Simple Fish

Fish should be easy to prepare and enjoy.


I know that catching it, scaling it and filleting it are not that simple- I watched this poor little fella being landed on the port, then prepared for sale with brutal efficiency- but once you have your fillets, then the rest doesn't need a lot of messing about.
I've put together a few ideas this week that use prepared fish and other fishy things (and their leftovers) in easy recipes which I hope you will like.







I'm starting with whiting fillets en chapelure.
Chapelure is the fancy name for toasted breadcrumbs. I make mine by blitzing biscotte toasts into crumbs, but that's easy in France. If you don't have biscottes where you are, then toast stale bread or bake it until crispy when you have the oven on for something else and then blitz it and store it in an airtight container.

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees and lightly oil a baking tray.
Lay out three plates- one with seasoned flour, one with milk and one with the chapelure.

Dip your fillets first in the flour, then the milk and then the breadcrumbs. Coat both sides.

Lay the fillets on the baking tray and bake for 15 minutes until just cooked through.

Whiting Fillets en Chapelure

You can make this fancier by adding Parmesan to the crumbs - as here, atop salmon fillets.

Parmesan Crusted Salmon

Salmon of course, is one of the easiest and nowadays most reasonably priced fish to use. You can flake a cooked fillet into a quiche:

Salmon and Leek Quiche

Or make it into fishcakes- like these Salmon-Broccoli Galettes:

Slice 250g of salmon into small cubes

Finely slice 1 leek and 200g broccoli and soften in a pan with some crushed garlic

Mix the fish and the veg in a bowl with 2 beaten eggs, 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp chopped parsley, 1 tsp curry powder, a squeeze of lemon and plenty of salt and pepper

Place spoonfuls of the mixture into a pan with some hot oil and fry gently on one side for 4-5 minutes

The galettes will be easy to turn and cook on the other side.

Salmon-Broccoli Galettes

Every Friday in this part of Provence, cafes and bistros have Aioli as their Plat du Jour- a dish of poached white fish and prawns with veg with a pungent garlic mayonnaise which makes the simple ingredients sing.

The table laid with Aioli

I am grateful to blog follower laBarbe for both the recipe and the demonstration of how to prepare it:
First make your Aioli sauce.
Crush as many garlic cloves as you dare into a bowl. I suggest 3, but if you really like garlic and live alone then you can go up to 6.

Crush as many garlic cloves as you dare!

Beat in two egg yolks, a tablespoon of mustard and a thin stream of olive oil until the mixture becomes creamy. Add a squeeze of lemon.

Poach your white fish in water or milk until just starting to flake.

Boil your veg- potatoes, carrots, courgettes, cauliflower etc

Serve all the plain poached ingredients warm with the sauce.

Aioli

There were leftovers of course- and I put them into a Gratin Terre-Mer (Fish Pie to you and me):

Make a sauce from white wine, cream, a cooked leek and parsley gently heated and reduced slightly.
Mix in your leftover fish and shellfish
Top with mashed potatoes and some grated flavoursome cheese.
Bake in the oven at 170 degrees until brown and bubbling.

Gratin Terre-Mer

Finally, and I know my in-house Biologist takes issue with me as to the fishy nature of this- I'm making some mussel dishes.

My all-time favourite food- and desert island dish of preference- is Moules Marinieres- made simply with white wine, lemon, onion, garlic and parsley. Definitely no cream.
I like to clean, debeard and rinse the mussels then cook some onion and garlic in a deep pan until soft. Tip the mussels into the hot pan and add 1-2 glasses of white wine, a good handful of chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon.
Cover and cook for 7-8 minutes or so, or until all the mussels have opened.

Moules Marinieres

Leftover mussels can be kept for up to 3 days in the fridge- so I used them up in a Seafood Risotto.
If you prefer, you can make this dish with pasta ( little rice-shaped stuff called orzo is good). The same methods apply. Cook it from dry like rice and add the liquid bit by bit until it is tender.

For the risotto you need 200g of risotto rice, 1 litre of hot fish stock - either fish bouillon enriched with a tbsp of tomato puree and a pinch of saffron, or (as I prefer) left over fish soup and hot water- 1 shallot and 1 clove of garlic, leftover seafood and some creamy cheese (I used Boursin).
Soften the shallot and the garlic in olive oil and then add the risotto rice and coat.
Ladle in the stock, bit by bit, stirring all the time and adding it as it becomes absorbed by the rice.
When the stock has all been absorbed, test to see if the rice is tender. If not, add more hot water or stock and keep stirring. Adjust seasoning to your taste.
Take the mussels out of their shells ( keeping a few for decoration) and mix into the rice. Finally stir in some creamy cheese and serve.

Seafood Risotto/Pastotto

And so here ends my fishy tale. I hope you like the sound of some of the recipes and make tonight Fish Night.

Here's looking at you!

Fresh Ideas

I'd like to say that life is getting back to normal here, after our French adventure, but what with one thing and another, it just hasn't.
However, it's definitely time to restock with some fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish. Even reading last month's blog back to myself leaves me with a feeling of Vitamin C deficiency!


So, this time I'm giving you some soup recipes, some starters, vegetable sides and a meat and fish dish with the aim of offering you a more balanced diet than last time.

To start, I've made an Asparagus Charlotte. This is a pretty little starter, featuring a smoked mackerel mousse surrounded by a guard of honour of new season asparagus tips. Very cheffy-looking- but simple to achieve.

Asparagus Charlotte

Ingredients:

1 bunch of asparagus (you will use the tips and save the stalks for soup)

3 smoked mackerel fillets

1 tub of cream cheese with chives

Juice of half a lemon

2 tbsp creme fraiche

4-5 spring onions ( chopped)

Salt and pepper

Chives for decoration.

1. Steam the asparagus over a pan of simmering water until just tender but not floppy. Plunge into iced water to keep green colour vivid.

Chilly asparagus!

Reserve the cooking water for soup.

2. Trim the tips. Again reserve the stalks for soup.

3. Slice the tips lengthways in half

4. Blitz the mackerel, creme fraiche, cream cheese and lemon juice in a food processor .

5. Add the finely chopped spring onion and season well

6. Spoon or pipe mixture into chef's rings or scone cutters and chill until firm

7. When ready to serve, unmould and arrange the asparagus cut side out in a guard of honour around the mousse.

8. Tie a chive around each one to hold it all in place.

Asparagus and Smoked Mackerel Charlotte

Hopefully, you now have some leftover asparagus stalks and poaching water to make soup. The next recipe makes a creamy asparagus veloute- made delicious with coconut cream:

Asparagus and Coconut Veloute

Ingredients:

1 bunch of asparagus (whole or just the stalks)

1 bunch of spring onions (chopped)

1 small pack of frozen peas

1 litre of vegetable stock (including the water used to steam the asparagus)

1 small tin of coconut cream

1 tbsp chopped dill

Salt and pepper

Oil for frying

1. Steam the asparagus until tender over a pan of simmering water.

2. Reserve the cooking water and add it to the vegetable stock to make up to 1 litre

3. Chop the asparagus and put it with the spring onions and peas in a little oil in a saucepan. Sweat gently for a few minutes.

4. Add the dill, stock and coconut cream and simmer gently for 15 minutes to let the flavours mingle

5.Blitz with a blender, adjust seasoning and serve.

Asparagus and Coconut Veloute

Next, I've made a vegetarian starter using halloumi cheese, aubergines, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Halloumi and Vegetable Tian

A tian is a layered vegetable dish named after the Provencal earthenware vessel in which it is baked. Originally, these were conical in shape but nowadays those sold in kitchen shops tend to be more like gratin dishes. I've recreated the 'stacked' look with roasted vegetables interleaved with halloumi, using a skewer to hold them all in place in the oven.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 portobello mushrooms

4 slicing tomatoes

1 large aubergine

250g halloumi cheese, sliced into 8 pieces

2 crushed cloves of garlic

salt and pepper

fresh thyme sprigs

olive oil for marinading and roasting

1. Remove the stalks from the mushrooms, slice the tomatoes thinly into 4 slices per fruit, slice the aubergine thinly (you are aiming for 12 slices if possible)

2. Mix the crushed garlic and thyme sprigs with 2-3 tbsp of olive oil

3. Put the mushrooms, tomatoes and aubergine slices into the oil to marinade. Coat well with your hands, adding plenty of salt and pepper. Add more olive oil as you need it.

4. Leave for 1 hour or so.

Marinade the vegetables

5. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees.

6. Pan fry the halloumi briefly until you have a golden crust on both sides.

7. In the marinading dish, assemble your tians: mushroom cup first, then alternating layers of aubergine, tomato and halloumi, finishing with a tomato cap.

8. Secure in place with a bamboo skewer (or use chef's rings if you have them)

Hold the tians in place

9. Roast for 15 minutes until all the vegetables are soft and beginning to caramelize.

Halloumi and Vegetable Tian

I also used up any remaining aubergines in one of my favourite soups:

Aubergine and Butter Bean Soup

Anyone would think this smooth and delicate soup is rich with butter and cream- but in fact it is completely dairy-free and owes its silky texture to the butter beans which both thicken and enrich. The aubergines? Well, they lend a delicious, fragrant flavour to the ensemble!

Ingredients:

(Makes a litre and a half of soup)

2 medium aubergines

4 cloves of garlic

2 tsp honey

olive oil

juice of half a lemon

1 onion

1 litre of hot chicken or vegetable stock

1 400g tin of butter beans

salt and pepper to taste

1. Prick the aubergines all over, slice in half lengthways and lay cut side down in a baking dish lightly oiled with olive oil. Put the garlic cloves in too, in their skins.

2. Bake at 200 degrees for 15 minutes, then add the honey to the hot pan and swirl around. Continue baking for another 10 minutes or until the aubergines are soft and wrinkly. ( It happens to us all!)

3. Allow to cool enough to be handled, peel off the skin and chop roughly. Squeeze the garlic from its skin and do the same.

4. Soften the onion in some more olive oil in a saucepan, add the aubergine, garlic and drained butter beans and fry gently.

5. Loosen the sticky honey and aubergine juice from the pan with 2 cups of hot water. Add to the vegetables in the pan.

6. Pour on the chicken stock and simmer for another 10 minutes to amalgamate the flavours.

7. Blitz with a hand blender, adjust seasoning and serve with croutons.

Aubergine and Butter Bean Soup

Now for some main dishes- starting off with rabbit:

Rabbit in Cider

This is a version of the French classic 'Lapin Au Cidre'. Fresh rabbit is widely available in all supermarkets in France (including my local Lidl)- but I have found that this is not the case in the UK. If you can source it at your butchers, it is well worth the effort as the combination of rabbit, cider, cream and tarragon is such a good one. If not, the dish works well with chicken or pork too.

Traditionally, it is made the day before so the flavours mingle well and then the sauce if finished off just before serving- which makes it an ideal dish if you are serving to guests.

(Serves 4-6)

Ingredients:

1.8 kg of fresh rabbit, jointed

100g of smoked bacon lardons

200g of button mushrooms

2 carrots

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic (crushed)

70 cl of chicken stock

15 cl of dry cider

40g flour

10 cl of creme fraiche

90g butter

2 cloves

1 bay leaf

1 tbsp fresh tarragon

salt and pepper

1. Peel the carrots and onion and puncture it with the cloves

2. Season the rabbit and brown the pieces in 20g of butter, along with the lardons

3. Place in a casserole dish or slow cooker with the crushed garlic, carrots, bay leaf and onion

4. Deglaze the frying pan by boiling the cider in it and scraping with a spatula

5. Pour this over the rabbit, along with the chicken stock and cook for 1 hour in a casserole in the oven at 170 degrees or 3-4 hours in the slow cooker.

6. To finish the dish, add the button mushrooms either half an hour before the end of cooking, or as you reheat the next day. Remove the bay leaf and onion.

7. Make a roux with the flour and the remaining butter and strain in the hot cooking liquor. Heat, stirring constantly as it thickens. Adjust the seasoning. Add the cream and tarragon- and the rabbit pieces- and serve.

Rabbit in Cider

Next I braised some fennel to go with a fish dish. Usually I cook this recipe (Slow Braised Fennel) with olives and orange juice- but this time I left out the olives as I was serving it with Tapenade Crusted Fish.

Slow Braised Fennel

1  large bulb of fennel

250 ml orange juice

splash of white wine

salt and pepper

1 tbsp chopped parsley

1. Slice the fennel bulb thinly, reserving the feathery fronds as garnishes.

2. Place it in a slow cooker, or heavy bottomed saucepan along with the orange juice, wine, parsley and seasoning. Cover with a lid and braise until tender- about 20 minutes in a saucepan or 2-3 hours in the slow cooker.

Slow Braised Fennel

As I mentioned, I intended serving this fennel with fish. I chose firm white fish fillets (cod or hake) and placed them on baking parchment with a splash of white wine and some chopped parsley. I then sealed the parcels up like Cornish pasties, twisting the paper together to form a seal.

Wrapping up the fish parcels

Bake in a hot oven (180 degrees) for 20-25 minutes. Then lift out the fish pieces and spread each one with some olive tapenade. Top that with some breadcrumbs and finely chopped chive or spring onion and flash under a hot grill until crisp.

Serve with the fennel and other veg of your choice. (I usually bake some tomatoes on the vine along with the fish)

Tapenade Crusted Fish

Finally, with the leftover fennel I made another soup: 1 onion and 1 clove of garlic softened, 3 small potatoes (chopped), fennel slices, orange juice, chicken stock and parsley- simmered and then blitzed.

I usually sieve the finished soup to remove any fibrous bits of fennel or potato skin, add a little milk or cream and serve garnished with the fennel fronds which were saved as a garnish.

Cream of Fennel Soup

So, all in all I feel a bit healthier now. Lots of nice spring veg and fresh meat and fish working their magic.

I thought coming back to the UK, I'd find myself fresh out of ideas for the blog- but it seems the opposite is true!

Hope this week's blog has refreshed the parts that other blogs didn't reach..

Soupe de Poissons and other fishy dishes

It would be odd to end my time here in Cassis without at least one blog given over to fish recipes- as the fish restaurants on the quayside are one of the main reasons tourists come here in their hundreds. On a Saturday or Sunday, even in winter, you cannot get a table at any of the hotspots along the Quai des Baux- with everyone tucking into bowls of fish soup, plates of oursins and fish served up in any number of ways.

Fresh oursins

Quayside in Cassis

However, a meal in one of these enticing places will set you back a fair few euros- so here are some recipes to make at home at a fraction of the price. Open a nice bottle of Cassis white wine http://www.ot-cassis.com/en/les-cepages.html, find a bit of spring sunshine if you can, and you can share the experience along with me!

I'm starting with a fish soup, taking you through some simple fried fish dishes, a poached salmon idea, and then looking at some ways to make a little go a long way with the aid of pasta and pastry.

Soupe de poissons is a Provencal classic- little rock fish boiled up to make a stock with tomatoes, garlic and saffron and then pureed and sieved to make a rich soup, served with toasts, rouille and grated cheese. Every baker has big bags of toasts for sale- but of course, they are simple to make yourself with stale bread, sliced thinly, spread out on a baking tray and cooked on a low heat in the oven until brown and crispy.

Ingredients:

2 onions
2 fat cloves of garlic
1 leek
2 carrots
500g of fish- here the fishmongers sell poissons de rocher especially for fish soup but you can improvise with a mixture of pollock, fish pie mix, fish trimmings or whatever you can pick up at the fishmongers going cheap.
6 shell on prawns
1 glass of white wine
1 tbsp pastis-optional
1 pinch of saffron
salt and pepper
2 -3 tbsp tomato puree or a small tetrapak of passata
1 litre of water.

1. Soften the onion, leek and garlic in a little olive oil,  then add the chopped carrots
2. Add the prawns (legs, head and all) and scrunch around a bit with the veg.
3. Add the fish, white wine and seasoning and bring to the boil
4. Reduce the heat, add the tomato puree, pastis, water and saffron and simmer for 20 minutes
5. Then blitz the soup with a hand blender, pour the gloopy mixture through a sieve to take out any bones, scales, spiny bits etc
6. Keep warm

To serve- give your guests bowls of toasts, grated cheese and rouille ( garlic mayonnaise flavoured with paprika and tomato). They can either float their toasts in their bowl of soup, or place them in the bottom of the bowl and spoon their soup over them. (Everyone ate it so fast, I forgot to take a photo unitl it was nearly finished!)

Fish Soup with rouille, cheese and croutons

Sometimes the best way to serve fish is just to use the simplest and quickest method you can. Meuniere is just such a recipe. It literally means 'cooked the way the miller would'- white fish, coated in plain flour and seasoning and then fried in hot butter until golden and crispy.
That's all there is to it.

Skate wings cooked a la meuniere

Fish fillets- fried (whether in flour or not)- can be enhanced with simple sauces. Here I've got some red mullet fillets served with tapenade (green or black olive paste). You can buy tapenade everywhere here- it is known as the butter of Provence- and it is served routinely with toasts when you order an aperitif in a bar or cafe.
It is however very simple to make if you have a food processor:

Take 150g of  pitted green or black olives, 2 fat cloves of garlic and a glug of olive oil and pulse them all together until you have a smooth paste.

Fry your fish fillets quickly, presentation side down, turned once and served on a plate with lemon and tapenade.

Rougets with tapenade

An equally easy sauce to make is with roasted veg - it is good made with leftover Mediterranean veg as the flavour improves when it is cool.

Sea bass with roasted veg sauce

2 red peppers (deseeded and chopped into chunks)

2 large tomatoes (quartered)

1 onion (peeled and quartered)

1 fat clove of garlic (peeled)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

1. Mix the oil and vinegar in the bottom of a large roasting dish

2. Add the veg and plenty of salt and pepper

3. Toss with your hands until the veg is thoroughly coated

4. Roast at 170 degrees for about 30 minutes until the veg is tender and beginning to caramelize on the edges and tops

5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. (The flavour develops the longer you leave it, which is why it is good made with leftovers the next day)

6. Blitz in a food processor until smooth and pass through a sieve to remove any pips or tomato skin

Salmon- both fresh and frozen- is about the best value fish you can buy here. I bought four large paves for 7 euros.
Two of the fillets I poached in almond milk:

Bring a tetrapak of unsweetened almond milk up to a simmer and add a pinch of saffron, two tsp curry powder and lots of salt and pepper. Slide in your salmon pieces and poach for 10 minutes.
Thicken the sauce with a little creme fraiche and serve the fish with rice, sauce and a sprinkling of chopped chives.

Salmon poached in almond milk

The remaining two I used in pasta dishes- lasagne (layers of fresh lasagne pasta, salmon and cooked leeks mixed with a tub of creme fraiche and topped with a little grated gruyere):

Salmon and leek lasagne

and tagliatellis (100 g of fresh tagliatelle per person cooked in boiling salted waer for a couple of minutes, a bunch of chopped chives, some flaked salmon and a tub of creme fraiche and some of the leftover salmon poaching stock mixed into the warm pasta with plenty of salt and black pepper)- and had enough left over to flake into a leek and salmon tart. (A pastry case, 2 leeks, 4 eggs and some milk plus the salmon and seasoning).

Salmon and leek tart

Finally, I made a seafood pasta dish, using a mixture of fresh and frozen fish- pollock, prawns and mussels:

Embed the cleaned mussels in the pasta

Seafood pasta

Poach the white fish for 5 minutes in a little white wine. Cook the pasta noodles for 7 minutes until just becoming tender. Drain the pasta and mix it with the white fish, poaching liquor, a clove of pureed garlic, prawns and half a tetrapak of passata. Spread it out in a gratin dish, add some black olives and then embed 5-6 large cleaned mussels in the pasta.

Cook in a medium oven- 165 degrees- until the mussels have opened.

A bientot!

A Week's Worth of Roasted Vegetables

Mediterranean Chicken (for the recipe see the link below)

There was a time when roasted vegetables meant roast potatoes and parsnips and nothing much else.

Can you remember when we all started tray baking our courgettes and peppers? For me, I first had the dish (in a wondrous balsamic vinegar dressing- totally new to me!) at a party in the Nineties.

http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/week-47-healthy-new-year-recipes.html




I did a quick search on the internet and saw that this dish grew in popularity circa 1995 when Delia Smith brought out her 'Summer Collection' and suddenly we were all making Pasta Puttanesca, Chicken Basque and of course all oven-roasting our veg.
Well, nice one Delia.
It's been a mainstay of my repertoire evcr since.

When you have the oven on (if you're baking a cake or roasting a chicken perhaps), find the biggest oven tray you have and roast whatever is in the veg drawer of your fridge. Onions, garlic, courgettes, aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, squash, leeks, new potatoes- any combination as long as there is plenty of variety.
Cut them into equal sized chunks so they cook evenly, toss them in some olive oil, some balsamic vinegar and loads of salt and pepper and roast until they collapse and caramelize (usually 35-40 minutes at 180 degrees).



You can then serve them hot to accompany your meal- with chicken, steak, chops, salmon, hake...anything really- but then keep the rest and allow to cool completely and absorb the dressing. (Don't waste a drop of that sticky sauce!)

Hake with Roasted veg

Here are some suggestions of how you could use all these cooked veg during the rest of the week.

1. Mix with couscous to make a salad or to accompany  burgers, meatballs or quiche.

Couscous with roasted veg

2. Cook a pack of ravioli or tortellini , mix with the veg and some chopped tomatoes, top with grated cheese.

Tortellini pasta bake

3. Make a vegetable curry - by coating the veg in some korma paste, frying gently and then adding a tin of lentils and half a tin of coconut milk and simmering together until the flavours blend. Serve with basmati rice.

Vegetable curry with lentils

4. Mixed with salad leaves, fresh tomatoes and cucumber, pine nuts etc

Roasted veg salad with spinach and pine nuts

5. Blitzed with peanut butter or tahini, olive oil and lemon juice to make a roasted veg hummus

https://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/534564fbe4b06807fd8c4f13

This recipe featured on the Guardian recipe swap website (link above).

6. Packed with slices of mozzarella into a baguette for a substantial lunch

Roasted veg and mozzarella baguettes

7. Any left? Blitz the last little bit to make a sauce for white fish. Red pepper and tomato go particularly well with delicate flavoured fish.

Sea bass with roasted vegetable sauce

So, the week has gone by and the roasted veg have been used up in a variety of ways.

I hope you've enjoyed them and are not vegged-out!