fishy tales

Life is great­ly enhanced when you have a decent fishmonger.

Of course, you can just trot into your local super­mar­ket and look along the shelves con­tain­ing fish prod­ucts, and pick out a salmon fil­let or two.  But when you have a beau­ti­ful, clean blue-paint­ed store­front to walk by sev­er­al times a day, with smart­ly-aproned, smil­ing fishy guys wav­ing to you over their gleam­ing steel coun­ter­tops filled with man­na from the sea… well.  You get motivated.

Our “Fish­mon­ger’s Kitchen” in Shep­herds Bush Road is just such a mec­ca for me.  Tony, a hard-work­ing career fish man from Aus­tralia, greets me with enthu­si­asm.  “Kris­ten!  I’ve got a love­ly fresh had­dock for you,” and out comes a bright-eyed spec­i­men caught that morn­ing in Corn­wall, to be fil­let­ed, skinned and wrapped up for me.  Where­upon I dip it in cream and eggs, dredge it in my spe­cial blend of home­made bread­crumbs, panko bread­crumbs and Fox Point Sea­son­ing.  And fry it up deliciously.

Or if you fan­cy some­thing new for your lunch, get a lit­tle sushi spir­it going on.  Take your courage in your hands and pick up a nice piece of yel­low­tail tuna, to make the best sal­ad in the world.

Fresh Yel­low­tail Tuna Salad

(serves 4)

2 tuna steaks, about 1 inch thick

2 tsps olive oil

1 stalk lemon grass, minced

1 soup-size can chick­peas, drained

2 stalks cel­ery, chopped

zest and juice of 1 lemon

hand­ful rock­et leaves

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

3 tbsps mayonnaise

Heat the oil in a non­stick fry­ing pan until very hot.  Care­ful­ly place the tuna steaks in the oil and cook for 30 sec­onds on one side, then turn and cook for anoth­er 30 sec­onds on the oth­er side.  Remove to a cut­ting board.  Cool slight­ly so that you can han­dle the fish, then cut into bite-size pieces.  The tuna should be opaque and rather gray­ish on the out­side, but still red and cool to the touch on the inside.

Place tuna in a large bowl and add all the oth­er ingre­di­ents, then mix gen­tly.  Serve immediately.

Sim­ply divine.  I love any tuna, even the sort of cat­food tuna I was raised eat­ing, the one with the danc­ing fish in sun­glass­es on the label.  I have grad­u­at­ed to pre­ten­tious jars of yel­low­tail in olive oil, which is won­der­ful­ly robust and fla­vor­ful.  But this tuna is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence: soft, del­i­cate, com­plete­ly unfishy.  I could even skip all the oth­er ingre­di­ents and just eat it straight from the fry­ing pan, dust­ed with some mixed pep­per, per­haps with a tiny bit of wasabi-laced mayo on the side.

But my adven­tures at the fish­mon­ger do not end with a sim­ple slab of tuna.  Oh, no.  Take what hap­pened on Sat­ur­day, for example.

I walked, inno­cent­ly enough, into Tony’s love­ly shop with John, our bag of vir­tu­ous ten­nis rack­ets slung over his shoul­der, feel­ing like we deserved a treat.  “I have some love­ly tiger prawns for you today,” Tony assured me, and we suc­cumbed.  I wish I had a love­ly pho­to of what became of them, but I’ll have to make it again because the pho­to turned out wretched.  But here is the recipe, a splen­did­ly com­plex and spicy array of Thai flavors.

Thai Prawns with Coconut Milk

(serves 4)

2 tbsps sun­flower or oth­er mild oil
5 cloves garlic
1 small hot red chili
1 large (1–2 inch?) knob gin­ger, peeled
2 tsps turmeric
1 tsp cumin
juices of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 lime
large hand­ful corian­der leaves
large hand­ful pars­ley leaves
1 red onion, quartered
sea salt
fresh ground black pepper

1 kg king tiger prawns, heads removed, shells slit up the back for easy peeling

1 soup-size can coconut milk
red pep­per flakes to taste

bas­mati rice for four (put to steam)
ten­der­stem broc­col­ini to saute in olive oil

4 kaf­fir lime leaves
12 basil leaves, chiffonade

Prob­a­bly your prawns will arrive to you frozen. Mine did. If so, place them in a bowl and let them thaw. Save the thaw­ing liq­uid. If they come with heads, remove them and rinse.

So. Put all the ingre­di­ents up to and includ­ing the black pep­per in a Cuisi­nart and whizz till a nice paste. You will have to take the lid off and scrape down the sides sev­eral times. Next, heat the oil in a heavy skil­let or wok and throw all the paste in. Stir round till siz­zling, then throw in the prawns. Stir and toss and turn until the prawns are pink all over instead of their orig­i­nal grey, then smack each prawn against the side of the wok and remove to the even­tual serv­ing bowl.

Now pour into the wok the prawn thaw­ing liq­uid, and the coconut milk. Stir over medi­um heat until bub­bling and taste. Add the lime leaves and as many pep­per flakes as you need. Leave off the heat while you steam some bas­mati rice and saute some ten­der­stem broccolini.

When the rice and broc­col­ini are ready, remove the lime leaves from the sauce and add the prawns. Chif­fon­ade the basil and add to the sauce. Heat over high heat until bub­bling, then pour every­thing over the rice.  Serve with an emp­ty bowl for the prawn shells, and lots of napkins.

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This dish will make you sit up and beg like a dog.  So creamy, so beau­ti­ful­ly gold­en with turmer­ic (your fin­gers will be gold­en too, from peel­ing the shells!), so exot­ic and com­pelling­ly velvety.

I must digress and tell you that before I had even inves­ti­gat­ed the bags I brought home from the fish­mon­ger’s, the phone rang and it was Tony.  “Um, Kris­ten, you know those prawns you bought?  Don’t open them.  I acci­den­tal­ly gave you some­one else’s her­rings.  I’m bring­ing more prawns to you now.”

I tried, dear read­ers, to give back the her­rings.  He was hav­ing none of it, just smil­ing­ly shoved a pack­age at me, point­ed to the wait­ing ille­gal­ly parked van, and left, wav­ing over his shoulder.

I opened the her­rings.  Ugh.  Very fishy smelling, bones every­where (“You’re meant just to eat the bones,” well-mean­ing Eng­lish friends have said since.  Indeed.)  I went next door.  “Sara, do you and Sel­va want six but­ter­flied her­rings?”  I explained my sit­u­a­tion.  Sara repu­di­at­ed them in no uncer­tain terms.  “Give them to the cats!”  I rang up Annie.  “Annie, do you and Kei­th want six but­ter­flied her­rings?”  “Ugh, no!  Bin them!”

So, an hour and sev­er­al attempts to bone them lat­er, I gave up.  In the dark of night, feel­ing hideous­ly waste­ful but sin­gu­lar­ly unin­spired, I binned them.  Heav­en save me.

But I did­n’t stop there.  Some demon took hold of me, some com­plete­ly not-Indi­ana part of my cook­ing self, and I brought home… a squid.  Have you ever cleaned a squid?  It is not for the faint of heart, although I know to some peo­ple it’s child’s play, the same peo­ple who always clean their own scal­lops.  I cleaned scal­lops once, and while I com­plete­ly agree that the fresh­ness sim­ply can’t com­pare to ready-pre­pared scal­lops, I found it off-putting­ly grub­by.  It’s very hard to rec­on­cile the pris­tine white babies you buy at the super­mar­ket with the con­tents of a real scal­lop shell brought home from Tony’s.  They’re bot­tom-dweller bivalves, after all, their homes reflect their diet.

But a squid!  My good­ness, I could­n’t believe all that was con­tained with­in that one crea­ture.  Some brave twists of the head-ish-seem­ing bit, with long trail­ing ten­ta­cles, to sep­a­rate it from the thick body com­plete with fins… and voila.  It comes apart.  A long piece of car­ti­lage so per­fect as to seem like a piece of syn­thet­ic plas­tic.  And two lit­tle sil­ver­fish-like sacs of ink.  Ink that was pro­fuse, black­er than mid­night, and most impres­sive­ly stain­ing of the bowl, my fin­gers, the sink.  Amaz­ing!  Lots of time spent peel­ing the skin away, clean­ing the inside  OCD heaven.

But once that lit­tle guy was prop­er­ly clean, and sliced into per­fect rings, dipped into my peer­less bread­crumb mix­ture and fried… JOY.

And friends, that brings me to the end of my cur­rent Fishy Tales.  And since, begin­ning tomor­row, John and I are going to try a spell of eschew­ing carbs, there will be a spell of no fried fish for us.  You may look for­ward to a new spate of side dish­es con­tain­ing no pota­toes, rice, cous­cous, pas­ta or bread… we’ll see how long that lasts.  I’m not big on self-depri­va­tion.  Unless it involves… herrings.