Paula Wolfert's Fish Tagine, Funkyknuckles style

The parents have gone home so I have time to myself again. I got a beautiful new cookbook -The Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert - and it is just wonderful. I've already made Oudi, a clarified butter made by toasting barley grits - I just used coarse bulgur instead - with dried thyme and then melting butter over the mixture. The bulgur pulls the milk solids away magically, so you can just pour the clarified butter off really easily and it also gives a lovely smoky flavour to the finished product. I will be mostly anointing things with this for the next wee while.

I have not yet made the preserved lemons, the tomato confit, the meat confit or any of the amazing sounding breads - but I will. The range of recipes is incredible, there must be half a dozen versions of the old chicken/lemon/olive tagine classic, plus several very different and interesting looking b'stillas. If I only had one Moroccan cookbook (Ha! I have half a shelf of them!) this would be it.

Tonight I made the Fish Tagine with Creamy Onion Charmoula but - as usual - I made several substitutions, mostly because I had no preserved lemons, coriander or courgettes. Fresh lemons, parsley and fennel were perfectly good under the circumstances. The result was excellent, the husband loved it and it was very easy and good. I just bought myself a great big shallow cast iron casserole from Sainsbury's and it works very well if you don't have a cooking tagine.

The charmoula itself is spectacularly good and simple and I would use again and again on chicken or fish.

Fish Tagine with Onion Charmoula

Onion Charmoula:
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin seeds
2 tsp minced garlic & ginger
2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp hot paprika
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Pinch of turmeric, fennel and cinnamon
20g parsley
3-4 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion (coarsely chopped)
Juice of 1 lemon

Tagine
750g firm white fish (I used seabass & monkfish) skinned and cut into 1" chunks
1 punnet small red ripe tomatoes, halved
750g-1kg small potatoes, quartered
1 fennel bulb, sliced thin
1 red bell pepper, peeled, cored, seeded, and diced
Juice of one lemon
1/2 a glass of wine

Garnish:
Juice & rind of a lemon
Olive oil
Chopped parsley

Blitz the Charmoula ingredients until smooth. Divide into two, mix half of it with the fish and marinate for an hour in the fridge.

Boil the potatoes till almost tender, then put them in a shallow casserole or tagine with the fennel, pepper, lemon, wine and the rest of the charmoula. Bring to the boil and then simmer, covered, till tender (about 30 mins).

Spread the marinated fish and the tomatoes over the top and bake uncovered at 200oC for about 15 mins till the fish is cooked. Stir the garnish through and devour. I've adjusted the quantities to suit Irish levels of potato consumption so this needs no accompaniment.

Oudi

2lb butter
40g coarse bulgur
1 tsp dried thyme or oregano

Toast the bulgur and thyme in a dry frying pan for 5 minutes or so on a medium to high heat till it's golden brown and smells smoky. Put in the butter (chopped up into pats) and let it melt completely without browning or stirring. Take off any scum with a kitchen towel. It will magically separate out into golden butter fat and weird porridgy gloop at the bottom of the pan. Paula Wolfert says you should strain it but I just poured the clarified butter off the bulgur mixture and put it in a jar. Tastes amazing and will be a beautiful topping for all things Middle Eastern.

A very Sicilian stuffing

Slices of aubergine sizzling....

 Day 3 of the chest infection and I am at a very low ebb. I staggered out for a bottle of Benylin earlier and the effort half killed me, so nothing else for it but to cook very slowly and ponderously.

When I was getting the cough mixture I picked up some sardine fillets on offer and thought I might make Beccafico - these are sardine fillets stuffed with a rich mix of nuts, sultanas, herbs, spices and cheese. The same stuffing can be used for aubergine involtini, or stuffed rolls.

These are both great examples of Sicilian "cucina povera" - the cuisine of the poor. The Sicilians have the most amazing tradition of making exceptionally sophisticated and complex meals from very cheap ingredients. Breadcrumbs, chilli, garlic, fennel, tomatoes, raisins, spices and lemons feature strongly. The original Beccafico were little game birds who fed on figs and which, roasted and stuffed with a sweet and spicy breadcrumb mix, were a great delicacy amongst Sicilian noblemen. The working class used the same stuffing to fill sardines and in doing so created a dish even better than the original. They are like a very rich and exotic version of rollmops and indeed I'm sure you could treat herring the same way.

I spent one of the best holidays of my life in Sicily about ten years ago, touring the island with my new partner. We returned a few years later for our honeymoon in Taormina and the island holds a very special place in my heart. So no surprise that when I'm feeling a bit down and need cheering up with some cheap and sunny food that I turn to Sicily.

Involtini & Beccafico happily co-existing

The involtini are every bit as good as the sardines and both can be cooked together in the same dish if needed (though you may find they need separated if you have a vegetarian to feed). I'm scarfing the lot so I don't care. You can use the same stuffing for chicken or pork escalopes or very thin slices of swordfish or tuna too.


Involtini stuffing
6 slices of bread from a pan loaf made into breadcrumbs
1 onion, finely chopped or grated
25g sultanas
15g each fresh mint, parsley & dill, finely chopped
Either 2 tablespoons of Muhamarah or 1 tbsp toasted pine nuts, 2 cloves of garlic (mashed), 1tsp chilli powder and 1 tsp garam masala or similar mixed together with olive oil to bind.
75g Parmesan or Pecorino
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper


Fry the breadcrumbs,onion, sultanas and herbs in a very little olive oil on a medium heat until the mixture is golden - about 15 minutes. Cool, add other ingredients and use to stuff vegetables, fish or meat of your choice. Sardine fillets just need stuffed and baked for half an hour. Aubergines need cut lengthwise and griddled first, then drained on kitchen towel to remove as much oil as possible. The stuffing recipe above filled nine sardine fillets and two large aubergines cut lengthways into 13 slices. The whole lot packed neatly into a standard lasagne dish. Excess stuffing was sprinkled on the top and it was baked at 180oC for 30 mins. Sprinkle the Beccafico with lemon juice before devouring. These were all extremely delicious and rich and this amount would feed six people as part of a Sicilian menu with some salad, bread and a pasta dish. As it is the two of us will be wading through them for a few days.

Haddock Plaki

This is another of those gorgeous Greek braised dishes, full of olive oil. Please don't stint, it makes all the difference.
Ingredients
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 oz butter
Juice of 1 lemon
2 medium onions, finely sliced
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp Aleppo pepper
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano
1 glass white wine
1 cup of chicken stock (or more wine)
4 tomatoes, each cut into 8 pieces
6 medium red potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced and boiled for 2 mins then drained into a colander
4 large skinless haddock fillets

Preheat the oven to 200oC. Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the butter and when it begins to foam, add the onions along with a pinch of salt, stirring to coat well. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Raise the heat to medium and cook for 4 to 6 minutes longer, or until the onions are golden brown. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute. Add the oregano and stir to combine. Add the wine & lemon juice and bring to a boil. Boil for about 5 minutes, or until the pan is almost dry.

Stir in the tomatoes, the stock, and a pinch of salt. Return to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer, cook for about 10 minutes, season and remove from the heat and set aside.

Heat a large frying pan to medium-high. When hot, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Sear the fish for 1 min each side, only one or 2 at a time. Don't crowd the pan. Drain them on kitchen towel.

Mix the potatoes with about 2/3 of the sauce and spread it into a lasagne dish. Put the fillets on top and pour the remaining sauce over the whole thing. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until the fish is opaque and cooked through.

Turkish/Scottish sea bream recipe

Allspice for the win! Thanks, Dave.

Off to Turkey tomorrow for a week of relaxation and excellent food. But as it's a wee bargain basement trip (I'm planning to relearn how to draw and use an SLR properly) I can't justify ordering delicious Turkish seafood. It's dreadfully expensive and when there are delicious cheap eats like pide (Turkish pizza), kebabs, meze and lavash bread for a few quid there's not a lot of point.

But I do love fish, I really do. And my favouritest fish is a plump, whole one - head on, scales off, simply fried or grilled, such as you'll find all round the Med. There will always be olive oil and lemon involved and maybe one other characterful ingredient - dill, cumin, oregano or whatever.

So when I nipped into Tesco tonight I was very happy to see their sea bream reduced to £1.50 for a 12oz fish! The plan was to treat myself to a Turkish style fishy dinner for one with minimal fuss and maximum flavour. My problem was getting the right flavour combination - it had to be simple, quick but tasty enough to keep me walking past the Turkish fish restaurants all week.

Then I remembered that our old photographer, David Spence, once told me that when he was a kid in Scotland they used to ask for their fish suppers with "salt, vinegar and spice" and that the spice in question was allspice. Genius!

Turkish-Scottish Sea Bream

1 x 12oz Sea Bream
Olive oil
Salt & pepper
Allspice
Lemon juice

Gut and scale the bream (to scale it, hold it by the tail and scrape a knife down it repeatedly till all the scales fly off. Repeat on the other side. If you don't know how to gut it, you probably shouldn't be trying this!). Heat a few tbsp of oil at medium high heat and fry the fish for 5-10mins each side. Don't move the fish while it fries. When it's done, lift it out and dress it with lemon juice and fresh olive oil. season with salt, pepper and allspice.