Peri-Peri Fish

                                                                                                                                    14 January 2015
Serves 4                                                                                                                                    

I wasn't planning on posting this recipe, but when I posted our weekly menu to Facebook and Instagram my cousin asked to share the recipe. After making it my mom and hubby both felt it was delicious enough to share, so here you go.



Ingredients
1 Filleted and deboned yellow tale or other fish, with the skin still on. Cubed.
Not many people know this, but once you've chosen your fish from Food Lover's Market you can ask the monger (I love that word – m-O-nnger) to clean, debone and fillet it.
I leave the skin on as it gets nice and crispy, adding to the flavour. Another reason to keep it on is structural – it actually keeps the flakes together once it starts cooking.
½ cup Woolworths' Original Peri-Peri Marinade, or any other spicy condiment if you can’t find it.
2 tomatoes, washed and cubed
I know you’re meant to put the poor guys in hot water, wait till they cool and then take the skins off…. But I don’t have that much time and the skins frankly have never bothered me. So there.
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp crushed garlic
½ packet Knorr or any other Cream of Tomato soup
Verjuice
Couscous
I have not yet perfected the art of making couscous, mostly due to doing too many things at once and forgetting about it. So unless you want grainy porridge, I’ll leave it to you to follow the quantities and instructions on your packet.
¼ head of broccoli
½ handful of raisins
Sesame Oil
Soy Sauce
Olive oil
Fish spice / salt
Butter
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method

Onions. Always start with those onions to get the flavours going. Fry them in a bit of butter and olive oil till they start to colour.

I like to make the most of my fried onions, so I put the plate on high and let them go brown on the edges before I add anything else. The juice from the tomatoes will cause them to cook instead of fry.

Then add the tiny cubes of fresh tomato and crushed garlic. Season with a little salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper and fry till cooked.

This may be completely wrong, but when I see the little tomato seeds sticking to the pan, making dark caramel, I know they’re ready.

While all of that is going on, but before it’s ready, mix half the packet of tomato soup with a cup of hot water and a quarter cup of verjuice. Make sure to all the powder is dissolved.

Now turn the plate down to medium and pour the tomato soup mixture into the pan with the rest tomato and onions. Let the soup cook through.

I’m not sure whether you’re following when I say the flower in a sauce needs to be cooked. The best way I can describe my gut feel is that it stops tasting chewy and looking cloudy.

The soup is likely to get a bit thick and flowery, so you can add more water or verjuice as you see fit. It should be a thick, saucy stew. Not stodgy and definitely not a runny soup!

Stir in 1 – 2 tablespoons of olive oil and immediately pour over into your dishing bowl. Cover with a lid or foil and place in a low oven to stay warm.

Break or cut the half head of broccoli into miniature florets and pop them into the microwave steamer for a minute and a half.

If you don’t have a steamer you can just put them in a covered bowl with a tablespoon of hot water and some salt. They should still be crispy, but no longer have that raw cabbage taste.

Coat the cubes of fish in salt and fish spice, or just fish salt – whatever you have will do just fine. In the same pan as before (mostly just to save dishes) fry the cubes of fish in some sesame oil (only if you like the taste) and butter on high till they’re crispy on the outside.

They’ll cook through fast because of the small pieces and, well, because it’s fish. I find that it goes from stiff, when it’s raw, to soft and flaky when it’s just right, and stiff and chewy again when it’s overdone. For this reason one needs to be very, very careful to take them off between those stiff stages, or even a little before as it will keep cooking.

While that’s happening, prep your couscous and add the raisins to the raw couscous and water so they swell up nice and sweetly.

Back to the fish: Add the half a cup or less of marinade and mix to heat the sauce and coat all the pieces. Be careful not to break the fish. Add soy sauce to taste and remove once done to prevent overcooking of the fish.

The pieces should be coated, but not floating in sauce. That’s what the tomato mix is for!
 
Mix the broccoli florets and a teaspoon of butter with the perfectly cooked couscous.

Pour the fish over the tomato-and-onion mix.

Serve fish and couscous in two dishes so guests can dish the fish mix over the couscous themselves.

Use #TigerFeast and let me know what you thought via Twitter or Facebook.

No comments:

Post a Comment