Roasted dab with shellfish, samphire and brown butter

With my last blog post taking the best part of a week to make, it’s a refreshing change that this recipe is one of the simplest that I have ever written. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending hours in the kitchen making something complicated, but I only get the chance to do that every so often and most of the time I’ll get back from work and just chuck something in the oven. And this was exactly what happened here. 

I’ve recently started a new job working with Jonathan Norris in Victoria Park. As a business that I have championed loads as a customer previously, I’m loving being involved on a more hands on level; for someone like me it’s just fantastic to be surrounded by such top quality produce. As I’m new to trade though I’ve had a lot of quick learning to do, and I can tell you that it’s a totally different thing to gently fillet a fish in the calm of your own kitchen than when there’s a paying customer peeping over your shoulder! I’ll also be expanding my recipe writing, and in the near future we are launching a blog with fish dishes throughout the seasons. Even just a few weeks in, my whole perception of shopping for fish has been turned upside down. I often agonised for weeks thinking up dishes designed for specific fish and always visited the fishmonger with a preconceived idea. I now know to be much more open-minded. That much lauded phrase ‘catch of the day’ really does exist, and sometimes we have been able to buy a certain species of fish that is extra-special. 

And yesterday at the market stall, the humble dab was one of those fish. As I had never cooked or even tried one before, Jon suggested that I took one home for dinner. To say my mind was blown would be an understatement. When the slab is full of glistening seabass, turbot and red mullet these dull-looking, wallet friendly flat fish are easily overlooked, but the quality of eating was just sensational. When produce is that fresh creating a recipe is a doddle; cook simply with a few well-matched ingredients. 

White fish with brown-butter, shellfish and loads of lemon is an all-time classic, and it is often difficult to want anything else. So nothing new here, just a deeply, deeply satisfying meal. I have talked up the simplicity, and the only thing that slows the preparation is the purging of those inconvenient clams. To create a lovely mixture of seafood (we cringed when I sarcastically described this as a fricassee…) I would promote their inclusion and attempting this timely process. Ideally you would soak them slowly whilst at work, but alternatively leave them out and bulk up with the other shellfish. Either way, once that hurdle is climbed this meal is ready to stuff in your face within a matter of minutes. 

Serves 2 

Ingredients:

For the dab:

2 whole dab, gutted and trimmed if required 
40g butter, cut into small cubes 
3 lemons, two sliced into thin rounds 
Olive oil 

For the shellfish:

4 live razor clams 
1 handful live cockles, plus a little flour for purging 
1 handful live clams 
1 handful live whelks 

For the brown butter sauce:

100g butter 
½ a lemon, juice only 
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, finely chopped 

For the samphire:

2 handfuls of samphire 
1 garlic clove, finely chopped 
20g butter 
½ a lemon, juice only 

 
Prepare the shellfish first. Purge the cockles for at least a few hours in plenty of water combined with a small amount of flour. Change the water a few times during this process to try and get rid of as much grit as possible. Rinse the other shellfish lightly to clean. 

When ready to start cooking, heat a medium-sized saucepan to a high heat and when hot, add the razor clams and a splash of water. Cover, give the pan a good shake and steam for a minute or two until the shells open. Pour the clams into a bowl topped with a sieve to collect the cooking liquid and allow to cool. Repeat this process with the clams and cockles. When you just have the whelks left, add 500ml of water to the pan and salt well. Bring to the boil, then simmer the whelks for 3-4 minutes. Drain the whelks but this time do not reserve the cooking liquid. Trim the hard feet from the whelks and razor clams, separating the firm edible tube of flesh from the latter and cutting into thin strips. Leave some of the other shellfish in their shells and pick the rest, then set aside. 

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C. 

Line an oven dish big enough for both fish with greaseproof paper and arrange on the lemon slices. Season all sides of the dab well and rub with olive oil then place side-by-side, dark side up on top of the lemons. Bake for 10 minutes, then rub the butter lightly onto the tops and return to the oven for another 2-4 minutes. When cooked, squeeze over the remaining lemon. 

When the fish has a few minutes of cooking to go, melt the butter for the sauce in a medium saucepan over a moderate heat until it starts to turn a nutty brown colour. When very close to serving, squeeze in the lemon, season and add the cooked seafood and parsley, stirring lightly to combine and heat through. 

At the same time as making the butter sauce, melt the butter for the samphire in another pan. Soften the garlic over a medium heat for a minute, then add the samphire and a good splash of the reserved shellfish cooking liquid. Cook for a further minute, then squeeze over the lemon and taste for seasoning.

To serve, spoon some of the samphire onto each plate and top with the cooked fish. Surround with the cooked shellfish and pour a generous amount of the brown butter over the top.

Three ways with mackerel: pan-fried, smoked and cured, with rhubarb puree, beetroot crisps and watercress oil

I cook with mackerel quite a lot, and regular readers will know that I have covered it in various guises in this blog before. However it has been a fair while since its last appearance, so it’s about time that this amazing fish is top of the page again. Every week that I write, in fact every time I cook, I learn something new, and I am constantly looking back on how to improve things that I have made before. My mind is always whirring away trying to work out flavour combinations or complete a long list of initial ideas that just require one or two things to tie them together. So I guess that this is an update on a mackerel and beetroot recipe that I posted last January, but slightly more refined and a damn sight prettier. 

 
We are now nearing the end of the mackerel season as they group up to spawn in the spring, but soon it’ll be summer again when there’s nothing better than flashing it on the barbeque with capers, lemon and parsley. Though the beauty is in its versatility, and as the year moves into Autumn it is just as comfortable with crunchy raw root vegetables or spicy broths, then back around to now where the season happily coincides with those new shoots of vibrant red rhubarb from the Yorkshire triangle. I am always so shocked at how bad the supermarkets are in reacting to British seasonality, and this vegetable is a fine example. Despite proper forced rhubarb only being around for a short few of months, I was saddened to still see thin and bendy imports lining the shelves. As usual, my local greengrocers knew better and I was soon walking home with a happy bunch poking out the top of my bag. Rhubarb is good for more than crumble alone (although buy extra for that too) and finely compliments savoury things like oily fish and pork. The key is in the balance, you want to keep the tartness or your main will think it’s a dessert.
   
I’m still amazed by how easy it is to hot smoke things at home. I was initially worried that my flat would be filled with clouds of black smoke, but even the crumbly old extraction and a few open windows miraculously contained everything in my tiny kitchen. So far I’ve only really tried it with fish that cook quickly using bungled smoke combinations of rice, herbs and zest, but the results really are great. The fish ends up meltingly moist with just the right amount of smokiness. Oh how I yearn to have a garden to expand on these projects…  

There are quite a few processes in this recipe but as with most things loads can be done in advance. It’s really up to you how far you take it, and the flavourings still work perfectly if you were to cook all of the mackerel just the one way. Likewise, I have perhaps been a little fancy in just using the loins of the fish here, but in no way were the trimmings wasted. Quickly grilled and crammed between soft white bread with tartar sauce they were delightful. But the whole fillets can also be used throughout this recipe too, especially if you wanted to bulk it out a bit.  

Serves 2 for a starter or light lunch.  

Ingredients:  

For the pan-fried mackerel:  

2 mackerel fillets, top loin only, pin boned 
Olive oil 
½ a lemon, juice only  

For the smoked mackerel:  

2 mackerel fillets, top loin only, pin boned 
Olive oil 
1 handful of rice 
1 lemon, zest only 
½ a bunch of thyme 
1tsp black peppercorns 
1tsp brown sugar  

For the cured mackerel:  

2 mackerel fillets, top loin only, pin boned 
100g salt 
50g caster sugar 
1 lemon, zest only 
2tbsp fresh thyme leaves  

For the rhubarb puree:  

1 large stick of rhubarb 
½ a lemon, juice only 
2 tbsp caster sugar, plus more to taste  

For the watercress oil:  

50g watercress 
100ml extra virgin olive oil  

For the beetroot crisps:   

1 golden beetroot 
Vegetable oil for frying, approx. 1ltr  

For the smoked beetroot salt:  

3tbsp smoked sea salt 
¼ of a beetroot, roughly chopped  

To finish:  

3tbsp cress, washed 


To cure the mackerel, mix together the salt, sugar, lemon zest and thyme. Pour a quarter of this mixture onto the bottom of a small dish or tray and top with the two mackerel loins. Cover with the rest of the salt mix until fully covered. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for two hours. 

While the mackerel is curing make the other elements of the dish. 

To make the smoked beetroot salt, pour the salt into a small bowl and add the chopped raw beetroot. Mix well and set aside, stirring occasionally. The longer it is left the more the salt will take on colour. 

For the rhubarb puree, chop the rhubarb into inch-sized pieces and tip into a small saucepan. Add the lemon juice and sugar and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for a couple of minutes until cooked through. Drain and transfer to a food processor and blitz well. Taste and add more sugar or lemon if needed, you want it to be quite tart still. Pass through a fine sieve into a bowl and set aside. 

Heat the deep frying oil in a heavy saucepan until it reaches 160⁰C. Peel the golden beetroot and carefully slice very thinly with a mandolin. When the oil has come to temperature, fry in small batches until lightly golden and crispy. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with salt. 

For the watercress oil, put the watercress, extra virgin olive oil and a little salt into a food processor and blitz until the leaves are finely chopped and the oil has taken on a vivid green colour. Pass through a fine sieve and transfer to a bottle. 

When the mackerel has had its curing time, remove from the fridge and lift the fillets out of the salt. Rinse well and pat dry. Carefully slice the skin off and then set aside to come to room temperature. 

To make a DIY hot smoker, tip the rice, sugar, thyme, peppercorns and lemon zest into the bottom of a small deep metal oven tray that has been lined with foil. Start the smoking process off by singing everything with a blow torch. Place an oiled metal cooling rack or other grill on top and then seal with more foil. Put the tray over a medium heat until lots of smoke and heat is generated inside. Season the mackerel fillets and rub with oil. Peel back the foil and place the fillets skin-down onto the hot rack, then seal again quickly. Smoke for 4-5 minutes, or until just cooked through. Keep warm. 

Heat a non-stick frying pan with a little olive oil. Season the remaining mackerel fillets well. When a medium-hot temperature, add the fish skin-side down, holding them for a few seconds to stop any shrinkage. Fry for 2 minutes to crisp up the skin, then turn over and remove the pan from the heat and allow to residual heat to finish the cooking off. Squeeze over the lemon juice.

To plate up, lay one of each of the mackerel fillets onto heated plates. Dot the puree and the oil around the fish and scatter over the beetroot crisps and the cress. Finally sprinkle over some of the smoked salt.

Pig head project 3: seared squid with homemade paprika sausage, purple sprouting broccoli and ink dressing

Finally we come to the end of the pigs head project, and to be perfectly honest I’ll be happy to start writing about new things again. But that said, I have thoroughly enjoyed tackling a piece of meat that was new to me and being able to create three very different meals out of it. It’s certainly inspired me to try out more of the undervalued cuts; they are so cheap to buy and can be made into really lovely dishes with a bit of thought and time. I was amazed at how far the head went, and once you stopped thinking about the anatomical side of things you were left with a lot of really decent meat. Although these cuts are not commonly found in the supermarket, it’s well worth getting to know your local independent butcher who can advise you on these cuts and can usually order them for you within a day or two. 

Even this week there has been loads of coverage on the news about how supermarkets are developing new schemes to deliver food not to people’s houses, but to convenient points such as tube stations to be collected. I found this quite depressing. This is another measure that is going to damage our high streets. Luckily where I live in Stoke Newington we have a high street that is 90% small independent businesses, and this diversity is such a refreshing change to the corporation dominance of other parts of town. Don’t get me wrong, of course I shop at supermarkets, but when it comes to food, the quality shines through in these small shops. I always find pork chops the most striking example of this, where the scrawny ones sold at the supermarkets are dwarfed by the cave-man style specimens from a butcher. And don’t get me started about the way that some of the big brands treat the farmers. It’s more than embarrassing. I digress, but my point is that without these specialist butchers, fishmongers, delicatessens, finding those great quality or less popular ingredients would be near impossible. 

With the braised cheek and doughnut dishes the pork was definitely the star of the show, whereas in this case it’s more a balance of three good ingredients that combine really well together. Squid and chorizo are classic partners and one I love, and this is kind of my attempt to replicate that. Although my method of making these sausages is totally makeshift and involves cooking the meat in the spices beforehand, I was amazed that it worked. I found that another fairly gruesome-yet-handy piece of pork, caul fat, acted perfectly as the casing and formed a crisp shell around the filling when fried. Aside from the initial slow roasting of the pork that you can do a day or two in advance, this is a really quick meal to knock together. 

Purple sprouting broccoli is bang in season and gives the finished dish another texture and an earthy, irony taste. Like the squid it also loves strong spicy flavours and marries really well with the paprika in the sausages. But don’t cook it too much; it just needs steaming or boiling for a couple of minutes.

I also wanted to include the squid ink in this recipe. It’s commonly used in risottos and pasta dishes but tends to dominate everything else and make it all look a bit, well, inky. I wanted things to be a bit more subtle here, so have used it in the vinegar and lemon reduction. Although very sharp, it cuts through the rich oiliness of the cooking juices used to make the rest of the sauce. 

Serves 2 for a light lunch. 

Ingredients: 

For the squid: 

1 large squid, cleaned and gutted then cut into large triangular pieces 
½ a lemon, juice only 
Olive oil 

For the pork: 

1 pork jowl, approx. 600/700g 
1 carrot, halved vertically 
1 leek, halved vertically 
1 onion, sliced thickly 
3 cloves of garlic, crushed 
1 star anise 
1 bay leaf 
A few sprigs of thyme 
1 cinnamon stick 
1 glass of white wine 
1 tbsp fennel seeds 

For the sausage mixture: 

25g butter 
1 shallot, very finely chopped 
2 cloves of garlic, very finely chopped 
1 lemon, zest only 
1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika 
1 tsp dried chilli flakes (or to taste) 
½ tsp oregano 
An approx. A4-sized sheet of caul fat 

For the purple sprouting broccoli: 

10 florets of purple sprouting broccoli, trimmed 
Olive oil

For the squid ink dressing: 

4 tbsp white wine vinegar 
1 lemon, juice only 
1 bay leaf 
½ a small sachet of squid ink
   

Pre-heat the oven to 160⁰C. 

First roast the pork jowl. Use the sliced leek, onion, carrot and garlic as a trivet in the bottom of a roasting dish. Top with the star anise, cinnamon, fennel seeds, thyme, seasoning, white wine and about 150ml of water. Score ½ cm marks into the pork skin and rub in a generous amount of salt. Place the meat on top of the trivet and cover with foil. Bake for 3 hours, or until the meat is really tender. Raise the temperature of the oven to 220⁰C and continue to roast until the crackling is crunchy. Strip the soft meat from the crackling, it should fall away with little pressure, and shred well. 

Heat a saucepan up to a medium temperature and add the butter for the sausage mixture and a little olive oil. Fry the shallots, garlic, paprika, oregano, chilli flakes and lemon zest until very tender. Add the shredded pork meat and a good amount of seasoning and combine well. Reduce the heat slightly, cover the saucepan and allow to cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste for seasoning then mash the ingredients together well. Spread the filling mixture out onto a plate to cool down quickly. 

To construct the sausages, lay the sheet of caul fat onto a flat surface. Make a long sausage out of the filling mixture and lay on top. Very carefully wrap with the caul fat, overlapping a little and making sure that the filling is held in tightly. Twist and cut into a few separate sausages, then put in the fridge for about 15 minutes. 

Make the dressing by putting the vinegar, lemon juice, bay leaf and seasoning into a small saucepan. Reduce over a medium heat until only about 2 tablespoons of liquid remains. Remove the bay leaf and squeeze in the squid ink. Mix well and taste; it should be quite sharp. Remove from the heat and set aside. 

Lightly score one side of the squid pieces in a crisscross and allow to come to room temperature on a plate. 

Fill a saucepan with well-salted water and bring to the boil. Also heat a non-stick pan to a medium temperature. 

When the pan is hot, fry the sausages in a little oil for a couple of minutes on each side until crisp on the outside. Be careful when turning them to reduce the risk of the caul fat breaking apart. 

Boil the broccoli for a couple of minutes until cooked but still retaining a bit of bite. Drain from the pan, season well and toss in the olive oil. 

While the other elements are cooking, heat up a heavy pan or griddle to a high temperature. When smoking, coat the squid pieces in olive oil and seasoning then sear quickly for about a minute on each side. Squeeze over the lemon juice right at the end.

To serve, put some of the broccoli and sliced sausage pieces onto a plate and top with some of the squid. Spoon some of the cooking juices from the sausage around the stacks and dot over some of the dressing.

Pan roasted black bream with crab, confit fennel, asparagus, clams and sea purslane

As I wrote a couple of posts ago, I have recently been pretty obsessed with cooking fish. I tend to do this with food; I will go through stages of really concentrating on one group of ingredients, or method of cooking and will use it in lots of things that I make. Previously it has been adding breaded, deep fried things (see cod cheeks, pork cheeks and oysters in the last few months), or asparagus which I can’t get enough of at the moment. The fact that the very short British asparagus season is in full swing, and combines with fish so beautifully means that they take high priority on the menu. And simply both ingredients are delicious and I take great pleasure in eating them.

This dish came about in a bit of an accidental way. The ingredients and concept are classic enough, but the finished meal was not really what I intended when I started thinking of what to cook. For the last few weeks I have had some wacky idea in my head about curing an oily fish, initially sardine fillets, in rhubarb to create a fresh tasting, vibrantly pink element to a dish which also included some chargrilled fillets for contrast. I imagined that it would produce a lovely looking little salad, and couldn’t wait to get experimenting with it. Flaw in my plan no.1: when I enquired to my local fishmonger about sardines, I was told that they were ‘pretty scarce’ at the moment. That was the sardine thought grounded, but fair enough I would use the trusty mackerel instead. So off I went to the fishmongers on Sunday, and as my luck would further have it, a good weekend had seen them cleared right out of mackerel. Bugger. 

I’m rubbish at creating quick, inventive things to cook on the spot, so I felt really thrown at that point and a little panicked that I was just going to buy a load of random things that wouldn’t come together. This is where the joy of a local, independent fishmonger came in. After a quick chat, it was decided that black bream is really in season, and would work perfectly with the ingredients that I planned to use. They are pretty mad looking fish, with big heads and dark silvery flanks, but fillets that you get from them are amazing, very similar to seabass. Along with the clams and purslane that I also bought, to my delight I was also given a bag of freshly picked white crab meat. Menu sorted I left a happy bunny (apart from the flat tyre I got on the way home...). Thanks a lot to the excellent as always Jonathan Norris in Victoria Park village. 

This dish is pretty simple to put together, with the only time consuming thing being the fennel confit. Once this is made everything else can be prepared and cooked quickly. Cooking fish is something that takes experience, as it only takes a minute or two to overcook and ruin, but with a little practice it’s dead simple. The key is to make sure that the pan is hot before you add the fish, and that you cook it skin side down for the majority of the time.   

Serves 2

Ingredients:

For the bream:

1 black bream (or gilthead will be fine), filleted and pinboned

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

1 tbsp butter

1/2 lemon, juice only

For the confit fennel: 

2 bulbs fennel, finely sliced, fronds kept for garnish

600ml olive oil, or enough to just cover the fennel

2 bulbs garlic, whole

150g white crab meat

1 lemon, juice only

Salt and pepper

For the asparagus puree:

8 asparagus stalks, heads removed and kept for pickling

30g butter

1/2 lemon, juice only

Salt and pepper

For the pickled asparagus:

The heads of the 8 asparagus

200ml white wine vinegar

3 tbsp caster sugar

6 black peppercorns

For the clams:

1 small handful clams

1 glass white wine

For the samphire:

1 small handful samphire, rinsed

1 tbsp butter

Squeeze of lemon juice

Salt and pepper

To finish:

1 small handful sea purslane, rinsed

Fronds from the fennel

To make the confit fennel, put the sliced fennel and whole garlic in a medium-sized saucepan and cover with the olive oil. Cover the top of the oil with a cartouche and set on a low heat for 35-45 minutes, or until very tender. Drain well, discard the garlic and set aside. 

Take the prepared bream and crab out of the fridge and allow to get to room temperature. If the fillets are big then cut into two neat pieces. 

For the puree, fill a medium saucepan with salted water and bring to the boil. When boiling, add the asparagus stalks and boil for 3-4 minutes or until tender. Drain and transfer to a food processor with the butter, lemon and seasoning. Blitz well, then taste and adjust if needed. Set aside in a warm place.

To pickle the asparagus tips, put the sugar, white wine vinegar and peppercorns in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. When the sugar has dissolved, put the asparagus into a small bowl and cover with the pickling liquid. Set aside.

Put the cooked fennel into a saucepan and gently warm up on a medium-low heat. Season well and squeeze over the lemon juice. Keep heating through as you finish the other elements of the dish.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan to a medium-high heat and add a good glug of olive oil, 2-3 tablespoons. 

While the pan is getting hot, put another small pan on a medium heat and melt the butter for the samphire. When melted, add the rinsed samphire and seasoning and cook for a minute or two until just al dente. Squeeze over the lemon and keep warm. 

Also put a small saucepan on a medium-high heat for the clams. When hot, pour in the clams and add the white wine, which should bubble straight away. Put a lid tightly over and shake the pan a couple of times. Cook for a minute or two until the shells open. Remove the clams into a bowl, and pour the white wine liquor into the fennel saucepan along with the white crabmeat. Mix well and taste, adjusting seasoning and acidity. Cook for another minute and take off the heat. 

When the frying pan is hot, season the bream fillets all over and gently place skin side down, holding them flat to the pan with your fingers for a couple of seconds to stop them curling up. Cook for 2-3 minutes on the skin side only, and while this is happening baste the flesh side with the hot oil, running the back of the metal spool down each fillet. This will gently cook that side too without the need to flip the fish. After 3 minutes the skin should be crispy, add the butter and lemon and remove from the heat while you plate up. 

Spoon a good tablespoon of the asparagus puree onto the middle of each plate, then lay some of the confit fennel on top. Place the cooked bream onto the fennel, then place the clams, pickled asparagus, samphire, purslane and fennel fronds around the edges. Squeeze over a touch more lemon and serve.

Mackerel with pureed and pickled beetroot, smoked mackerel pate, apple and horseradish

For this monday lunch I have gone back to an old favourite, mackerel. I have cooked some fairly long winded recipes for the last few blog posts, so this time I wanted to do something a little less time consuming for a light and tasty lunch. 

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has recently championed the use of three key ingredients as the formula of a great dish, and this recipe goes along those lines. The combination of mackerel, beetroot and horseradish has been tried and tested and works so well, with the oily mackerel, sweet beetroot and the hot horseradish. The only thing that I have introduced are a couple of different ways of preparing the fish and beets to make the finished dish a little more interesting. 

Recently I have been really into focussing on a few ingredients and using them in different processes in the same dish. I have done this previously on this blog with lamb and salmon recipes, and I like how you can achieve a variety of tastes and textures within a meal. In this dish the beetroot adds both sweet and smooth elements in the puree and sharp and crunchy when pickled. With the mackerel, the fried fillet gives the cooked heat whilst the pate gives a smokey, creamy backnote. The horseradish is not a dominant flavour, like everything else it just balances with the other ingredients. The apple with the pickles gives much needed refreshment, and can be combined with mackerel to make a dish in their own right. 

Serves 2 

Ingredients:

1 large mackerel, filleted and pin boned

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

Salt and pepper

For the beetroot puree:

2 beetroots

2 garlic cloves

5 sprigs thyme

1 tsp thyme leaves

2 tsp caster sugar

2 tsp butter

Salt and pepper

For the smoked mackerel pate:

1 smoked mackerel fillet, skin and bones removed

2 spring onions

1 tbsp butter

2 tsp horseradish, finely grated

2 tbsp cottage cheese

2 lemons, juice only

Salt and pepper

For the pickled beetroot:

1 white or golden beetroot, peeled and finely diced

250ml white wine vinegar

2 garlic cloves

5 sprigs thyme

10 peppercorns

1/4 braeburn apple, finely diced

1 tsp horseradish, finely grated

1/2 lemon, juice only

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Salt

For the peashoots:

1 handful peashoots

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice

Salt and pepper

To serve:

Hot bread and butter

The first thing to make is the beetroot puree. Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Put the unpeeled beetroot, garlic cloves and thyme sprigs into a small oven dish and rub with a little olive oil and seasoning. Seal with kitchen foil and put into the oven for 1 hour 15 minutes.

To make the pickled beetroot, put the white wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, thyme and peppercorns into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. When hot add the finely diced white or golden beetroot and cook for 2 minutes. Spoon the beetroot into a bowl with a little of the pickling liquid and allow to cool. When cool, drain the liquid away and mix in the apple, horseradish, lemon, olive oil and salt. Taste and set aside. 

Now make smoked mackerel pate. Put the spring onions and butter into a food processor and blitz until smooth. Add the smoked mackerel, horseradish, lemons, cottage cheese and seasoning and mix again until everything is combined. Remove from the mixer, taste and add horseradish, salt or lemon as required. Set aside. 

Make the dressing for the peashoots by mixing the lemon juice with the extra virgin olive oil and seasoning. Set aside to dress at the last minute.

The roasted beetroot is cooked when they can be easily pierced by a knife. Peel the beets whilst they are still hot then put into a food processor with the butter, thyme leaves, sugar and seasoning. Blitz well then taste and adjust the seasoning. Pass the puree through a sieve and keep warm. 

Put a large non-stick frying pan onto a medium-high heat and add 2 tbsp olive oil. Cut the mackerel fillets into 3 pieces and pat dry with kitchen paper. Season well on both sides and then place skin side down into the frying pan, pressing down for a couple of seconds to stop them from curling. Fry for 3 minutes on the skin side then carefully flip over. Add the butter and take the pan off the heat. The fish will finish cooking in the residual heat while you plate up. 

Spoon a little of the puree onto the middle of each plate and top with the mackerel pieces. Quenelle the pate and the pickled beetroot and add around the fish. Dress the peashoots in a little of the dressing and arrange on top of the mackerel. 

Octopus with courgette, prawn, clams and a tomato consomme

I love it when I finally get round to cooking something that I’ve had on my mind for ages. Ever since watching Raymond Blanc create his ‘tomato essence’ during the Kitchen Secrets series, I’ve had it down on my ‘to do’ list but have never got round to it. This recipe involves loads of long winded processes and planning, but this weekend I got my act together and it was well worth it.

I have followed similar stages to Raymond in making it, but have tweaked the ingredients slightly. I thought that oregano would add a nice citrus element that would give the basil and tomatoes a more rounded flavour. Although the consomme is quite intense on it’s own and would make a lovely elegant starter (or even be great in a cocktail or bloody mary), I wanted to use it as part of a bigger dish. Enter another ingredient that I had been wanting to use: octopus. I recently spotted some Cornish octopus at my local fishmonger, and that was too good an opportunity to miss. It was time to tell if the dish that I had in my head would come together into something good. 

I have had octopus a couple of times before in Spanish restaurants to mixed results. Most of the times it has been beautiful and tender, like a meatier version of squid. However, on one time it was awfully tough and quite unpleasant, so even though I wanted to cook it, I knew that I had to approach it with care. After doing some research, it appeared that freezing the octopus for 48 hours was recommended before some long slow cooking and a final flash fry. Flavour-wise, octopus is again similar to squid in being subtle and almost tasteless, and it needs something adding to it. I thought that the tomatoes, basil and shellfish would go perfectly with this to create a dish that was light and not too overpowering.

Although this meal took a lot of time to prepare, most of the steps were really simple and didn’t feel like the massive slog that I expected it to be. The main thing is patience, especially with the consomme where I had to resist the urge to squeeze the bag of muslin. In order for the liquid to be a pure, clear colour, it must gently drip out without being forced.   It might seem like a lot of tomatoes to waste just to collect the liquid, but don’t throw them away - they can easily be turned into the base for a sauce or stew on another occasion. 

The other parts of the dish are all quite simple, and can easily be prepared whilst the octopus is poaching. The only difficult thing is right at the end when a lot of pans are used to cook everything before serving. But it was worth it in the end, and unlike many recipe combinations that I dream up in my head, the finished dish worked really well. 

Serves 2 

Ingredients:

For the consomme:

1.2kg cherry tomatoes

1/2 fennel bulb, sliced

1 shallot, sliced

1 garlic clove, finely sliced

1/2 bunch basil, leaves torn roughly

10 sprigs oregano, leaves picked

2 sprigs thyme

1 bay leaf

Large pinch of salt 

2 tbsp caster sugar

For the octopus:

2 medium octopuses, around 300g after being cleaned

1 fennel bult, chopped roughly

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 bay leaf

1 shallot, chopped roughly

1 carrot, chopped roughly

3 sprigs thyme

1 lemon, zest only

Salt and pepper

For the marinate:

3 tbsp olive oil

2 sprigs thyme, leaves picked

1 lemon, juice only

1/2 red chilli, sliced roughly

For the chilli oil:

5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

3 red chillies, finely sliced

4 strips lemon zest

Shells from the prawns, roasted

3 large prawns, shells kept for the chilli oil

1 courgette

200g clams

To finish:

Salad fennel, basil and oregano leaves

Prepare the octopus and tomato consomme a couple of days in advance of serving. 

Gut and clean the octopus, wrap in cling film and freeze for 48 hours. This will help to tenderise the octopus which can sometimes be tough.

For the tomato consomme, halve the cherry tomatoes and put in a large bowl with the fennel, shallot, garlic, basil, oregano, thyme, bay, salt and sugar. Stir well to combine, seal with cling film and put in the fridge for about 6 hours. 

When the marinating time is up, remove the tomatoes from the fridge. Using a food processor, pulse the tomatoes in batches until they are roughly chopped. Wrap the mixture with 2 layers of muslin and carefully hang above a large bowl overnight. Let the juices gently drip from the muslin bag without moving or squeezing; you want the consomme to be clear and not cloudy. When all of the liquid has been collected, set aside and chill until needed. 

On the day of cooking, again the octopus needs to be thawed out and put on first. Put the fennel, shallot, carrot, garlic, bay, lemon zest and pepper into a saucepan and cover with a good amount of water. Bring to a simmer then add the octopus and continue to simmer for between 1-2 hours, or until very tender. While the octopus is cooking make the marinate by combining the oil, lemon juice, chilli, thyme and seasoning. When the octopus is ready, remove from the saucepan (keeping about 250ml of the liquid), cut each tentacle away and the body into pieces and add to the marinate. 

While the octopus is cooking prepare the rest of the ingredients. Peel the prawns, reserving the shells, and cut into 1cm pieces. Set aside until needed. Heat the oven to 200ºC, and when hot, roast the shells for a couple of minutes until lightly coloured.

To make the chilli oil, pour the extra virgin olive oil into a small saucepan and add the roasted shells, sliced chillies and lemon zest. Gently heat the oil on a low heat for about 5 minutes, without letting it get too hot. You just want to warm the ingredients up enough to infuse the oil without cooking them. Turn the heat off then allow the oil to cool down in the pan. Strain into a bowl and set aside. 

Using a mellon baller, cut out circles of the courgette leaving the skin still on one side. If you don’t have a mellon baller then cut the courgette into 1/2” pieces. 

When the octopus is cooked and marinating, get everything ready to finish up.  

Put three quarters of the finished consomme into a small saucepan and bring up to just before simmering. 

Heat up a saucepan to a medium temperature and add the remaining quarter of the consomme. When the liquid is hot, add the courgette pieces and cook for a couple of minutes. Tip in the prepared prawns and continue to poach gently for another two minutes, until the prawns are cooked and the courgettes still have a little bit of bite. 

At the same time as the courgettes are cooking, put another saucepan on to a medium - high heat. When hot add the reserved octopus stock and bring to the boil. Add the clams and cover the pan, giving it a little shake. Keep covered for about two minutes, or until the clams open. Season with a little salt and pepper.

Finally, finish cooking the octopus by heating a non-stick frying pan on a high heat. When hot, add the octopus pieces and a little of the marinating juices and fry quickly for a minute on each side. Season well.

To plate up, arrange the octopus in the centre of a shallow bowl. Surround with the cooked courgettes, prawn pieces and clams, and drizzle with a little of the chilli oil. Top with some of the salad fennel, basil and oregano leaves, then carefully pour in some of the warm consomme.