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Fish recipes

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Guineafowl21

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There’s a good local boat here that comes in and sells direct to the public. Sadly, all they’re used to supplying is skinless, vac-packed fillets, mainly cod and haddock.

I’m apparently the only weirdo wanting whole, ‘interesting’ fish. After quite a few weeks of cajoling, they’ve started bringing round Dory, Ling and Hake, like this lot for £40, which I think is pretty good (I’ve already filleted the two ling, not pictured):
IMG_1311.jpeg

Good ways to cook these? My usuals:

Dory - season, stuff with lemon, butter, garlic, aromatics, bake in foil.

Hake - fillet, then batter, or curry.

Ling - as above, except the skin doesn’t crisp up as well as hake/cod/haddock.

Any other suggestions welcomed. I saw a Rick Stein show in India where the fish (Rui) was dusted with turmeric and salt, then fried, then finished off in a mustard sauce with green chillies. Very nice with the hake.
 
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Guineafowl21 said:
....

Any other suggestions welcomed. I saw a Rick Stein show in India where the fish (Rui) was dusted with turmeric and salt, then fried, then finished off in a mustard sauce with green chillies. Very nice with the hake.
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Great to have the opportunity of good fresh fish.

But surely. chucking all that stuff on it....??? Can you still taste the fish?
 
I cook all fish very simply in the microwave using a silicone flip lid container from Lakeland. A large chunk of haddock on a low setting takes about 2 mins. Delumptious! - Rob
 
Hake is a lovely fish. Possibly wasted in a curry (although I like a fish curry myself). We eat a lot of it when we can get it (in fact once our fish monger cam running across the street to accost my partner, to say he’d got some really fresh hake in. And he had.. Soft flesh, and really popular in Spain and Portugal. Cooked with chorizo, smoked pimenton, potatoes (at least partially pre cooked) and maybe some padron peppers. And the usual garlic,white wine/stock. I’ve also done it with peas and strips of frizzled serrano ham.

Dory is pretty versatile. What I wouldn’t mind this evening is steamed, with a dressing of heated sesame oil, golden garlic, ginger and spring onions. Or hard fried or grilled with a sauce made of garlic, red chillis, fish sauce, sugar, lime and a bit of stock. But there's loads of other ways of doing it. Bony, mind you.

Ling I haven’t cooked much. I seem to remember it as a bit non-descript. Good for salting though.
 
Woodbloke said:
I cook all fish very simply in the microwave using a silicone flip lid container from Lakeland. A large chunk of haddock on a low setting takes about 2 mins. Delumptious! - Rob
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I thought you were a wrap them in tin foil and whack in the oven man.

Has taken me ages to get used to names of fish here, for example.
Haddock when bought as fresh white fish is galled aiglefin. When aiglefin is smoked it becomes haddock fumé.
 
Good haul, love fish and I'm also partial to a fish curry. Simple onion, coconut milk, tumeric and chilli. With rice and a few chives sprinkled on top, delicious!
 
The missus makes a lovely prawn curry with Coconut milk, spices and whatever green leaves we can find eg spinach, kale, chard etc eaten with garlic and coriander naan bread that we buy in UK and freeze.
 
MattS said:
Good haul, love fish and I'm also partial to a fish curry. Simple onion, coconut milk, tumeric and chilli. With rice and a few chives sprinkled on top, delicious!
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That is what I know as meen moolee(or molee). I’d go a bit more complex, and add black cardamon, taj patta or curry leaves, cassia bark, green chillis, garlic, and finish with lime juice. Oh, and leave out the onions.


If you like the taste of fish and turmeric, have you tried cha ca? Fish (anything firm, I usually use monkfish), Marinade chunks of fish in a paste of turmeric, lemon grass, fish sauce, sugar and lime juice or tamarind water. Drain and dust with more turmeric and rice flour. Shallow fry, and then add to the oil serious amounts of dill and spring onions. Serve with rice noodles, and side bowls of peanuts, herbs (that basil, mint, coriander) and a viet dipping sauce.


And by happenstance here is a photo of a version of this I made.


DSC05402.jpg


Getting a bit away from the OP original question, but I can see this working with ling.
 
RogerS said:
Great to have the opportunity of good fresh fish.

But surely. chucking all that stuff on it....??? Can you still taste the fish?
Click to expand...
I know what you mean. If I ever did a trip to India, I think I’d end up craving a simple barbecued steak by the end. There’s something to be said for letting the main ingredient shine, rather than smothering it with strong flavours. That said, with all this fish about, some variety might be in order.
Woodbloke said:
I cook all fish very simply in the microwave using a silicone flip lid container from Lakeland. A large chunk of haddock on a low setting takes about 2 mins. Delumptious! - Rob
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Sounds a little bland (but see above!)… what do you have with it?
Tiresias said:
Hake is a lovely fish. Possibly wasted in a curry (although I like a fish curry myself). We eat a lot of it when we can get it (in fact once our fish monger cam running across the street to accost my partner, to say he’d got some really fresh hake in. And he had.. Soft flesh, and really popular in Spain and Portugal. Cooked with chorizo, smoked pimenton, potatoes (at least partially pre cooked) and maybe some padron peppers. And the usual garlic,white wine/stock. I’ve also done it with peas and strips of frizzled serrano ham.

Dory is pretty versatile. What I wouldn’t mind this evening is steamed, with a dressing of heated sesame oil, golden garlic, ginger and spring onions. Or hard fried or grilled with a sauce made of garlic, red chillis, fish sauce, sugar, lime and a bit of stock. But there's loads of other ways of doing it. Bony, mind you.

Ling I haven’t cooked much. I seem to remember it as a bit non-descript. Good for salting though.
Click to expand...
I remember in Spanish GCSE, we learned the word ‘merluza’, hake, then had to ask what ‘hake’ was! I know it’s very popular over there, very under-rated here. Brother lives in Spain so we have pimenton. Hard to get decent chorizo over here, but what is available might be ok for cooking.

Wife is Chinese, so she likes the Dory done whole and put in the middle of the table, then it’s quite easy to pick away from the bones. You mustn’t flip the fish over - bad luck. Spiky fins jab you and puncture the foil, though.

Ling, yes, ‘cheap cod’ in my book. Skin a little bit more eel-like.
Tiresias said:
That is what I know as meen moolee(or molee). I’d go a bit more complex, and add black cardamon, taj patta or curry leaves, cassia bark, green chillis, garlic, and finish with lime juice. Oh, and leave out the onions.


If you like the taste of fish and turmeric, have you tried cha ca? Fish (anything firm, I usually use monkfish), Marinade chunks of fish in a paste of turmeric, lemon grass, fish sauce, sugar and lime juice or tamarind water. Drain and dust with more turmeric and rice flour. Shallow fry, and then add to the oil serious amounts of dill and spring onions. Serve with rice noodles, and side bowls of peanuts, herbs (that basil, mint, coriander) and a viet dipping sauce.


And by happenstance here is a photo of a version of this I made.


View attachment 33496


Getting a bit away from the OP original question, but I can see this working with ling.
Click to expand...
Aforementioned wife would like that Vietnamese dish - she often goes to Thailand doing eye ops, then finds the food here a bit plain when she comes back. Looks like similar flavours - sweet, sour, salty, spicy etc.

I might have said this before, but we hosted a couple of Thai surgeons - got them to try haggis, neeps, tatties. As politely as they could, they left most of it. Bland, no texture, stodgy was the report. Compared to their food? Well… yes. But I still like haggis now and again.
 
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Sampled some ultra-fresh scallops from a fishmonger in Wedmore yesterday. Stunning. The rest of his fish looked to have been caught the night before. Come from Newlyn, Cornwall.
 
Guineafowl21 said:
Sounds a little bland (but see above!)… what do you have with it?
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Not at all; you can taste the fish. All that's required is a good squeeze of lemming juice. If you ever go to Japan and sample really fresh sashimi all you get is a dish of sliced up raw fish and a pair of chopsticks. Sublime - Rob
 
RogerS said:
Sampled some ultra-fresh scallops from a fishmonger in Wedmore yesterday. Stunning. The rest of his fish looked to have been caught the night before. Come from Newlyn, Cornwall.
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Good ones up here too - I usually cut the tough bit off the white, season, then just a minute per side in very hot butter. Roll the roes around in the pan afterwards.
Woodbloke said:
Not at all; you can taste the fish. All that's required is a good squeeze of lemming juice. If you ever go to Japan and sample really fresh sashimi all you get is a dish of sliced up raw fish and a pair of chopsticks. Sublime - Rob
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So you’re gently steaming it, basically? The fresher, the better, I suppose.

@Phil Pascoe I’ve ordered both those books, cheers.
 
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Phil Pascoe said:
Much as I like fish I wouldn't give a thank you for raw fish. My mother's idea of a heaven was oysters and champagne - that to me is the meal from hell.
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Taste, texture or just the thought of it?

If it’s just squeamishness, and you can get over it, it’s hard to beat fresh oysters with a few drips of tabasco and lemon juice.
 
Phil Pascoe said:
Much as I like fish I wouldn't give a thank you for raw fish.
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Neither did I till I tried it at the old fish market (now closed) in Tokyo. The queues outside the tiny restaurants early in the morning were huge (mostly westerners) and as I recollect we had to wait for a couple of hours before being seated on a bar stool. The raw fish was utterly delicious apart from one or two very fatty specimens which I didn't like. As with many eateries in Japan, there was and old lady who seemed to have a teapot of green tea permanently filled so our small mugs were never empty - Rob
 
Guineafowl21 said:
Taste, texture or just the thought of it?

If it’s just squeamishness, and you can get over it, it’s hard to beat fresh oysters with a few drips of tabasco and lemon juice.
Click to expand...
I don't like the taste or the texture of raw oysters, tabasco or not, and cooked as in a carpetbag they just spoil the steak.. I like mussels and cockles. I dislike Champagne, Cava and Prosecco. And yes, before anyone asks - I have drunk Dom Perignon, Krug, Cristal, Belle Epoque and numerous others.
 
On the subject of books, oddly this morning I picked up Mitchell Tonks' Fresh - Great simple seafood for a quid.
Oddly, for a peninsula and being quite close to the largest fish landing port in England, fish other cod and haddock in chip shops is very rarely eaten in Cornwall. The last I ate anything different (other than in fish pies) was several years ago - we're just not brought up to eat it. I went out with a girl 50 years ago whose family were Londoners - they ate more fish in a week than we ate in two or three years.
 
We cook fish for guests at least three times a week (we open 4 times a week generally). Simply and small portions and cooked fast. Currently mostly Turbot. It's bang in season. I use a lot of mussels, either Shetland blue or Welsh as well. We are also home smoking at least 1 whole salmon or wild sea trout every fortnight as well. Fish is getting popular again maybe.
 
AJB Temple said:
We cook fish for guests at least three times a week (we open 4 times a week generally). Simply and small portions and cooked fast. Currently mostly Turbot. It's bang in season. I use a lot of mussels, either Shetland blue or Welsh as well. We are also home smoking at least 1 whole salmon or wild sea trout every fortnight as well. Fish is getting popular again maybe.
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What would you do with a ling? As I say, the skin is hard to crisp up, so best removed, then cook like cod/haddock?

@Tiresias the Cha ca ling went down very well last night. No peanuts, except bird ones, so we used toasted pine nuts instead. We had all the other ingredients, since, as you can imagine, the cupboards are rammed with Asian stuff! Served all in one in a bowl, because I’m a guailo and dislike the faff of picking from little separate dishes.
 
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RogerS said:
But surely. chucking all that stuff on it....??? Can you still taste the fish?
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Fish in mustard is a classic Bengali thing, in many different forms, but the thing you have to bear in mind is that they have very different types of fish than we do. Rui is one of the most common every day fishes over there and has a stronger flavour than any of our white fish, but the classic for steaming in mustard and green chillies is ilish. That has no close relative over here that I know of, but imagine a metre-long mackerel with the strength of flavour increased in proportion to its size - it benefits from the strong flavours to offset the oiliness of the fish.

The recipe that @Guineafowl21 mentioned with rui actually works very well with salmon - it doesn't taste remotely like rui, but has a strong enough flavour to stand up to it.
 
Guineafowl21 said:
What would you do with a ling? As I say, the skin is hard to crisp up, so best removed, then cook like cod/haddock?
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I would not buy ling as it is becoming endangered and we only ever serve sustainable fish as a matter of policy. It's a member of the cod family but worse than pollack in my view. (I know pollack is fashionable in restaurants operating to a budget, but to me it lacks flavour and is grey fleshed). With ling you must take the skin off and pin bone it if you want it to be edible. It would be well salted and put in the smoker, or filleted and used in a fish pie.
 
I just remembered, I did a stage in Spanish 1 star some years ago and they served ling. It was quite popular (but may be more plentiful there or then). They skinned and pin boned as a said, then cut into thick steaks. These were then "sun dried" which is Spanish for walked across the quay in the sun, prepped, heavily salted and put in the dehydrator at 60 degrees for 12 hours. As I recall it was served with set polenta and a quite light chilli oil sauce and fresh herbs.
 
A 22' inshore boat went out over a tide in Mount's Bay in the late 1800s and landed 1200 ling. I remember being in St. Mary's I.o.S. in the '60s seeing scores of large ling thrown away regularly.
 
Phil Pascoe said:
A 22' inshore boat went out over a tide in Mount's Bay in the late 1800s and landed 1200 ling. I remember being in St. Mary's I.o.S. in the '60s seeing scores of large ling thrown away regularly.
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It is stupidly wasteful, damages species, and still goes on. Things like scallop dredging should be banned. I'm all for quotas but throwing by-catch back into the sea, dead, is disgustingly wasteful.
 
Salting the ling sounds a good idea. I recently cut up some whisky barrel staves for firewood, and kept the sawdust, so perhaps it could be smoked and used in Cullen skink. I agree about pollack and coalfish (saithe). Fun to catch, boring to eat.

I’m quite fond of the old ling, having enjoyed hauling them up from the wrecks off Plymouth, and more recently, the broken ground of the Moray Firth. I didn’t know they were becoming endangered, but you can’t really throw them back as their swim bladders evert from the pressure change.

So I wonder if the word ‘sustainable’ can really be applied strictly to a species. To my mind, while making every effort to avoid non-target species, if you pull it up in a net, you should use it. Throwing it back half-dead because it’s not on the list is just making gull and crab food.
 
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Years ago we holidayed in a small sea side village in the Western Cape.
The only shop was small, think 6m x 6m.
It was right next to the slipway where the fishing boats landed.
You keep an eye open as to when the boats land, and then select your fish from the boat, Yellowtail, take it inside the shop where it was cleaned.
Back at the cottage it was butterflied, then rubbed with a mixture of apricot jam + mayonnaise + black pepper. This was all done on the Weber grill.
Into the Weber kettle (coals ready) and taken out after 15 minutes.
Fish on grill to the table with some side salad.
All that remained was skin and bones!

At the nearest town was a fish factory where we would buy fresh Red Snapper.
Stuffed with some garlic and herbs. Skin rubbed with salt.
Once out the Weber the salted skin, crispy, just pulled off.
 
Phil said:
Years ago we holidayed in a small sea side village in the Western Cape.
The only shop was small, think 6m x 6m.
It was right next to the slipway where the fishing boats landed.
You keep an eye open as to when the boats land, and then select your fish from the boat, Yellowtail, take it inside the shop where it was cleaned.
Back at the cottage it was butterflied, then rubbed with a mixture of apricot jam + mayonnaise + black pepper. This was all done on the Weber grill.
Into the Weber kettle (coals ready) and taken out after 15 minutes.
Fish on grill to the table with some side salad.
All that remained was skin and bones!

At the nearest town was a fish factory where we would buy fresh Red Snapper.
Stuffed with some garlic and herbs. Skin rubbed with salt.
Once out the Weber the salted skin, crispy, just pulled off.
Click to expand...
Some sort of marinade, then grill over coals, sounds like a good idea, thanks. I’ll need one of those mesh cages to hold the fish.

The chap has just brought round another ten Dorys, so it was ‘Dory and chips’ last night. Very nice. They’re quite easy to fillet. No bones.

I’m the only one buying them - it’s mad.
 
I quite like John Dory - if that is what they are. They sell readily down here and I put them on our menu sometimes. If you mean Dory as in the Vietnamese fish that you sometimes see imported, I've never had one.

Todays prep involved a 5kg wild salmon and a Kent chalk stream trout that is about 3kg. Plus a bunch of cod cheeks. The cod cheeks will be trimmed seasoned and deep fried in aerated tempura batter (foam gun is used to make the batter ultra light). Salmon is now descaled, filleted into two sides and is in a wet brine of salt, sugar and citrus and the trout has been filleted and deboned and is in the chiller too in a 3 to 1 demerara sugar and sel de gris dry brine. Both will be rinsed tomorrow and hardened off for 24 hours in the chiller and then cold smoked for about 12 hours. They will get used for two events next week. The fish have also yielded a few other portions and some belly fat. The latter will be sashimi later on.

If ever you see them Monk cheeks are also very good and super cheap. Skate cheeks are even cheaper and equally tasty but have a cartilage strip so need a bit more cooking.
 

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Tiger cat arrived during prep. He or she hangs out here a lot - no idea where it is supposed to live: no one owns cats. I duly handed over the skeletons and unwanted trimmings.
 
AJB Temple said:
I quite like John Dory - if that is what they are. They sell readily down here and I put them on our menu sometimes. If you mean Dory as in the Vietnamese fish that you sometimes see imported, I've never had one.

Todays prep involved a 5kg wild salmon and a Kent chalk stream trout that is about 3kg. Plus a bunch of cod cheeks. The cod cheeks will be trimmed seasoned and deep fried in aerated tempura batter (foam gun is used to make the batter ultra light). Salmon is now descaled, filleted into two sides and is in a wet brine of salt, sugar and citrus and the trout has been filleted and deboned and is in the chiller too in a 3 to 1 demerara sugar and sel de gris dry brine. Both will be rinsed tomorrow and hardened off for 24 hours in the chiller and then cold smoked for about 12 hours. They will get used for two events next week. The fish have also yielded a few other portions and some belly fat. The latter will be sashimi later on.

If ever you see them Monk cheeks are also very good and super cheap. Skate cheeks are even cheaper and equally tasty but have a cartilage strip so need a bit more cooking.
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It’s John Dory - I assumed the ‘John’ was optional, as in Jenny Wren.
 
I love smoked kipper, I was going to do it myself but then realised I'd have at least 15 species of wood to 'experiment' with and the option anxiety prevented me from doing it.
 
Anyone have any good ideas for smoked herring? I bought some the other day thinking it was smoked mackerel. I knew it didn't look right, but I assumed it was smoked with no artifial colouring.

We had some for dinner yesterday. I ate my piece, but didn't really enjoy it, and my partner, who likes fish (but doesn't eat meat) didn't finish hers.

There is at least one more generous portion in the fridge. It wasn't expensive, but I hate throwing food away. Does anyone know how I can make a piece of sad-looking, grey fish taste sensational?
S
 
Make a pate. Serve with cucumber and sour cream. It will be OK but not sensational.
Put in fish cakes with some salmon.
Use it to kidnap a nice cat. Ransom the cat.
 
Steve Maskery said:
Anyone have any good ideas for smoked herring? I bought some the other day thinking it was smoked mackerel. I knew it didn't look right, but I assumed it was smoked with no artifial colouring.

We had some for dinner yesterday. I ate my piece, but didn't really enjoy it, and my partner, who likes fish (but doesn't eat meat) didn't finish hers.

There is at least one more generous portion in the fridge. It wasn't expensive, but I hate throwing food away. Does anyone know how I can make a piece of sad-looking, grey fish taste sensational?
S
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Fish pie?
 
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