Hints and Tips: Cooking Fish

• Fish for the Pot

• Spider Crabs

• Preparing and Cooking Rays

• Mackerel "Blackened Fish"

• The Best Smoked Mackerel in the World

• Smoked Mackerel Pate

• Bass with Garlic, Chilli and Thyme

• Fish Chowder to Impress

• Thai Fish in Red Coconut Sauce

• Five Thousand Fish

• Filleting Fish (Link)
  

Fish for the Pot

If you are going to keep a few fish for a meal, there is more to it than bashing them on the head and slinging them in a bag. Although to be honest, that is what most of us did until the Japanese, in their search for the ultimate sashimi, discovered that if a fish died calmly the meat was much better. If you want to have great fish fillets, here is what to do.

As soon as the fish is landed, it must be killed by pushing a spike into its central brain just behind the eye. This is quick and humane. You can either use an Iki Jime spike if you know a Japanese chap who has one, or make your own by filing an old, slender screwdriver into a spike. Push the spike into the right hand side of the head and wiggle it around to destroy the brain. The fish will go limp (unsurprisingly). The heart will carry on pumping for a while, so to create the whitest fillets, the fish needs to be bled. You can do this by cutting the gill rakers with a knife or scissors, or cutting through the narrow bit of belly right under the gills where there is an artery. Let the fish bleed for a while.

Next, gut the fish and take out the gills. Wash in some sea water, then ideally, pack it in ice in a cooler, stuffing some ice into the belly cavity. If you do this, the fish will remain edible for up to ten days. For every hour left out of ice, the fish will last a day less. If you don't have a box of ice, at least pack it with a few frozen 2 litre drinks bottles around it. Go home and enjoy the best fish you have ever tasted.

Spider Crabs

You are bound to catch these sooner or later in the Eastern Solent area, and if they are big enough they are superb eating. Here is how to do it. Firstly, catch one (use a landing net as they may drop as soon as they break the surface. If it is large enough (minimum 130mm from between the eyes to the back of the carapace for males), keep it cool and out of water. As soon as you can, cook it. First, scrub it with a vegetable brush to remove the worst of the muck that collects on them, then kill it with a spike pushed through the centre of the underside and wiggled. On males, go in at the end of the pointed flap. It will go limp. Put it in a big pot of boiling water with a handful of salt added, and boil for 25 minutes. Take it out and plunge in cold water, then stand it on end to drain. There will be plenty of gunge floating about, just wash this off, it looks a bit horrid but it is OK. Cool it as fast as you can, and keep it in the fridge - eat within a couple of days.

To "pick" a spider crap, pull off all the legs and claws, break each segment with a hammer or rolling pin, and pull the white meat out. To get at the white body meat, prise off the shell and peel off and remove the feathery gills that are all around the body. Wash your hands after, these can harbour nasties. Then get to work on the leg sockets, that is where there is a load of white meat. There is some edible gooey brown meat around the shell if you fancy it. Getting at the socket meat is fiddly but worth it. Each leg socket has a thin shell around it, so you have to cut or pick this open and flick the meat out - it is best to use an old bent skewer and flick the meat into a bowl.

All this will take ages, and you will scoff what you have prepared in a minute or two. Be careful though, if the cat gets there first and scoffs it, you will probably kill it in a fit of rage and then you would have some explaining to do.

Preparing and Cooking Rays

There is a lot of mystery and nonsense around cooking cartilageous (as opposed to bony) fish species. This is usually related to worries and fears about the smell of ammonia that comes from the flesh of rays and dogfish. There are ways of dealing with this involving soaking in various liquids, but the easiest, and most reliable, is to prepare your fish portions then freeze them for a couple of weeks or more. Once thawed, the smell will have gone and you will have some firm, white fish ready for your recipe.

So how do you prepare a ray wing? First catch your ray, of course. You will need a reasonably sized ray to get a couple of portions from, so put any back that are less than the size of a "Bag for Life" or Lidl carrier - that's as good a measure as any. Kill it humanely with a hefty whack between the eyes, then with a very sharp knife and a firm hold, cut each wing from the body along the edge of the soft central guts area. You will find it easy to run the knife along the hard inner edge of the wing, except in the middle of the back where there is a sort of bony bridge. Cut through this and you will have 2 separate wings. To save space, trim the thin edge of the wings back to a point where there is flesh covering the bones, otherwise you will overcrowd your cooking pan for no good reason. Rays are very slimy so all this will be a bit messy - and take care with the knife if it's all sliding about!

Freeze the wings and when you are ready for a meal, thaw them thoroughly. The next problem to overcome is the covering of rough skin. The professional fishmongers have a lot of skill and very sharp knives, and they cut the skin away before putting the wings on the slab. You can do this too, if you have a razor-sharp knife, by peeling the skin back and slicing between the flesh and the underside of the skin. There is a quicker way though. Take your largest frying pan and fill with boiling water. Heat the pan to keep the water simmering and put the wings in the water. After a couple of minutes, take them out (you may have to do them one at a time) and scrape the skin off both sides of the wing with a large knife. The skin with come off easily.

Now throw the water away and put a large lump of butter and some olive oil to heat in the pan. Dust the skinned wings in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, and shallow fry in the oil and butter until you can lift the flesh from the central bone. You will have to turn the wings over halfway through to cook both sides. Keep the wings warm while you do the next, and most important bit. Take a large slug of double cream (a small sized pot does two wings) and heat through in the pan, stirring to collect all the buttery, crumbly, fishy scrapings from your frying job. Don't boil it, as soon as it looks hot and steamy, it's done. Pour over your cooked wings and serve with potatoes and a green veg. The great thing is, this recipe is not at all scientific - no measurements to get wrong, if it looks like it needs more of anything, just give it more.

Mackerel "Blackened Fish"

This recipe is perfect for those that like a spicy dish but don't necessarily like the taste of mackerel. Blackened Fish is a Cajun style of cooking where fish fillets are rolled in spices then fried briefly in a searingly hot frying pan. This makes the outside crispy and the inside stays succulent.

Takes 10 minutes, serves 2. You need:

2 large mackerel or 4 small, filleted and dried on a paper towel
Seasoning:
1 teaspoon paprika
half teaspoon salt
half teaspoon garlic powder or fine granules
half teaspoon onion powder
half teaspoon white pepper
half teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram
50gm clarified butter or ghee

The fish will be fried in hot butter, but at a high temperature ordinary butter burns and goes black and nasty. Clarified butter can be made - you just melt butter and pour off the clear part to use, and throw away the white bits. Or you can buy it readymade in the form of ghee in the ethnic food section of a large supermarkets, or much cheaper in asian food shops. It keeps for ages in the fridge and can be used for any frying job, particularly when making curries.

It really is this simple. Heat the ghee in a frying pan until it smokes. Mix the spices and spread out on a plate. Coat the fillets in the the spice mix on both sides. Put them in the frying pan, then after a minute or so, turn over and fry the other side. If the side you turned up is brown and crispy looking, a minute was fine. If not, give it a bit longer. Turn over and repeat.

That's all! Serve with whatever you like, I like new potatoes and french beans, but rice and sweet corn would be ethnic, or potato wedges. Drink plenty of cold beer with this and listen to some good Southern music, and wonder why you hadn't eaten mackerel this way before. (Adapted from Linda Doesner)

The Best Smoked Mackerel in the World

I found a fascinating web site on smoking food: www.3men.com and discovered the difference a well-seasoned brine mix makes to the final taste. It is well worth the little extra trouble. Here is what you do (it is easier to measure dry ingredients in a measuring jug). Make a brine mix of:

4 Litres of water at room temperature
500mL salt
250mL brown sugar
75mL lemon juice
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon allspice
2 teaspoons white pepper

- or proportional to your quantity of fish. Half that will be enough for a couple of dozen fillets.

Stir well to dissolve the salt and spices. Gut and fillet the mackerel. Clean off any blood or slime with a kitchen towel and soak the fillets in the brine for 30 minutes. If it is a hot day, put this in the refrigerator, and in any case keep it out of reach of cats or dogs. They seem to find the whole process of smoking fish very interesting. When the brining time is up, take the fillets out of the brine, pat dry and lay on the smoker grill tray skin side down (see how to build a smoker in "Odds and Ends"). You can tuck them closely together as they will shrink slightly when cooking. Light the meths and cook for 20 minutes. Check the fish is cooked through, it almost certainly will be unless you have monster fillets, then allow to cool (still keeping them away from cats and dogs). Refrigerate when cold, and eat within 3 days. Alternatively, freeze the smoked fillets wrapped in foil or greaseproof paper. They keep very well, unlike uncooked mackerel.

Smoked Mackerel Pate

The easiest dish in the world. Take your best-ever smoked mackerel as above, and remove all bones and skin. Mix with cream cheese (Philadelphia or supermarket equivalent) in a ratio of twice as much fish as cream cheese. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, but go easy on the salt and pepper until you have tasted it – your brine may have made the fish spicy enough already. Serve with toast fingers, or, if you really want to impress, make canapés with little circles of toast topped with smoked mackerel, a sliver of gherkin, and a sprinkle of fresh chopped parsley. Very posh.

Bass with Garlic, Chilli and Thyme

Takes 15 minutes, serves 2. You need:

Two fillets of Bass (I like to use portion-sized slices of a thick fillet from a 3-4lb fish)
Glug of olive oil
Splash of white wine
Sprigs of fresh thyme
2 cloves of garlic, crushed with the flat of a knife blade
Lemon juice
Half a red chilli, seeds removed, chopped.

Heat the oil in a heavy pan, then fry the fillets skin side down until crisp and brown, turn over and repeat. Then reduce the heat, add wine, chilli, garlic and thyme. Cover with a lid and simmer for 7-8 minutes. Keep an eye on it and splash a bit more wine in if it looks like drying out. Add a squeeze of lemon juice to the juices, sprinkle with sea salt and serve. Goes well with green beans and new potatoes. (Thank you Mitchell Tonks)

Fish Chowder to Impress

Takes 35 minutes plus chopping, serves 4-6. You need:

350g white fish fillet (pollack, whiting, cod etc.) cut into chunks
45g butter
Dash olive oil
1 onion chopped
2 celery sticks, sliced
4 rashers bacon, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
1 potato, cut into cubes
1 bay leaf
Sprig of thyme
2 heaped tablespoons plain flour
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
900ml milk
Lemon juice
110g frozen peas, thawed
Salt and pepper

Gently fry the onion, celery, carrot, bacon and potato for five minutes in the oil and butter. Add the thyme and bay leaf, cover and let it sweat for a further five minutes. Sprinkle with flour and turmeric, stir for 30 seconds then add the milk. Heat and keep stirring, until it simmers. Add salt and pepper. Simmer for 15-20 minutes - if it gets too thick, add a bit more milk. Drop in the fish and peas, and cook for five minutes after it has come back to the simmer. Add lemon juice, adjust seasoning and serve. This is nice with crusty bread, and a sprinkle of nutmeg and grated cheese on top. (Thank you William Black)

Thai Fish in Red Coconut Sauce

Takes 10 minutes, serves 4. You need:

400g white fish fillet (pollack, whiting, cod etc.) cut into chunks
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons red Thai curry paste
1 tablespoon fish sauce (Nam Pla)
450ml coconut milk
20 cherry tomatoes
20 fresh basil leaves
Salt and pepper

Season the flour and toss the fish chunks in it to coat. Put the oil in a frying pan, place on a medium heat and fry the fish in the oil for 3-4 minutes. Mix the coconut milk with the garlic, curry paste and fish sauce. Pour over the fish in the frying pan, and add the cherry tomatoes. When the mixture has started to boil turn the heat down and simmer for five minutes. Scatter with shredded basil leaves and serve with Thai rice. Couldn't be easier. (I can't remember where this recipe came from but several similar ones exist in Thai cookery books so it is authentic).

Five Thousand Fish

Have you ever wondered how to serve a fish meal to a hungry family when you only have one or two? Jesus managed to feed five thousand followers by the sea of Galilee with two fish and five buns, but he used miracles. This is a recipe that does not involve cheating. It doesn't exactly feed people either, but it makes a nice starter and leaves them happy. Use plaice, dabs, flounder, small pollack, bass, whiting, cod or similar.

Make an Indian batter by measuring about 50g of gram (chickpea) flour, which you can buy in the better supermarkets these days. Add a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of garam masala. Mix with enough cold water to make a batter the consistency of thick cream. Heat a pan of oil to frying temperature, which you can measure by dropping a small cube of bread in and if it goes nicely brown in 30 seconds its fine. The oil only needs to be a couple of cms deep.

Take your fish, skin and fillet it and cut into strips. Coat in the batter mix and drop in the hot oil one by one. Don't over-do the quantity as they will stick together and cool the oil. Take them out when golden, and drain on kitchen paper. Wait a minute for the oil to get hot again then repeat the performance until you have a basket of Indian fish strips in a spicy batter. Serve with a scattering of chopped coriander leaf for a posh touch, and a bowl of mango chutney to dip. Scrummy. If you have made too much batter, you can make vegetable fritters and onion bhagees - its the same batter. (My own recipe)

Filleting Fish

There is no better way of describing than showing, and these videos are excellent - almost every species you are likely to catch is demonstrated by an expert. Look here