Fish
Obtaining fresh fish is the hard bit. Frozen fish can be good, depending on how long and
how well it’s been frozen. Fresh means seasonal, so don't expect sprats in summer or
mackerel in winter. Crabs and other shellfish are better 'when there's an 'R' in the
month' (September to April). If you have a local independent fishmonger, help them stay
in business by shopping there. The trout or sea angler brings some really fresh fish
home sometimes.
Fish can be spoiled by overcooking or fancy flavourings. 'Better raw than overdone' as
Jennifer Paterson rightly said about scallops. Choose the right fish and cook it quickly
without excessive seasoning and you won’t go far wrong. Some meat needs long
cooking, but no fish does.
Sea fishes can be divided into 3 main types-oily, white and Mediterranean. Oily fish
include mackerel, herring, sprats and sardines. White fish include cod, haddock, pollack,
whiting, hake and ling. Mediterranean fish that also seasonally swim in British waters are
bass, mullet and sea bream give or take the odd trigger fish and John Dory. The cooking
style for each group is similar, so a recipe that works for pollack will suit other white fish
like cod or whiting, a mackerel recipe for herring, etc.
Seasonal Fish Recipes
Sprats are a great winter treat- tasty, filling and cheap. When you see them fresh, buy
plenty and freeze some for later. To clean, lay each fish on newspaper, cut through just
behind the head, then sweep the knife down and away from the body, pulling the head
away with the insides. Some people cook them whole like whitebait and it's OK. Toss in
seasoned flour* and fry in olive oil, 2 minutes a side.
Mackerel is a highlight of our culinary year, best with that shimmering pink rainbow
iridescence about them, fresh from the sea. My rude diagrams show how to fillet, other
round fish can be done in much the same way.
Pan fried mackerel in seasoned flour
Mackerel (1 or 2 per person, filleted)
Seasoned flour
Vegetable oil
Toss in seasoned flour, fry in sunflower oil 5 minutes a side. Serve with bread and butter,
and a squeeze of lemon.
NB lemons for squeezing at the table should be cut into halves or quarters lengthways,
not across. Try it and see.
Soused mackerel
Mackerel, filleted
Water
Cider vinegar
Peppercorns
Bay leaf
Place in a saucepan or frying pan in just enough water to cover, with a tablespoonful of
cider vinegar, a bay leaf and half a dozen cracked peppercorns. Simmer gently skin side
down without turning, for about 10 minutes until cooked. Serve with peas, boiled
potatoes, a salad or bread and butter. This recipe also works well for trout or salmon.
Mackerel burger
Fillet the mackerel then scrape the flesh carefully off the skin and bones, mix with salt
and pepper or a few drops of Teriyaki sauce. Pat into a burger shape, then fry in a little
sunflower oil about a minute a side. They stay together quite well provided they are small
enough, about 1 cm by 6 cm is right, giving 2 ‘burgers’ to an average size mackerel.
Serve with bread and butter or salad as a dinner party starter.
Mackerel grilled with tomato and mustard
Mackerel (1 or 2 per person depending on size and main course or starter)
Mixture of tomato puree and mustard, 70:30 or to taste
Fillet the mackerel and grill skin side up for 3-4 minutes first, then turn over and spread
the dressing over the flesh before grilling for another 5-10 minutes, depending on how
thick the fish are. Serve with boiled potatoes or peas.
Herring-the silver darlings
Herring is the oily fish of the winter as mackerel is of the summer, and equally
undervalued. Fresh herring have a sweet smell and taste to them, go well with boiled
buttered potatoes and peas, and are excellent smoked as kippers.
To fillet herrings, remove any loose scales by rubbing the back of a knife up the fish from
tail to head several times and wiping over a newspaper which you later put in the
compost heap. Slit the fish from vent to head and remove the insides. The roes are good
fried and served on toast with salt and pepper and/or squeeze of lemon.
Cut off the head with a forward slanting cut from behind the gills to avoid waste. Place
the cleaned fish back upwards on a suitable polythene food board and using the palm of
your hands press firmly and progressively down, this will separate the bones from the
flesh. Use finger and thumb to separate the rest out, and pick out any loose bones. You
can grill herrings whole and eat them off the bones if you prefer.
Grilled herring
Having prepared as above, place under grill skin side up first for 5 minutes, don’t worry if
the skin blackens a bit, turn over and finish by grilling the flesh side (seasoned with salt
and pepper) for another 5 minutes. Serve with bread and butter, or peas and boiled
potatoes. You can also fry or oven bake herrings.
Kippers are already cooked, just warm through in a little unsalted water in a frying pan
and serve with frozen peas or bread and butter. You can grill or bake them but this
concentrates the saltiness.
Kipper scramble
1 Kipper Fillet,
Knob of margarine
2 eggs
Pepper
Slice of hot buttered toast.
Put kipper fillet in a jug or dish. Pour boiling water over, cover and leave for five minutes.
Drain off water. Carefully remove skin and any bones there may be, and flake fish with a
fork. Break eggs into a basin, add pepper and beat lightly with a fork. Add fish to eggs
and pour this mixture into saucepan. Stir vigorously until mixture thickens, but take off
heat while still creamy and soft. Serve on hot buttered toast with a green salad. (recipe
contributed by Peter Lowater, with acknowledgements to Rubie
Richards)
Trout and Salmon
The trout and salmon in the shops is all farmed. It is easy to cook fried in butter or baked
with white wine and juniper and dill seeds, but it’s not the same as wild brown trout or
salmon. I remember long ago when I used to fish the streams of Dartmoor, Exmoor and
north Wales….
Colliford trout
Let us happily dream of a day free from physical and mental pain out under the sky with
a fishing rod, catching a couple of wild brown trout which had fed on freshwater shrimps
and things in clean water such as Colliford reservoir on windswept Bodmin moor, or
perhaps the dear little river Lliw flowing through pristine, lichen-clad pine woods into Llyn
Tegid in north Wales, or (sob, sniff...) the glacial blue Lake Tekapo in the south island of
New Zealand…..
Trout
Bacon
Butter
Salt and pepper
Fillet and season the trout, then fry in butter with the bacon until done. That’s it. Small
trout can be done whole, gutted obviously. Serve with bread and butter. If you have no
bacon, it can be omitted, but you should have some! This dish is best served by a
driftwood fire at the edge of the water with a cup of whisky and water or local white wine if
the water happens to be lake Tekapo.
Curried rainbow trout
Farmed rainbow trout can be 2kg or more. A delicate, fresh wild fish should not be overly
seasoned, but these fish can benefit from it. Fillet a big rainbow trout, then take a sharp,
strong knife and work it under the skin, with the skin side down on a big polythene food
board. Work the knife forward between flesh and skin until you have a skinned fillet.
Apply a mix of finely ground black pepper, Sechuan pepper, dill seeds, cumin and salt to
the skinned fillets and fry in butter for 3 or 4 minutes a side. You can do the same with
farmed salmon or other fish that might be slightly stale or a little lacking in flavour.
There's no point pretending that we don't have to do our best with second rate
ingredients sometimes, better to make do that waste food. You wouldn't, I hope, smother
fresh scallops or plaice with curry paste.
Bass and Bream
These spiny big scaled fish when cooked are not very different, and from a cook's point
of view can be treated the same. In May 2005, in the Mediterranean port of Collioure,
beloved by painters like Dali, Picasso and the Fauvists, Julia and I enjoyed a 'duo' of
bass and bream, a dish of one fillet of each fish (which we could see the chef cooking
simply and quickly on a hot plate) It was hard to tell one from the other.
Careful with the spines when cleaning these fish, I got one under my thumbnail once and
it hurt. Cut the spiny fins off before cleaning and scaling the fish. Scale with a serrated
knife run from tail to head under water to stop scales flying everywhere, don’t put the
scales down the sink or it may block.
Bass and bream should be grilled, baked, fried or barbecued simply, just add salt,
pepper and maybe lemon, or sprig of fennel in the cavity. They can be steamed Chinese
style with spring onions and ginger but don’t spoil these lovely fish by excessive
seasoning or overcooking.
Cod
It’s easy to see why cod has been fished halfway to extinction-it’s so popular; firm texture,
nice fillets, easy to cook, robust but not overpowering flavour which is fine on its own and
accepts various flavourings happily. Deep fried in batter is good, add some spice to the
batter or make it with beer instead of water for a change. Portuguese style cod involves
finely chopped green and red peppers baked in the oven. Cod can also be oven baked
with white sauce and a grated cheese topping, and is good with mashed potato in pies or
fish cakes.
Cod Chowder
There is a wonderful account of Nantucket style cod and clam chowder in Herman
Melville's 'Moby Dick' which I won't spoil for you if you haven't yet read this mysterious
and enchanting meditation on the human condition. To make cod chowder, or any fish
stew, prepare some fish stock (see ‘shellfish soup’), cook your potatoes, onions, carrots
and bacon, and add the fish pieces right at the end. Cod can bear longer cooking than
most fish without ruination, but still only needs 10-15 minutes.
Dogfish with Beaujolais
This sounds weird, but was very good; there are a lot of recipes like this-see ‘Floyd on
fish’. I include it as an example of the ‘why not?’ inspired risk taking improvisation which
can occur in the male kitchen. This was the first fish soup I cooked, I did it because I
wasn’t sure what to do with a dogfish I’d caught and had most of a duff bottle of
Beaujolais Nouveau which wasn't quite bad enough to throw away or good enough to
drink. Together they made a great soup with some onions, potatoes and carrots.
1 dogfish, cleaned (to serve 2)
4 rashers bacon
1 large onion
400g potatoes
30 mls sunflower oil
100g carrots
400 mls wine (or cider)
500 mls fish stock or water
Few sprigs of fresh parley and sage
If you buy your dogfish from the fishmonger it may be called rock eel, rock salmon or
some such name, and it will have been cleaned and the rough skin removed. With the
thin, sharp filleting knife, take the flesh off the backbone. Dice the potatoes into 1.5cm
cubes and fry in a heavy pan, add the carrots diced small. Stir, add the chopped bacon
and herbs, then the wine or cider and let it bubble. Once it has bubbled for a few
minutes, add some fish stock if you have any, or else water or cider.
Once the potatoes are soft, add the cubed dogfish. It only needs to be heated through to
set, just as if it were egg white, 5 minutes should do. Variations add prawns (see shellfish
soup recipe). Substitute other white fish or eel for the dogfish. Red wine is typical for a
fish soup called matelote, white wine or cider is usually a better choice with fish.
Tuna
I won’t forget the first time I had fresh Tuna steak. I had cycled the 100 miles from Lake
Taupo to Hawke’s Bay in 2 days and bought 2 big tuna steaks from a Pacific fresh fish
store on the outskirts of Napier. I already had some local wine, grapes and apples in my
panniers. I lightly fried the tuna steaks in oil and ate them with fresh bread and
Chardonnay, with grapes for pudding, served on the balcony of the Toad Hall
backpacker hostel looking at the sun’s last rays over the Tasman Sea beyond the Art
Deco rooftops of Nelson. Happy days further down the road. 1999, a lot of things
seemed better before the events of September 2001 and subsequently.....
I usually pan fry tuna in olive oil or butter, and serve with bread and butter, new potatoes
and Australian or Californian Chardonnay. Treat fresh tuna like scallops-don’t overcook
or it will dry out and lose flavour and tenderness, 1 minute a side is about right. I have
done it with a dash of Teriyaki sauce applied to the tuna a few minutes before frying
which was very nice. You could grill, bake or barbecue it with a dash or lemon juice but
be careful you don’t dry it out and ruin it-this is an expensive treat which like scallops is
‘better raw than overcooked.’
Flatfish
For our purposes, there’s no difference between Dover sole, lemon sole, flounder, dab,
plaice, brill etc except price. Some taste better than others but freshness is more
important than variety. Cook whole (cleaned, obviously) or fillet, as per the drawing. Slice
just to one side of the clearly visible line down the middle of the fish, following the bones
round until you have 2 fillets each side, 4 per flatfish. The long, thin, sharp flexible blade
is indispensable. Fillets of plaice or other flatties need just 2 minutes in the frying pan
with some butter, or grill briefly, or bake fish whole with butter and a glass of white wine.
Season lightly with salt and pepper.
Monkfish
Monkfish, like dogfish, is a member of the shark family so has no bones apart from the
cartilaginous backbone, which makes it easy to fillet and cook. Its firm tasty flesh is
another point in it’s favour. Monkfish tail costs about the same as fillet steak. Enjoy it like
fillet steak, with respect on special occasions. I marinaded a monkfish tail in rosemary,
fresh sage, olive oil, white wine, garlic and shallot and baked 40 minutes for our 30th
wedding anniversary, nice after a first course of pan seared teriyaki tuna with Oyster Bay
chardonnay.
Monkfish can be stir fried, or added to a special fish soup, like cod it’s very flexible.
Recipes abound on line.
NB the fish we call monkfish is really the Angler fish, there is another fish called monkfish
which is similar but not the same. This piece of information is likely to be of no use to you
whatever.
Squid
The thought puts some people off but squid is easy and tasty. You can get frozen squid
tubes and much else from the good little fish shed by Burseldon bridge. The eatable
parts are the firm white meat of the 'tube' and tentacles. If you get whole squid, remove
the head, guts and transparent quill, and wash under the cold tap. Remove the tube and
tentacles and discard the rest. For squid rings, clean and cut across the tube, very nice
deep fried in batter.
The easiest way with squid in to fry in olive oil with garlic, salt and pepper. You can add
tomatoes, paprika and chopped red peppers and some white wine to make a sauce-think
of Spanish tapas. Serve as an appetiser or main course with bread, olives and white
wine. Cuttlefish can be done the same way; the only difference is they have a large
‘bone’ that needs removing, not difficult, and the meat is thicker. We cooked fresh
cuttlefish ‘tapas style’ as above in Mallorca and it was lovely.
Squid a la Romana
300g cleaned and chopped squid (for 2 )
Can of tomatoes
50g tomato concentrate
2 teaspoons of mixed dried herbs (e.g. thyme, oregano)
Olive oil, 2 cloves crushed garlic, 120g spaghetti
Fry the garlic in the olive oil for half a minute before adding the squid. Stir frequently until
done, about 10 minutes. Then add a glass of white wine, herbs, tomato and stir for
another 5 minutes. Serve with spaghetti. Variations-substitute scallops or monkfish
cubes for squid.
Mussels
500g mussels per person
Onion, garlic, cider, vegetable oil
Clean the mussels in water by scraping any adherent ‘beard’ off with a short, strong
knife. Discard any which are cracked, float or don’t close. Fry some finely chopped
onion or shallots and garlic in a little oil in a big saucepan for 5 minutes then add half a
pint of dry cider. As this comes to the boil, add the mussels, stir with a wooden spoon,
they are cooked when all the shells are open plus 2 minutes to be on the safe side.
Serve in large bowls with sliced French bread and spoons for the cooking liquid, remove
each mussel from its shell using another shell as a scoop.
Variations tsp of mild curry powder, tomatoes, some cream at the last minute, white wine
instead of cider, coriander leaf or parsley.
Scallops
are delicious and rightly expensive. Slice in halves horizontally if they are more than 1.5
cm thick, lightly season fry in butter for 1 minute a side. I prefer to add some finely
chopped shallots (fry them first before adding the scallops which don't need as long
cooking) and a dash of chardonnay to make a sauce. Serve with peas and new potatoes
or good bread and butter.
Variation scallops with pan fried plaice in butter is a special treat. We always have this
when self catering in Looe, Cornwall, an excellent destination for a good old fashioned
seaside holiday.
Oysters
are marvelous but not everyone likes them the classic way, raw. Open with a short knife
between the halves of the shell and cutting through the muscle which holds the bivalve
closed. Don’t cut yourself. I like to add 3 drops of Tabasco before drinking the fluid and
eating the raw oyster. In the oyster town of Cancale they drink Muscadet from the Loire
with oysters.
Shelled and cooked, they are completely different. Oysters can be added to beef pies,
wrapped round with bacon and grilled, or grilled with balsamic vinegar. I am told that
Australians barbecue them-who am I to disagree?
Return to Botley Men's Cook Book main menu page