A friend of ours came to the back door with a couple of very fresh large pollock, just as I was contemplating what to have for tea. I was about to make a Norwegian dish from Davidson’s, involving cheese and macaroni, but then I turned to Google.
When I search for recipes online, I type in the ingredients that I have, and then pick out interesting sites to check what they suggest. I sometimes pick up flavour suggestions, or some interesting methods. I don’t like sites with too many photographs, it makes it hard to find and follow the recipe. I also don’t like sites with poor formatting, or dodgy programming that don’t let you download the recipe so that it is readable.
The BBC food website is reliable, informative and full of good ideas, so when I spotted this recipe, I had to try it. I had to tweak it to fit my ingredients and timescale, though. I get all my spices and herbs from Seasoned Pioneers, if you wondered.
INGREDIENTS:
- coarse sea salt
- a pinch of saffron
- 1 large pollock, filleted, skinned and boned
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 2 red chillies, finely chopped,
- 4 cooking chorizos (about the size of a standard sausage, and soft) cut into 1 cm lengths
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 200ml chicken stock
- 1 can chopped tomatoes
- 1 can chick peas (or 150g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and cooked until tender)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 125g spinach (could be more, but that is all I had)
METHOD:
- Cut the fillets of pollock in half to make four good-sized portions, In a close-fitting plastic container with a lid, sprinkle the pollock with coarse salt and a pinch of saffron, and ensure that the fish is well-coated. Cover, and put in the fridge.
- After an hour and a half, start preparing the rest of the stew. Preheat the oven to 170C.
- Put a casserole dish on a medium/high heat, add the olive oil, and fry the onions, garlic and chillies for 6 minutes or so.
- Add the chunks of chorizo, and cook for a further 5 minutes.
- Add the cumin, paprika, bay leaves and cinnamon, and continue to cook for another 4 minutes or so.
- Add the drained chickpeas, chicken stock and chopped tomatoes, bring to the boil and then put it in the oven for 45 minutes.
- Next, remove the stew from the oven, check the seasoning, and add salt and pepper to taste. I also reduced the stew a bit on the stove top at this stage.
- Take the fish from the fridge, thoroughly rinse off the salt and pat dry, before adding to the top of the stew, and returning the casserole to the oven for a further 12 minutes.
- To serve, lift the fish onto warmed dishes, and then stir the spinach into the stew before ladling it onto and around the fish.
We also had some fresh bread and olives at the table, and a Spanish white wine.