On A Little Dishy? I Think not? (Fish)

Member Name: pjs21

Product:	Fish
Date:	04/09/02 (364 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Yummy

Disadvantages: Costly

Okay, here we go.

In exactly 28 days I will be starting a brand new life. Well, not brand new, but a new exciting time will begin and you can expect me to share some of this with you in the form of recipes. For five hours a day I will be let loose in kitchens and made to work my little socks off training as a chef in one of the country?s top Schools for food and wine. Yay!

So, before I start my course and learn new fancy techniques, here are my three current favourite fish dishes for your pleasure. The first one is incredibly simple, the second a little trickier, and the third is very special, very expensive to make, but very much worth it.

Fish has got to be one of my favourite food types, coming second only to chocolate. There are so many different types and it's so good for you. We should all eat more or the stuff!

Recipe One

Oven-Poached Trout or Seabass.

Trout is readily available from any supermarket, or if you're lucky enough to have on, fishmongers. The same goes for seabass, but it is generally a lot more expensive. Two whole rainbow trout will cost you somewhere around £2.50 - £3.50 depending on size and where you buy them from.

What you need:

(for two)

Two rainbow trout, gutted and cleaned, heads on!
2 Salad Onions, chopped
1 Courgette, sliced
Unsalted butter
Fresh Parsley, chopped
1 Lemon, sliced
Olive oil
1 Pepper (colour of your choice, but I use yellow or red as they are slightly sweeter), chopped or sliced
1 small green chilli, chopped and seeds removed
Lashings of dry white wine.
Kitchen Foil
Salt and Pepper

Tear off two large pieces of foil and lay flat. Place one trout in the middle of each piece of foil and turn the edges up to prevent any of the ingredients from seeping out.

Slice your lemon in half lengthways and cut the halves into slices. Place three or four slices inside the fi
sh with some of the chopped onion.

Place two or three, up to you, knobs of butter along the top of each fish, drizzle some olive oil over them and sprinkle on the remaining vegetables, dividing fairly equally between the two.

Now, bring the edges of the foil right up and pour in the white wine. Not too much, probably about half a centimetre deep, maybe a little more if you feel adventurous! Now seal the foil like a Cornish pasty so that none of the ingredients are able to leak out. The foil shouldn't be tight around the fish, you need room for steam.

Now comes the cooking part. During the winter and those rainy day we use the oven, call me old fashioned, but I find this works really well for cooking my food. You need it at about 180C, I can't tell you what that is in gas as I don't use a gas oven, but I'm sure someone out there knows, is around Gas Mark 5, possibly?

Alternatively, these parcels are fantastic for shoving on the BBQ in the summer.

Check after 15 minutes to see how they're doing, bigger fish will need longer, obviously, but it shouldn?t take more than about 20 minutes for an average sized trout. Once the eyes have clouded over that's a pretty good sign that it's done. If you remove them from the heat and leave them wrapped for a couple of minutes they will continue to cook anyway.

Serve it in it's foil parcel on the plate.

The reason the head is kept on fish is because it holds most of the flavour, if you remove this before cooking you will lose this. So if you?re not squeamish, leave it on.

Do the sea bass in exactly the same way, only you will only want one bass between two, as they tend to be a lot bigger than trout.

Recipe Two

St Peter's Fish with Yellow Mash

St Peter?s Fish has fast become one of my favourite fishes. It's really called John Dory, and it is sweet, succulent and very very tasty.


You will need:

For the sauce

100ml of dry white wine (this alcohol is becoming a habit!)
45ml soy sauce
300ml fish stock
175ml beef stock
15ml olive oil
salt and pepper

for the fish
350g John Dory, cut into 12 fingers (2 large fish should be enough)
salt and pepper
15g unsalted pepper

0.6kg old potatoes
50ml olive oil
75ml whipping cream
25g unsalted butter
5g saffron, or a good pinch of turmeric to colour


In a saucepan boil the white wine, soy sauce and fish stock, reduce this until about 100ml of fluid remains, then add the beef stock and reduce again until it thickens slightly.

In a frying pan, heat the oil. Season the fingers of fish and when the oil is smoking add the butter and quickly fry the fish in the hot fat. This should take about 1 minute (30 seconds a side), remove from the pan and drain.

To make the mash, boil your potatoes to soften, mash slightly and add 25ml of the oil, continue to mash. In another pan add the cream and saffron and heat gently for a few minutes, then add the remaining oil and butter. Heat this gently for a further minute or two and then add the mashed potato. Mash this all together until smooth and silky.

Divide the mash between four plates, place three fingers of the fish onto the potato and pour over the fish and potato.

Warning: John Dory is fairly expensive to buy. Two large fish cost me about £18.00. Get your fishmonger to fillet them for you if you're not confident to do this.


Recipe Three

Okay, the final recipe for now. This is from a recently tried and tested recipe for a dinner of 10 people, it went down a storm, but took a while, and costs a lot of money to do. I think the fish cost me around £90.00 for the lot, my fishmonger gave me a load of heads and bones to make my own fish stock, but you can use those Knorr tablets, they're pretty good.


Bouillabaisse

This is real Fish soup made the way it should be. This was originally a recipe used by the fisherman to use up the damaged fish from the catches, now it is made of prime fish and will set you back quite a bit to make, so it?s worth saving for those big dinner parties when you really want to impress.

You will need:

One large fish, I used a Red Fish, which I think is also called Deep Sea Haddock, Scorpion Fish is also good.

1 John Dory
2 Seabass
1 Large Monkfish Tail
2 Large Crabs
12 Langoustine
2 Red Mullet
4 Sardines
1 large cod fillet

3 large onions
18 tbsp olive oil
6 large ripe tomatoes
1 bouquet garni
1 large strip of orange zest
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
1.5g saffron threads
salt and pepper

2.5 litres of fish stock

French bread, sliced to serve.

Clean the fish and crabs, leave heads on all fish, and separate the fish with firm flesh from the fish with light flesh:

Firm: Scorpion Fish, Monkfish, Crabs, Langoustine
Light: Dory, Sea Bass, Mullet, Sardines, Cod

Peel and finely chop the onions and fry in 12tbsp of the oil to soften, do not let them brown. Peel and dice the tomatoes and add to the onions with the bouquet garni, orange zest, garlic and saffron, season with salt and pepper.

Start laying the firm fish on top of the vegetables, staring with the crab, and pour over the remaining olive oil. Leave this to infuse for about 10 minutes.

Add enough of the fish stock to cover the fish and bring this quickly to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Now add the soft textured fish and boil vigorously for a further 5 to 8 minutes.

Place a slice of bread in the centre of each bowl.

Remove the fish from the soup and place on a large platter, keep them warm by covering with foil.

Stir your soup, if you prefer it less lumpy, you can strain it thro
ugh a mouli, or use a hand blender to mix it, and pour the soup around the bread. Serve the bowls of soup to the people and place the platter of the fish in the middle for everyone to help themselves too.

This recipe was a winner when I served it up, it was also a good way to break the ice as people had to take from the same plate. However, I think that something is still missing, and I shall experiment again one day and re-write this with the improvements made.

Remember, if you use crab you will need the necessary tools to get into it. Lobster crackers are available in most cookshops.

There, that was my little bit for fish recipes. I hope someone out there is brave enough to try them. Let me know how you get on.

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