sardines

Vegans, avert your eyes right now.

I’m going to talk about the glories of flesh, food that stares back at you eyeball to eyeball and the smell of a once living creature caramelising on the grill.

I’m not really; I just needed to get those words out of my system. Despite abstaining from meat I love fresh fish, especially cooked whole on the bone. While I remember sharing with my brother the joys of a whole fish, deep fried and bathed in a Thai red curry sauce, for the rest of my family it has always been the anonymity of fillets with barely a hint of the creature that sacrificed itself for our pleasure. At Christmas when I barbecued a snapper, I knew I’d have to serve each of them the white flesh, free of any bones, with the eyes averted.

Such a thing is near impossible with sardines. Sure you can buy the dark fleshed, itty-bitty fillets. Tiny things that just take seconds to cook. But the fishmonger had the freshest looking sardines this week, just aching to be barbecued.

While on a moral level I understand that eating another being may be wrong, so I think it is important to be conscious when consuming them. I want to honour the noble fish, be cognizant of its unwitting sacrifice and fully respect its beauty.

The skin is glorious scale-free silver, with flashes of rainbow colours. It feels firm to the touch. The eyes are clear. Only a small slit is need to remove the organs from its belly, a quick wash in cool water, then pat dry. As you need at least half a dozen per person for a meal, it’s just as well the process is quick and easy.

Stephanie Alexander has a simple suggestion on how to cook this little fish, simply wrap in a vine leaf, secure it with a toothpick and grill over the coals. When I first made these years ago, not long after I became the owner of the aging grape vine, I cooked them on a hibachi. As much as I miss old fashioned barbecuing over glowing embers, the immediacy of the gas model means we cook outdoors more often.





A simple BBQ dinner for two

Scrub the skin of two big, organic potatoes and bake in a hot oven for about 25 minutes, til half cooked. Cut in thick slices then toss with olive oil, fresh rosemary, sea salt and black pepper.

Turn on the barbecue.

Cook the potatoes on a hot plate for a good 10 minutes a side til golden. Toss a bunch of asparagus in the remaining oil and cook for the last minute or too as well.

The fishmonger also had some dear little whiting, so fresh and inviting. I figured on 2 whiting for the SE, 1 for me plus 4-5 sardines each. (The cats got some sardine sashimi and were very happy – 14 little fish cost about $2.60 so slipping them the odd few is no luxury).

On a hot grill cook the whiting (gutted, rinsed and patted dry with a slice or two of lemon in its belly) for about 4 minutes aside, likewise the vine leaf wrapped sardines.

To eat the sardines, remove the toothpick and pull away the now charred leaf. Hold the fish with your hands and slide the fragrant flesh off with your teeth, a side at a time.




Thank you little fishies, you made two humans and a couple of felines very happy.

another tagine of sorts

To initiate a tagine into useful existence it needs to be soaked for 24 hours then left to dry for a further hour or so. Realising this the other morning, it became clear that the dish I’d planned to christen the tagine with was just not going to happen. Undeterred I went ahead and made a harisa of sorts from our home grown chillies, using the spices I liked that loosely fit this Middle Eastern classic. The resulting meal was slow cooked in the trusty iron pot and came out just fine.

Stripped back harisa paste

6 medium hot red chillies
6 plump cloves of garlic
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
salt
oil

Toast the seeds in a pan, swirling all the time so they don’t burn. After a couple of minutes the aroma will tell you they are cooking nicely. Keep swirling until the coriander seeds begin to brown. Remove immediately from the pan (residual heat = burnt seeds) and grind with a mortar and pestle.

Chop the chillies into quarters (if you really don’t like the heat, deseed or use less chillies) and process with the garlic, a touch of salt and a drizzle of oil. Throw in the pounded roasted seeds and whiz til you have a nice paste. The consistency I aimed for was runny enough to process easily but a paste rather than a slurry. I used raw sesame oil not necessarily out of authenticity, just because we’ve got a surplus of it at the moment.

The raw paste had a kick but a nice rounded flavour from the other herbs as well. Given that I have a heavy hand when it comes to heat, this quantity of paste would be enough for a meal of about 6 people with good tolerance, or two meals of 4 for those who like things a little milder.

Fish and vegetable ‘tagine’
(for 2-3 people)
Other than the harisa, most of the ingredients can be improvised, this is just a stew afterall!

vegetable oil
1-2 tablespoons of harisa
1 onion or 2 leeks, roughly sliced (I used 1 red onion and a baby leek in need of eating)
1 medium, sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 medium fennel bulb, sliced into wedges
2 Japanese eggplants
6 large peeled tomatoes, roughly chopped (or if you don’t happen to have them in your garden I am sure a cans worth would be fine)

400 gm (200-250 gm per person) of white fish (I used flathead)
salt to taste

tahini

Rice, couscous or crusty bread to serve.

This is a slow cooked meal so allow at least 2 hours to cook or prepare. If I was going to do this in a tagine in the oven I’d allow 3 hours of cooking, starting in a cold oven.

Put a heavy based pot on low-medium heat, add a tablespoon of oil then fry off the harisa. Just a minute or two is enough. Add the onion or leeks, stir about for a while, then the rest of the vegetables. Once they are coated in the harisa, add the tomatoes. If they aren’t very juicy add some water or stock to make sure the vegetables are covered. Cover with a lid and once it has come to a gentle simmer put the heat way down low. Give it a stir every once and a while and check there is enough liquid. I’d suggest you aim for 90 minutes minimum. When the vegetables are tender, add the fish and cook for 3-6 minutes depending on the size of your chunks. Check for taste, season with salt if necessary (it will probably need a teaspoon or two of sea salt).

Serve on top of rice (it went well with brown rice) or couscous or just eat it with chunks of a decent, crusty bread. Drizzle a little tahini (sesame seed paste) on top before you dive in. This adds a lovely bit of body to the stew.

Oh boy this was good!

Some obvious variations: celery, carrots, potato, preserved lemons, fresh coriander to serve. Any firm white fish would work well but for the lovers of mussels and other things in shells they would be a winner too. If you want to make sure no shell or grit sullies your dish, cook the mussels etc separately in boiling water, then drain through muslin before adding to the cooked dish.

Enjoy.

cooking with fire

What is it about barbecues that is associated with the domain of men? I’ve never lived with a barbecuing fanatic before, which could be why I have got to this age of life before a gas fired beauty has come into my life. The SE loves the new barbie but, at least is theory, is happy to hand over the reigns at any time. So last night was my turn to be in charge of the new, backyard, basic model, grilling machine.

The most obvious place to start was a whole fish and one of those grill cages made to contain such a beast. The sultry weather of late makes me think of Asian flavours, especially as there was a bunch of coriander in the fridge in need of using. While cruising the net I found this great guide in Taste on how to barbecue whole fish and was thrilled to find they’d included a version using the flavours I had imagined. I’ve altered the method and a few of the ingredients from the original recipe.

Barbecued whole fish with coriander and fish sauce

First catch your fish, or visit your fishmonger. Our fish grill comfortably accommodated a 1.4 kg red snapper. Get the good people at the fish shop to clean, gut and de-scale the creature before taking it home. Look for a 1-2 kg fish with firm flesh; snapper is always a winner in this house.

1-2 kg whole fish
Vegetable oil
Fresh coriander
Fresh Vietnamese mint
1-2 red chillies
1-2 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup lime juice
1 – 1.5 tabs fish sauce
2 tsp palm sugar
1-2 tsp roasted sesame oil (optional)

Take your fish, pat it dry inside and out with paper towels. Make slashes through the thickest part of the flesh, to help both the heat and flavour penetrate.

Take a handful of coriander/cilantro (leaves and stalks) and another of Vietnamese mint (or regular mint), 1 sliced chilli and a clove of garlic thinly sliced and stuff the belly of the fish.

Combine the lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and sesame oil in the bowl. Play with the quantities til you have a favourable balance of salt, acid and sweetness. I like a dash of sesame oil these days to add a touch of smoky depth to the flavour. Using some extra herbs (coriander, mint, chilli and garlic if you like) chop finely and add to your marinade and combine well. Use some of the marinade to brush the fish on both sides, pushing the sauce into the slashes as well. There will be a lot of marinade left over, this is to pour on the fish once it is cooked. If you wish you can leave the fish, covered in a pan or on a board, for 10-20 minutes to let it soak up a little of the marinade. As it is more a gentle painting of sauce, rather than a bath, the timing doesn’t matter too much.

Take a fish grill gadget and brush or rub it with some vegetable oil to stop the fish from sticking. Gently place the fish in the grill and close it.

Fire up the open grill side of the barbecue (rather than the flat plate). Give it five minutes to warm up before adding the fish. For this sized fish I cooked each side for 8 minutes on moderate heat, then a final 2 minutes on high.

When cooked, carefully remove the fish from the grill and slip onto a serving plate. Pour the rest of the marinade over the fish immediately.

To Serve

I made a double quantity of marinade and used it as a dressing for a simple noodle salad with rice noodles, toasted cashews, cucumber and generous handfuls of coriander and Vietnamese mint.

Arrange the noodle salad on the plate, then top with chunks of fish. Perfect!

I also grilled some eggplant straight from the garden to serve with the meal.


The fish was perfect. The skin was crunchy, salty and beautifully grilled. The noodle salad reinforced the subtle flavours of the fish and solicited four “This is f**king fantastic” gasps from the SE.

A winner!



One side cooked, the eggplants doing their bit beside it