Fish in a curl
Use Dublin Bay prawns. Not the ones flown in from the Pacific. That would be treason. Buying them frozen is fine — when fresh they go smelly very quickly. Decide how many you can afford, and gauge your mouth/prawn ratio accordingly.
From frozen:
Marinate them in lemon juice for half an hour as they defrost.
Then add to a hot, oiled pan and fry for 5-6 minutes until opaque.
Serve with something starchy, like warm buttery potatoes and something green, like cress.
For fresh:
Heat your grill to high.
Lay their pink bodies on the rack – they will take 5-6 minutes to go opaque, size dependent. Season heavily with rough salt and pepper and eat with good crusty bread.
Fish in a tin
Buy the tins of fish from sustainable sources — they will have a label flagging this.
- 1 small tin sardines
- ½ jar sundried tomatoes
- 1 tin tomatoes
- 1 onion, chopped to rings
- 3 cloves of garlic, grated to a crush
- 150g rice
- Fresh thyme, several sprigs
Gently sweat the garlic and onion until soft.
Add the thyme and tomatoes and cook until it smells sweet and you are tempted to test with a spoon.
Add in the rice and water to cover it just.
Stir regularly as the rice cooks – only add more water if needed.
Add the tin of sardines half way through the cooking of the rice. Makes 2 lunches.
Fish in a bed
White fish and greens are very virtuous, so butter should be used copiously.
- 2 thick white fish fillets
- Rainbow chard, 4-6 stacks
- Butter, several knobs
- 4 garlic cloves, grated
Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
On a square of baking parchment, rub the fish flesh with butter or a good olive oil and squeeze the juice of a lemon over them.
Trap the juices as you tie up the parcel with string.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until the flesh flakes and is opaque. Meanwhile cut the stalks of the chard into 1cm lengths, and the leaf part much larger.
Melt a knob of butter in a little pan and add the stalks.
Add the leaves after a few minutes.
The greens are ready once tender.
Serve the fish atop the bed of greens. Crusty bread or warm potatoes appreciate the juices.
Fish in a Blanket
Batter has to be light, hot and crisp. Farmer Browns in Rathmines does an excellent job: they serve white flesh, just separating nicely within a generous coating of golden batter — so light that it’s almost tempura. This comes beside a green puree, incredibly creamy yet still tasting of garden. There are other textural interests too: pickled pink onion and an iceberg lettuce salad, which is fine because, well, you know. It is fish and chips.
Fish ‘n’ chips at Farmer Browns, 170 Rathmines Road Lower, €17.50.
“It’s ok to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings,” said Kurt Cobain. Not so.
Fish is cold, wet and slimy. The story of fishing is even slimier. Fish trading is a bit nonsensical; much swapping of fish goes on, from one corner of the globe to the to the other, wasting precious energy. For instance, Ireland, our seaside isle, buys three-quarters of its fish from abroad, and exports the same fraction of its own.
But fish that comes from fresh water isn’t necessarily a more sorted story. Farmed fish — unless organic, end up with lots of nastiness in its tight flesh — chemical residue, antibiotics, and heavy metals, which rather negates the benefits of fatty acids for your nervous system.
The best fish is local fish, bought in season. When shopping and eating, interrogate your fishmonger, question waiters and waitresses, and buy the lesser fried varieties: ling, coley, haddock, or pollock instead of cod, and gurnards, mackerel or pilchards for your oily varieties. Finally, look out for little labels like the blue dot from the Marine Stewardship Council, and use their excellent app to search for recognised sustainable products.
