Category Archives: Fish

Fishcakes with Passion Fruit Sauce

16 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Fish, Sauces

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A passion fruit is a capsule of readymade sauce– aromatic, sweet and sour with its own distinctive colour and texture in a neat one-person portion sized container.  In Madeira it makes a sauce for fried fillets of fish, but I had in my minds eye/stomach that it would be better if the fish had more texture and flavour to balance the intense fruitiness of the passion fruit. Crispy gougons? Or little Thai style fish cakes? With a hint of ginger, chilli, lemongrass and garlic, but not too much, I don’t want these seasonings to compete with the flavour of the passion fruit. And some finely sliced beans for colour and texture.IMG_0009

Per person

1 passion fruit

120 gms white fish – I used a type of shark which has a nice texture –  swordfish, conger eel, monkfish would all work well

3 or 4 prawns

Pinch of grated ginger

Pinch of grated garlic

Pinch of finely chopped red chilli

Pinch finely chopped lemon grass

Pinch salt

Mangetoute peas or green beans

1 level teaspoon cornflour plus extra for dusting the fishcakes

1 tablespoon beaten egg – it doesn’t have to be a quail egg, the one in the photo just happened to be lurking in the fridge and was the right size for one person. Here in Spain quails and their eggs are not the expensive delicacy that they are in other countries.

Olive oil for frying

Dice the fish and put it into a food processor. Peel the prawns and add to the fish.

Add the grated ginger and garlic, the chopped chilli and lemongrass, and the salt.

Process to a lumpy mix. You don’t want to over process and have a mush, plus you still have a bit of processing to do.

Add the egg. Pulse to mix in.

Add the cornflour. Pulse to mix in.

Add the beans or mangetoute and stir in with a spoon.

Sprinkle some cornflour onto a plate and take a spoonful of the fish mix and form into a small fishcake coating it with the cornflour as you go along.

Do this with the rest of the fish mix. You will have 3-5 fishcakes depending on how small you like them.

Warm some olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and when hot add the fishcakes. They will only need about three to four minutes each side by which time they should be a light golden brown.IMG_0014

Serve with the passion fruit pulp as a sauce. You can leave this cold or cut the passion fruit in half and give the halves a quick warm in the microwave before scooping out the pulp onto your fishcakes.

Sardines with Pine Nut and Raisin Stuffing

01 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses, Starters

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sardines-stuffed-and-bakedI don’t remember now where I came across this recipe for boned sardines that are wrapped around a stuffing of toasted pine nuts, raisins and onions and then moistened with orange and lemon juice before being baked in the oven, but it has been a favourite way of preparing these fish in my kitchen for many years. The combination of the oily fish, with the acid of the citrus and the sweetness of the onions and raisins is very successful – and so summery.

This recipe is for when the sardines are medium to large in size and need to be  gutted and deboned. I use two or three per person as a starter and four or five if it is to be a light main course.

12 medium sardines

1 medium onion – very finely chopped

Olive oil for frying the onions

25 gms pine nuts – dry roasted in a thick based shallow pan

25 gms raisins or currants

chopped fresh flat leaved parsley

fresh bay leaves

100 ml freshly squeezed orange juice

100 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

Salt and black pepper

Start by descaling the sardines and then cut off their heads, gut them and remove the backbones. Open them out flat.

Prepare the stuffing.

Fry the onions until lightly browned. Add the pine nuts, raisins and parsley and mix well.

Take a small amount of the stuffing and place it at the wide end of the opened out sardine. Roll the fish around the stuffing, starting at the wide end and rolling towards the tail.

Put the fish into a shallow oven proof dish side by side with the tails sticking up. It can be pretty to use individual dishes per person if you have them. I use ramekins that will take two to three fish each if I am making this as a starter, or shallow bowls with four or five fish in each as a main course.

Once you have arranged all the fish, put a bay leaf in between each fish.

For cooking liquid, mix the lemon and orange juice. Pour over the fish to cover half a centimetre up from the base of the dish.

Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 20 minutes.

Serve with a side salad and fresh bread.

An alternative stuffing is chopped capers, olives and chillies, with a white wine and lemon juice mix for the cooking liquid.

Boquerones en Vinagre

25 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Snacks and Tapas, Starters

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boquerones_smelts……..or Smelts in Vinegar.  The word Smelt does not excite the imaginary palate in quite the same way as the word Boqueron. I assume its origin is from the word boca which translates as mouth and that Boqueron means a mouthful. And a delightful mouthful it is, whether dusted with flour and fried whole or marinated in vinegar as in this recipe which I was describing to my friend Andy while in France last week, and so it brought it to mind to share with you too.

This is regularly served as a tapa in Spanish bars. A couple of the fish will be presented atop a slice of fresh stick bread and sometimes with a good dollop of Allioli between the bread and the fish.

Cut the heads off your fresh smelts and open them out flat by opening along the belly and moving the flesh away from the bones on one side. There is no need at this point to remove the bones or the guts.

In a shallow dish that will take all the fish in one layer, pour enough white wine vinegar to cover the bottom of the dish. Lay the fish with the flesh side down into the vinegar.

Continue with all the fish putting them neatly side by side in the vinegar and then add more vinegar to just cover the layer of fish.

Put in the fridge for an hour so that the vinegar can ‘cook’ the fish.

Remove the fish one by one from the vinegar and remove the bones and guts. Lay in a clean dish.boquerones_en_vinagre

When you have done them all, pour over a generous amount of extra virgen olive oil and season the dish with finely chopped garlic and parsley. I added some chopped fresh green chillis as well, which are not traditional, but I like a bit of spice with my fish. Having a lime farm, and consequently having a lime or two lurking about, I have  used lime juice in place of the vinegar in this recipe which works very well and makes it more of a Ceviche, especially if you substitute fresh coriander for the parsley. Lemon juice should work too, although I haven’t tried it.

Put back in the fridge for half an hour or so for the flavours to develop and then serve with fresh bread.

Mediterranean Fish Soup with Rouille & Aliolli

19 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by in Fish, Starters

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The promised fish soup recipe. The only specialist bit of equipment needed to make this is a Mouli for straining the soup. You can use a sieve but a Mouli makes it much less work and gets more of the flesh of the fish and hence more flavour into the soup. It is a very useful bit of equipment for all soups especially Gazpacho Andaluz and not expensive to furnish yourself with. I have found that the cheaper plastic ones, while not looking so smart hanging in the kitchen, actually work much better than the all metal.

For 8

The body and head of a skate, cut into 3 or 4 pieces

10 large prawns

4 cloves of garlic sliced

Half and onion sliced

Either 250 ml Passata – home made being best, or 250 ml Tomato Frito, or Standard sized tin of chopped plum tomatoes plus 3-4 tablespoons of tomato puree.

The cooking liquid from the skate wings from the previous post if you have done that.

Salt & Freshly ground black pepper

Peel the prawns and put the heads and skins in a pan with the cooking liquid from the skate wings if you have that, otherwise with enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes.

Strain this stock and add to a large pan containing the pieces of skate body, the garlic, and the onion. Add more water to cover the ingredients and bring to the boil. Simmer for half an hour.

Let cool and strain through the coarse blade of the mouli making sure that you get as much of the fish flesh in the soup as you can. It will look a bit grey and unappetising at this point, but do not worry the tomatoes will transform it into a gorgeous red puree.

Return to the pan with whichever version of tomatoes that you are using and reheat. Cook for five minutes. Check seasoning. I have left this until this stage because some of the Passata and Tomato Frito in the shops has a high salt content so you can allow for this at this stage.

Add the chopped prawns to the soup and simmer a minute or two more. Serve with Rouille and Aliolli to stir in to taste.making_authentic_aliolli

I have given you already the recipe for Aloilli made like a mayonaise with eggs. This is  the simpler version using just garlic and olive oil. Put three cloves of garlic in the mortar with a good pinch of salt. Pound to a paste.

Have the olive oil at room temperature. Add a drizzle at a time, pounding well between the drizzles until you have a thick paste. For this condiment I added about 40 ml of oil as I wanted the garlic flavour to be strong, but for an eggless mayonaise keep adding the oil until you have a mayonaise consistency. You should be able to add about 150 ml of oil.aliolli_eggless

Rouille is a spicy condiment made with red chillis and seasonings, but you can easily substitute Harissa the Moroccan Chilli paste. I improvised mine by blending together some roasted red peppers from the freezer with fresh green chilli from the garden and a little olive oil and salt.

Skate Wings with Caper Sauce

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses

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I have been on my travels in recent weeks and whenever I am away from my home in southern Spain there are two things that always miss – the quality of the fresh fruit – and fresh fish. So on my return from my latest trip I hot-footed it to my local market to see what fish looked good. It is the season now for Bonito which is a variety related to Tuna, and that looked really good and fresh, but what really caught the attention of my mental taste buds was the Skate.

You could have the skinned wings only, or at a more economical price the whole fish. In these straightened times I thought you would like to know how to deal with the whole fish, from which there were two portions of a wing each, the body made enough soup for eight,  and there were a couple of meals for the cats as well – all for less than 4€!

Skate has no scales, but the skin feels a little slimy and it has some sharp barbs around its head area, so rubber gloves are essential for handling it. Firstly wash it, and then put it on a board and cut off the wings. Remove the guts from the body and give to a grateful cat. Cut the body into three or four pieces for making into soup. The recipe will be in next post.skate_wingAs I mentioned above the fishmonger will skin the skate wings for you, but I prefer to cook them with the skin on as the skate cooks so quickly that it is too easy to overcook them if they are already skinned. Once cooked the skin peels off very easily.

To cook the wing put it in a pan with some sliced onion, a sliced clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. Put in enough water to just cover the fish. Put the pan over a medium heat and bring slowly to a simmer. If you want you can add sliced potatoes at this stage to cook with the fish. For a wing the size above – it is pictured on a standard sized dinner plate – simmer for seven minutes.

Prepare the sauce. In a small saucepan put about 20 gms butter, the juice of half a lemon and dessertspoon of chopped capers. Leave on one side until you are ready for it.

Remove the fish to a warmed plate. You can leave your potatoes cooking with the onions while you skin the fish. Put the sauce on a very gentle heat. Starting from the thicker side of the fish using a smooth bladed knife gently push the skin away from the flesh and then slide it off the plate. Turn the fish over and do the same the other side. The darker side of the wing always has tougher and thicker skin than the pale side.removing_the_skin_from_a_skate_wingKeep an eye on your sauce and stir it or swirl it around from time to time. You do not want the butter to melt entirely, just enough to mix with the lemon and capers, and then remove it from the heat.skate_with_caper_sauce

Transfer the fish to a clean warm plate. Drain the potatoes reserving the liquid to go towards the soup, and put the potatoes on the plate with the fish. Pour over the sauce. Season well with lots of freshly ground black pepper and serve.

I will continue with the fish soup recipe tomorrow.