Homemade Fish Fingers

Even people who don't generally like fish will often eat fish fingers quite happily. I'm not sure whether these are truly fish fingers or are really goujons - or are those just two ways of saying essentially the same thing? They are very easy to make, though, and contain only things that I wanted them to: sustainable fish with organic breadcrumbs, flour and eggs.

I bought some gurnard fillets and they worked beautifully, being quite meaty and holding together really well during cooking. Gurnard is rated 2 by the Marine Conservation Society.

So, first slice the fish into finger-sized peices. Lay out three saucers or bowls and fill the first with plain flour, the second with a beaten egg and the third with some breadcrumbs. Coat each peice of fish in the flour, then with egg and finally the breadcrumbs. That's basically it!

Heat up a frying pan with some oil and cook the first side, without moving them, until brown and crispy, then flip over and do the other side. Fish cooks pretty quickly so expect them to be ready in 5-10 minutes depending on how thick the fish is.

I just put them with curly fries and broccoli with a bit of ketchup but I'm planning to make fish finger sandwiches at some point with tartare sauce.

Salmon with Sorrel Sauce

I knew that I wanted to cook something along these lines, after seeing a recipe in Raymond Blanc's "Simple French Cookery" and noticing how much the sorrel had grown in the garden. However, for a mid-week meal, not even I could excuse lashings of cream in the sauce nor the junior role of vegetables in the dish.

I substituted half-fat creme fraiche for the cream, added celery, leeks and extra tomatoes to the sauce and served up a kohl rabi bake on the side. It's a weird looking vegetable, makes me think of daikon/mooli in taste - a bit radishy. It's not my favourite but what's in the fridge must get eaten!

If you are making the kohl rabi bake, skin and finely slice the vegetable and layer the slices into a baking dish, seasoning with salt and pepper as you go. Pour over enough vegetable stock to almost cover them and grate some parmesan over the top. Pop in the oven at 180 degrees for about half an hour, until the vegetable is tender. 

First, chop up your alliums (in my case a purple onion and a couple of leeks), and a stick of celery. Put a frying pan on the heat with some oil and cook them until softened.

Pour 100ml of white wine into a saucepan and add the cooked vegetables, stir in and bring up to a boil to cook out the alcohol. Add two diced tomatoes and a big bunch of de-stemmed and sliced sorrel, along with half a pot of creme fraiche and a squeeze of lemon juice. Season well and cook until the sorrel leaves have wilted, then add a little chopped parsley. If you don't have sorrel, substitute any leafy green and an extra squeeze of lemon.

Season the salmon fillets with salt, pepper and parsley, coating them in oil prior to cooking. Heat up a frying pan and wipe round with oil, when very hot, lay the fillets in skin-side down and cook without moving them until the sides start to turn opaque. Flip them over and cook for another minute or so until the flesh has only just turned opaque the whole way through.

Put the chunky sauce on the plate and some of the bake, then lay the salmon, crispy skin up, on the top.

Baked Fish Italian Style

I used sardines in this recipe but I really think mackerel would have been loads better, just because sardines have lots of tiny bones which are hard to make out under the topping. 

I suspect white fish would also work well with this. I got the inspiration from a recipe in "Two Greedy Italians".

First of all gut, fillet and pin bone your fish and lay the fillets side-by-side in a well oiled baking tray. Cover with lots of breadcrumbs, chopped garlic, parsley, basil and a thinly sliced mild chilli or bell pepper. 

  
Drizzle over some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees C, for about 25 minutes.

This was lovely with a watercress, tomato and cucumber salad.

Lemon Sole with Crab & Sorrel Sauce, Potato Crisps & Samphire

Lemon sole has a rating of 2 from the Marine Conservation Society so, when I was standing at the fish counter, I remembered this and thought it was a pretty safe purchase. I later read that this is its breeding season (April to August), although it is at the very end of this period. Next time I'll go for a different flat fish during these months, such as dab or farmed halibut.

The white crab meat in this recipe is caught and hand picked in Cornwall, the potatoes are from our garden and the marsh samphire, which is in season at the moment, I got from the fish counter at the supermarket.

The first thing I did was to thinly slice the potatoes into crisps, using a mandolin because it's my new "toy", it probably would have been fine just to do it with a sharp knife though!

These crisps/chips are shallow fried in enough light olive oil that you can see it bubble when it's hot, it takes a few minutes on each side to cook them. We did them in batches and laid them out on recycled kitchen paper to absorb the grease, before popping them in a very low oven to keep warm.

For the sauce, heat up some oil and butter in a saucepan and add several sliced spring onions (or any onion) and a crushed garlic clove. Cook until soft, then pour in half a glass of white wine, salt and pepper, and let that bubble away gently to cook out the alcohol. Add around 100ml of vegetable stock and keep on a low heat while you cook the fish and vegetables.


Put a handful of beans into boiling water and put the samphire on greaseproof paper in a steamer on top of the saucepan. Both vegetables should cook through in the time it takes to prepare the fish.

Using the same frying pan as for the potatoes, reheat the oil and add a little butter. Lightly season the fish and place it in the pan when the oil is very hot. Leave it, without moving or pressing on it, for a good few minutes until the sides of the fish are starting to go opaque. Flip them over and cook for a final minute or two before plating up.

The potato crisps can be layered up to make a little tower, with the beans on top and the samphire to one side. At this point, stir some sliced sorrel into the sauce and remove the pan from the heat, then stir in the crabmeat as well and spoon over the fish.

Baked Ling with Cauliflower Puree & Fennel Salad

This photo does not do justice to the
yumminess of this dinner, trust me!

When I first started this blog, I said it was going to be a warts-and-all sharing of my experiences, as I try to eat both interestingly and ethically. Today, I present a large "wart". On the positive side, I learned something I didn't know today and writing about it might spread the word, certainly it highlights the easy pitfalls a hedonethicist can fall into.

It really starts with an old, and rather silly, assumption: if you haven't heard of a fish, or don't often see it for sale at a supermarket, it's more likely to be sustainable than one that is really common. This idea could have worked in the past for some things: king prawns, cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and sea bass have all made their appearances on the endangered charts, whereas pollack, dab, cockles, coley and the like hadn't. Nowadays, it's a bit more complicated than that.

Ling, a fish I'd never cooked before, is listed by the MCS has having a sustainability rating of 4 or 5, depending on various factors. This is bad. I won't be buying it again unless it makes it up to 3. 
I emailed my supplier (the nice people at The Fish Society) for advice. It turns out this was their first shipment of ling and they were as surprised as me to see how badly it scored on the sustainability charts, as it isn't a fish in high commercial demand. They get theirs from Denmark, which should mean the fishermen abide by EU regulations; however, for the ethically concerned consumer, a different fish would be a better choice. The good news is that they are about to start selling pouting which they recommend as a "mega sustainable" alternative - can't argue with that!

The meal I made with the ling was yummy though, so I'm still going to post it. Another white fish could (and should) be easily substituted.

First things first, the cauliflower puree. Sounds all cheffy, but it isn't. Break up a cauli head into small peices and pop into a pan with a couple of bay leaves and some mace. Almost cover with milk and bring up to a simmer, leave it to cook until the cauli is tender (about 10-15 mins or so, prod it with a fork to check).

While that's cooking, finely slice a fennel bulb and cut a couple of carrots into thin batons. Pop into a bowl and in another bowl whisk up a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Pour over the dressing and mix really well. Put the salad into the fridge to marinate.

Lay your fish fillets onto a peice of foil (recycled!) and put a knob of butter on each one. Squeeze over some lemon juice, a sprinkle of salt and grinding of black pepper, plus a scattering of parsley, oregano and chives. Pop in the oven at 180 degrees until cooked - the timing is going to vary depending on how thick your fillets are, ours took about half an hour because they were still ever so slightly frozen.

When the cauli is done, whizz it up in a food processor with salt, pepper, some butter and as much of the milk as is required to give it a creamy, pureed texture.

The creamy puree, herby fish and crunchy fennel salad work wonderfully together; this is a really lovely mid-week meal.

Links
Marine Conservation Society - Good Fish Guide

Herb & Lemon Foil-Baked Bream

This is a super easy one, but delicious. It was inspired by a recipe in The River Cottage Fish Book.

I had a whole black (sea) bream, already gutted and scaled. All I needed to do was pop it into a foil parcel with:

Butter
Lemon slices
Fennel fronds
Parsley
Salt
Pepper
White wine

Sealed up the parcel and popped it into the oven for 25 minutes at 190 degrees. Yum. Goes nicely with boiled potatoes and peas.

Aromatic Seafood Hotpot

This is the easiest dinner of them all, but you do need good quality fish and seafood to pull it off; it's pretty simple, so it relies heavily on the flavours from the fish. 

I've recently had a new order through from the fish society that included monkfish and squid, along with a bunch of fresh clams from abel and cole. I thought these would make a perfect combination when cooked a bit like the French moules mariniere. I found a recipe to inspire me in Nigella Express; like her or not, this particular cookbook is a good one. As always, though, I had to personalise it!

I had some lovely broad beans so I shelled them, blanched them and removed their cases to go in with the stew. 

I heated up some butter and oil in a pan and fried a sliced onion. Added sliced monkfish and squid rings for a few minutes, then added a couple of queen scallops and a glass of white wine. I left it until it was bubbling hot before adding the clams and covering with a lid. They need shaking up every now and again, but they only need cooking for a few minutes. 

Add a splash of sherry or marsala and some chopped parsley, cover again and cook for yet another few minutes. Finally, take off the heat, mix in some spring onions or chives, a crack of black pepper and serve with fresh bread and butter. Food for the soul!

The fish society have very kindly created a discount code for us: enter the word HEDON in the discount textbox when you check out and you'll get 10% off. 
***again, I need to mention that I don't get any special bonuses or payments for recommending companies, I just do it because I like them, their products and their customer service. This discount code was a lovely guesture they made after reading comments I'd already made about them. Just so we're clear!***

Brodetto (Italian fish stew)

I was wondering what to do with the wonderful fresh clams I had delivered on Friday and, quite randomly, came across a recipe originating from the Italian province my Grandparents lived in, Ancona. I remember having this for dinner as a child and just had to make a version of it.

I was lucky enough to have a few squid and queen scallops in the freezer, courtesy of The Fish Society. I defrosted these along with some homemade fish stock I cooked up a few weeks ago. I also had some pancetta and dab fillets in the fridge, so I figured that with the clams this would make a pretty decent meal.

For something so tasty it really doesn't take a lot of effort. A bit of chopping: garlic (I used wet garlic because I'm lucky enough to have had some in my veg box this week), onion, celery, chilli and carrot. And then straight into the cooking part...


I heated up some olive oil in a big pan and added the garlic and chilli, a few moments later the pancetta, celery and onion went in and, on not too high a heat, cooked almost through. Then the carrots and a glass of white wine, letting it sizzle until almost (but not quite!) evaporated. Then a tin of plum tomatoes, chopped up a bit with scissors, and some tomato puree. I let that cook for a bit and then added the stock, about a pint, a handful of chopped parsley and a shot of vodka (once again I must say please trust me on this... the vodka works).


I left that to bubble away for a good twenty minutes to reduce before adding the squid, scallops, dab fillets, clams and a huge handful of fresh basil. It was only few minutes before they were cooked, ready to be served in giant bowls with freshly sliced homemade bread - perfect for scooping up all of the lovely sauce.

Fishesto

So the fridge is looking a little bare, as it often does towards the end of the week. Luckily I had a couple of sea bass fillets in the freezer, left over from my last order with The Fish Society. Their frozen fish really isn't any different, in taste or texture, to the fresh product and has the added bonus that it stays nice and fresh in the freezer until you're ready for it.

All I had to do was move the fillets into the fridge this morning, so they could defrost over the course of the day. I put them in a colander over a bowl as they recommended, to stop fish juice dripping all over the place.

As I had some pesto left over from breakfast on Monday (A&C's pesto is fantastic) and some heirloom tomatoes in the fridge, I thought  I'd pan fry the sea bass and serve it with a tomato salad and a dollop of lovely pesto. Easy peasy.

This tastes a lot better than my awful photo makes it look!

Fish is really easy to cook but hard to be confident about; it tastes horrible if you overcook it and the texture is nasty when half-done. 
Still, as I'm finding out, the trick to a lot of meat and fish cooking is just having the pan pretty insanely hot before you put the food in. I have found that most often my fish seems to be cooked pretty spot-on after about 4 minutes frying on the skin side and 3 minutes on the flesh side, but that is just a rough estimate.

The bread and tomato salad recipe I've mentioned before: quartered or eighthed tomatoes mixed with finely diced red onion, toasted bread cubes, parsley, basil, salt, pepper, vinegar/lemon juice and olive oil, chilled in the fridge before serving. 
It's a very quick and easy, filling little salad with lots of flavour and goes with lots of different foods. It's good if you aren't in the mood for a stodgy carb side dish but still want a bit of chewy, starchy goodness.

Do give The Fish Society a go if you can, they are a very sweet company, do their best to provide ethically sourced fish and are efficient to boot. Here is what they have to say about their lovely wild sea bass: "All our sea bass is caught by a single Cornish fisherman, with rod and line. He fillets and freezes them for us within 24 hours, and then he delivers them all the way up to us in Surrey (usually taking his wife via Ikea, on the way). What a romantic tale!"

I do realise that this looks expensive, I chose sea bass and that's a pricey fish; it's just one of my favourites so I treated myself.
I also chose to buy it from this company because the quality of the fish itself is absolutely fantastic. If I want fish for the freezer, I'm better off buying it from them (where it's frozen directly after the boat gets in) rather than buying fish to be delivered fresh and then freezing it in my domestic freezer.
If I want to eat sea bass on a Friday (my A&C delivery day) then I'll order from them for a cheaper price. 

The same dinner would also have been awesome with mackerel, which is much cheaper than sea bass and just as easy to buy ethically. Abel and Cole sell a big fat dinner's worth of mackerel for just £3.99.

Hooray for fish!