Sardine, fennel, linguine

River Cafe recipe that uses fennel, parsely, garlic with the sardines. These sardines cost merely 80p. They were fat Cornish sardines, and tasted lovely.
The recipe cooks the finely sliced fennel with the pasta, which is good - but would be great if you griddled it alongside the rest of the dish and served it all at once.

I found gutting and filleting the sardines a cinch, and would definitely get them again, they are juicy, tasty and very satisfying to eat.

Dab, trout, hot salad

After seeing the Fish programmes on Channel 4, when I spotted Dab on sale in Sainsbury's, I bought one to try. It was very cheap, £1.11 for a fish.
I roasted it whole, along with some trout, in a little white wine, butter, lemon, bay leaf, s+p.
When I started to remove the flesh from the bone, there was a large section which was hard, and odd. I think its the roe. I skipped it, which meant there was very little eating to be had from the fish - you'd need lots of them. The white flesh was delicate and nice tho'.
I served it with Batavia lettuce, hot potatoes in lemon juice, zest, red wine vinegar, s+p - and the roasting juices. Tasty.

Cod parcels, Rocket creme fraiche

Lovely dinner - we found reduced price cod loins and wrapped them in filo with tarragon. Baked and served with saute potatoes, rocket creme fraiche, watercress and mustard salad.

Roast trout with fennel and lemon

I roasted the trout with lemon juice, olive oil, butter, seasoning, thyme, and spread over some finely sliced fennel. Wrapped it in foil and roasted for 25 minutes.

The fennel needed pre-cooking, and the texture wasn't soft and sweet as I'd wanted. Ideally I would blanch and griddle it first, then add to the fish parcel.

The dish was good tho' as the trout was just beautiful. Served with brown basmati and wild rice, kale and spinach and some leftover roasted tomatoes.

Hot trout salad with fennel

 Set up the trout to roast in the oven - wrapped in foil with lemon, salt, olive oil, pepper, parsley, fennel seeds.

Steam some Charlotte potatoes.

Make a dressing with lemon juice, lemon zest, red wine vinegar, olive oil, seasoning.

Assemble the salad - spinach, baby leaves from living salad box, fennel - finely sliced.



When the potatoes are cooked, immediately coat them in the dressing. Then add potatoes and dressing over the greens.
Flake the trout, and pour the roasting juices from the foil into the salad.

Place the trout on top of the salad. Garnish with long stems of parsley.

The fennel and potatoes pick up a lot of the dressing flavour, and the fish was superb. A light, tasty winter salad.

Plaice

Forgive the presentation - this was a late night meal - but was surprisingly delicious, in fact one of my favourites so far. The plaice was just superb - a total treat. I didn't know it was such a gorgeous fish. After so much rich food, I wanted something very simple: roasted fish with a little lemon, butter, bay, seasoning; steamed potatoes with their skins on; steamed spring greens with a little butter.
The flavours had enough space to work and it felt unforced. Humble, surprising, and generous.

Mackerel and Sea Beet

 Sea beet was new to me. We found some that had been foraged for in the wild - being sold at the Farmer's Market. It tasted lovely - quite thick leaves which did have some similarity to seaweed when cooked. Tasted like greens, but not earthy greens. Very nice, would definitely have again.
The mackerel was delicious - and i'm not usually a fan - but I'd seen a recipe that inspired me, which i then couldn't recall, but by then the fish was bought. Again from the Farmer's market, it was deliciously fresh and delicately flavoured, not the big fat meaty oily hit i was half-expecting. Great. Just roasted with lemon, salt, parsley, scant olive oil.