of the fillet, this is line of the central bone.  Gently push the flesh from  either side of the bone and remove to a warmed plate
4. Now you should be able to lift the central bone off and with it will come all of the rest of the bones
5. Carefully ease the remaining fish from it’s skin and serve

Lahore Kebab House, Tandoori Marinade and Streatham

On Tuesday I had dinner with a some of my family. Having lived in Streatham for a considerable part of my life, I’m always happy to return there particularly when there’s the prospect of a good dinner. My brother and his girlfriend had been to the Lahore Kebab House on Streatham High Road for a takeaway a couple of months ago. Oh how they had raved.

The decor of the place is reassuringly atmosphereless, neon lights in the window, grainy tv in the corner, long canteen style tables and you’ve gotta love a strip light.   This place is for eating, not romancing; more Lahore airport than Maharaja’s palace.

Out of the obscene amount of food that we ordered, a few things stood out: Thin, grilled, aromatic  lamb chops; crispy flat, tasty onion bhajia (no greasy boulders here!); exceptional jalfrezi, buttery paratha and hot and puffy naan, the bindi bhajia was also particularly good, fresh, spicy and delicious.  The raving was well founded.  Next time I’d stick to the lamb chops for a starter as they really are epic; the mixed grill we had was average in comparison and a bit outfacing and a bit bland even for our gannet like tendencies. The only curry that wasn’t for me was the ‘lamb on the bone’ – cinnamon is for puddings, not main courses in my view but that’s just me, others loved it.   The menu proudly advertises that it has ‘reduced prices due to popular customer demand’ and it is indeed a bargain. The place was stuffed with Asian families having dinner, not many English to be seen.  The waiters even bring you a bowl of fennel seed and sugar crystals and the end of dinner to aid your digestion. I’ve only ever seen that in India.  The difference at the Lahore Kebab House was that they used hundreds and thousands instead of sugar – very Pakistani/British, very neon lights.

I’d love to say that the following recipe was given to me by an Indian lady in Old Delhi who’d had this tandoori marinade passed down to her through the generations for hundreds of years.  She uses it every day on her street food stall to marinade paneer and chicken.  Not quite the case, I think I found it in a Sunday supplement about 2 years ago.  Regardless of where it came from I find it brilliant for firm white fish, chicken and lamb.  It’s one of my ultimate favorite recipes and is always a hit.

TANDOORI MARINADE
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp coriander seeds
3 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp turmeric
Juice of 1 lemon
75g natural yogurt
4 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 shallot finely chopped
2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
2 crushed garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 red chilli, finely chopped (you can leave this out if you don’t like things too spicy!)

WHAT TO DO:

1. Toast the whole spices in a dry frying pan until fragrant and grind either in a spice grinder or a pestle and mortar
2. Toast the cayenne and turmeric then add to the rest of the ground spices
3. In a bowl, combine all of the ingredients together

It makes a real difference if you are able to smother your meat or fish in the marinade and leave overnight in the fridge before cooking.  Always then cook the meat or fish in the marinade (apart from if you are grilling or barbecuing).  My favorite ways of using the marinade are for the following meats

• Double the recipe for a lamb shoulder  – slow cook for about 5 hours at 140-160C and serve with Tzaziki, pitta bread and green salad
• Push the marinade under the skin of a spatchcocked chicken and roast as you normally would; serve with some herby cous cous and roasted vegetables
• With some firm white fish or chicken on a skewer, simply grill in the marinade or barbeque and serve with some mixed rice and stir fried broccoli