Angel fish – astonishingly versatile

AngelfishA couple of weeks ago, the new season of Master Chef SA started, and I was watching with half an eye, as I was preparing our supper – angel fish.  Imagine my surprise when the first episode concluded with a boot camp – on a wharf in the Cape Town harbour – with the contestants having to prepare a dish with, yes, angel fish!

Before we moved to McGregor, we used to eat fish regularly, and over the last 10 or so years, the range of fresh fish available in the few independent fishmongers (as opposed to large supermarket chains), has shrunk enormously.  The implications of this, beyond availability for home consumption, is profound for both our environment, and for small fishers in South Africa.  However, that’s a rant for another time and place.

Inversely proportional to the reduced choice, is the increased price.  When I first moved to Cape Town some 22 years ago, my adventure with cooking fresh fish began.  I used to ask the lady behind the counter what was nice and how to cook it.  Being cash strapped, decisions were price-driven.  Consequently, and because hake seemed boring (and not always cost effective, and I am not fond of snoek), choices were limited:  Gurnard (shad) and angel fish.  Both, I discovered, are great eating – and very underrated.  In the Western Cape, Gurnard is not frequently available, so angel fish became our usual, and almost most favourite fish.  It remains so.  Even after moving, we still go into our “old” fish monger (Plumstead Fisheries), when we are in Cape Town.  A friend who commutes, also goes into the shop to get fresh fish for us – she has now got to know Desiree who has looked after us so well for about ten or so years now.  However, I digress…

A simple supper

Returning to angel fish – we eat it at least once a week.  Angel fish is moderately flavoured and relatively firm;  the fillets are thin, if you have a medium sized fish, so they don’t take much cooking. Tom is very fond of cooking over the coals (braai or barbecue), and will do so at any opportunity.  Having grown up in a land-locked country, when we first met, eating sea fish was foreign, and the first fish meal I did for him, he ate “met lang tande” (with long teeth), and was pleasantly surprised.  The next task was to get him to braai it:  a typical Western Cape way of eating fish.  Needless to say, some nearly fourteen or so years later, he’s a convert.

All that’s a long way of telling you that nine times out of ten, our angel fish is braaied on the Weber, over a moderate to dying fire, skin side down, regularly basted with a mixture that always includes an appropriate herb, garlic, butter and olive oil.  Recently, I’ve been using my lemon and parsley pesto as a base for what what is commonly referred to as “the paint”.

This is a simple, easy meal accompanied by a garden salad and potatoes (or not) boiled in their skins.  Depending on the weather (or the season, my mood and what’s in the garden) I will make a parsley or tartare sauce or a salsa, so although we eat the same thing, often, it doesn’t get boring.

Cold fish or luscious leftovers?

With only two of us, we often have fish left over, and I’m not one to throw away good food.  Prepared over the coals, the cooled fish has a lovely, light smokey flavour.  We have, on occasion, taken cold angel fish as a contribution to a picnic – the first time, against Tom’s better judgement.  On one occasion, there was quite a quantity and he was certain that we’d have lots left over:  what would I do with that?  “Make fish cakes,” was my immediate response.  But there was none left – no fish cakes!  On that occasion, the “paint” consisted of olive oil, butter, a little garlic and some grated ginger.

Fish cakes

Fish cakes are really easy to make, even if a little messy towards the end, with the egg-dipping and crumbing.  That said, Fish Cakes they are worth it and they freeze well, making them a great stand by.  Fish cakes are also a good way of using up extra potato and parsley sauce, which is what I did when I had a surfeit of fish, a week or so ago.  To make them, break up the fish, and mash the potato and then mix the two together, well.  Add the parsley sauce (if you have it; it’s not mandatory) and a good handful of fresh, chopped parsley.  Ensure this is well mixed in, season and add a lightly beaten egg to bind.

Then divide into cakes.  I’m not a great judge of size by eye and always used to end up with a load of unevenly sized fish cakes.  Now, I prepare a tray, covered with a layer of grease-proof paper, and then use a cookie cutter as a mould.  I press the mixture firmly into the shape and then once I’ve used it all up, I roll each cake in flour, dip it in beaten egg and then roll it in commercial bread crumbs:   fish cakes ready to fry.  At this point you can freeze them if you have more than you need.

Fish cakes - ready

I love fish cakes.  For me, they are a rare but indulgent comfort food.  I’ll eat them with lashings of tomato sauce (ketchup) and peas.  I’m especially comforted when the peas are freshly picked and lightly boiled/blanched with a sprig of mint.

Angel fish paté

Of course, to make fish cakes, you need a relatively large quantity of left over fish.  Often this isn’t the case, and one way of using up little bits of left over fish is to make a paté.  This has become one of the most popular products that I sell at McGregor’s Saturday pop-up market.  As far as quantities are concerned, use your discretion….

The paté consists of the left over fish, a spritz of dry white wine, a dollop of plain, creamed cottage cheese, a sprinkling of chives (or if it’s winter, and the chives have died back, green onion leaves) as well as salt and pepper.  Mix that all together, and you have angel fish paté.   Of course you can serve it with biscuits and/or fresh bread, but I have also served it in a lettuce leaf with a baby salad as a starter.

A last word (or two)

The South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) is a World Wildlife Fund initiative and, among other things, aims to create awareness about marine conservation and encourage people to eat fish responsibly, ensuring not just the sustainability of our oceans, but also, one hopes the re-establishment of stocks.

Both Angel Fish and Gurnard are on SASSI’s green list – at the moment.

I loved what the Master Chef contestants did with their angel fish and am grateful for a slew of new ideas….

A lovely bunch of….

….parsley!

I love parsley. I’m not happy until my garden grows herbs, especially parsley. And the challenge of parsley is that it’s a slow grower and it can be temperamental. My mum also always had parsley in her garden – some of my earliest culinary memories are of being sent to pick parsley – usually just as she was about to serve dinner. She, however, only grew the curly parsley and used it mostly as a garnish and for parsley sauce. I, on the other hand, prefer to grow the flat leaf, Italian parsley – it has a stronger flavour. Parsley is also a fabulous flavour enhancer, so if you are short of a particular herb, add parsley!

The Prima Donna

100_3129Given parsley’s prima donna status (in my experience, anyway), when it just grows, one just let’s it grow as it’s likely to thrive while one’s seedlings, carefully nurtured, and planted in the optimum position just do ok. So, we have self-sewn parsley all over the garden and when our red onion seedlings needed to be planted out, The Husband had to negotiate a parsley plant – in more ways than one!

Pesto al limone e prezzemolo 

It seemed such a waste to hoick out such a beautiful plant and not do anything with it (…the Scottish blood and all that jazz…), so I decided to make Pesto al limone e prezzemolo (aka parsley and lemon pesto). This is a divine, fresh and versatile pesto, and which has just deepened my love affair with parsley. I now try to have a permanent stock of this in the fridge. We use it as the foundation for basting sauces for fish (we braai* fish regularly);  when we roast a chicken (on the Weber, of course), I usually make a stuffing to go under the skin of the breast, and Pesto al limone e prezzemolo is now the base on which I build this stuffing. It’s also divine on warm bread…..

The recipe comes from Katie Caldesi’s The Italian Cookery Course which was a gift for my 50th birthday from good friend and graphic designer, Jaynie Lea.  This is also the book from which I have learned important tips that have improved my home-made pasta and inspired me to start making pizza dough and bread. But more of those, anon….476223_10151622920147848_328187723_o

To make this pesto, you need equal quantities of dry bread crumbs (stale ciabatta is best) and parsley, zest and juice of a lemon, a clove of garlic as well as olive oil. Whizz all of this together until you have a paste and then either use immediately or store. The olive oil and the vitamin C content of both the parsley and the lemon add to the shelf life, so this keeps well.

100_3130Tips:

  • If you are short of parsley leaves, do use the stalks (the whole parsley plant is parsley-flavoured), but before adding them to your food processor, chop them a bit otherwise you’ll be left with pesto with parsley stalks!
  • To make breadcrumbs, put slices of bread into a cool oven (about 40°C) for an hour or so, or until it’s dry, and then whizz in a food processor. If the crumbs are still “damp” put them on a baking tray and back into the oven for a little longer.
  • And pesto is a great way to use up herbs towards the end of summer to use through the winter – if you make sure that peso is always “sealed” with a good layer of olive oil, they keep much longer than one expects – just another Katie Caldesi tip!

And Jayne, thank you for the gift that keeps on giving – I still get a thrill when my produce looks like the picture in the book – and the passata, below, was my first attempt – last year!

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…and you see that “Fiona’s Favourites” was already “branding” my produce…

* this is the Afrikaans and South African word for “barbecue”

Small dinner parties

We have had occasion, this month, to host two very different dinner parties.  One was a birthday for a friend of ours and her teenage daughter, and the other for new-ish friends into whose home we have been warmly welcomed.  The birthday celebration was mid-week and relatively impromptu, while the other was a little longer in the planning and coincided with the Easter long weekend.  I thought I’d share with you how these two, rather different dinners were put together – from the planning to the table setting.

First off, most of our entertaining is with food that doesn’t take us away from our guests.  What is the fun in having people to share a meal with you if you’re banished to the kitchen because the what you’re cooking demands all your attention?

Simple does, however, require some planning and advance preparation. One of Pearli_Weber_2014the easiest meals to produce with the minimum of fuss is a roast:  a lot can be done beforehand and, depending on what you’re roasting, it’s looking after itself when (and for a while after) your guests arrive.  We always do our roasts on the Weber which has two benefits – you can roast your vegetables under the meat which also has the most wonderful smoky flavour.

Tom and I are a great team in which there is good division of labour:  he looks after the fire, and the nyama (the Nguni word for meat) and the vegetables that are cooked in the juices that run out of the meat as it cooks.  The menu is also usually a joint effort and its planning takes into consideration our guests and the time we have at our disposal.  Entertaining during the week and with little notice can be a challenge.  It’s not a 10-minute trip to the local supermarket or butcher to get something that’s not in the pantry cupboard, nor is there a premium food store from which one can select items to make up a gourmet meal in the blink of an eye.  Then, I admit that I an my own worst enemy:  I work until late-ish, so time is at a premium and then, to make matters worse, I’m not good at taking short cuts.  So, acknowledging that I make the rod for my own back, I cope by doing careful planning which starts a couple of days (or more) before the event, itself.

The birthday dinner

Table_April2014As her birthday was on a week night with school and work the following day, this was a simple, two course meal with a Brut Methode Cap Classique from Lords, a local winery, as an aperitif. We did a topside of beef on the Weber with fresh, creamed spinach from the garden.  Of course, there was gravy made by deglazing the pan in which the roasted potatoes and butternut and had been cooked.  Potentially the most complicated part of the meal (partly because I’m not a great fan of desserts) was the berry crisp:  a relatively healthy dessert made with frozen mixed berries and topped with a butter and oat crisp, and which was baked for an hour or so in the oven.  The great thing about this dessert that it must rest for an hour or so, which makes it good to do in advance (I did it as soon as I came out of the office, and it went into the oven while everything else was being prepared).  Serve it with cream or Greek yoghurt.

So, in addition to South Africa’s answer to a good Champagne, this simple meal was special because I set a table that was different, and which included items that are special to us, and have their own stories to tell.

 

 Long Weekend Get-together

Since moving to the village, we have been fortunate to meet new and interesting people.  Not all live permanently in the village, so getting together can be tricky, and we were delighted to discover that over the Easter weekend, our respective calendars were included the same free evening.  Wanting to 100_2836reciprocate their hospitality, we decided to stick to our tried and trusted recipe and have a roast – leg of pork – on the Weber, with the usual suspects happily cooked underneath it.  This time we had wine braised leeks (leeks are to be the subject of another post…) and the traditional apple sauce and gravy with the roast.2014-04-13 18.23.03Because it was a holiday weekend, we decided that we needed three courses, and in South Africa, it is traditional to eat pickled fish over Easter.  The thing about pickled fish is that you cannot make it today, to eat tomorrow – it must pickle – so I made it the weekend before.  People think it’s difficult to make, partly because it’s often deep fried before being placed into the pickling sauce.  I don’t do this:  I don’t like deep fried anything, so the fish is baked (a tip from a Cape Town local) and then the warm sauce is poured over it.  Allow this to cool and then store in the fridge.  Because of the vinegar and sugar content, pickled fish can be kept comfortably (in glass rather than metal or plastic) for as long as three months.  If you have the fridge space and you like pickled fish, make a big batch!

The dessert was also something typically South African:  pureed brandied peaches whipped into Greek yoghurt and topped with cream.  Both the dessert and the starter were plated, which, along with a pretty table, added to the sense of occasion.

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So, two quite different dinners that were variations on single menu:

To begin – MCC or pickled fish
The main bit – Roast beef or pork with seasonal vegetables and the traditional accompaniments
To end – Mixed berry crisp or Brandied peach whip

And the best part: because quite a bit was done before people arrived, we spent virtually all our time actually with our guests!