Week 33 of the Cookbook Challenge with the theme of Seafood. I decided to try my first oven baked fish, which I have been wanting to try for a while now, foil wrapped and all.

I recently gave into new cookbook temptation and bought my second Nigella Lawson cookbook, Nigella Express – this recipe is from this book.

Ingredients:

2 sea bass, approx 900g each, gutted and prepared (I couldn’t find sea bass so got some snapper instead)

4 spring onions

6 tablespoons of Sake – Note: Sake is a Japanese liquor made by fermenting rice – most traditional sake is gluten free however there are different varieties that may use barley or other grains, so double check before you use.

2 tablespoons of soy sauce (make sure it’s a gluten free soy sauce)

1 teaspoon grated ginger

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Lay each fish on a large piece of foil, and bring up the sides ready to make a parcel.

Slice the spring onions in half lengthways and place 4 pieces into the cavity of each fish.

Into each parcel, sprinkle 3 tablespoons of sake, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and about 1/2 teaspoon of the grated ginger.

Wrap the parcels loosely but seal them firmly, and cook on a baking sheet in the oven for about 25 minutes.

Open the cooked fish parcels, peel away the skin from the top of each fish and fillet the top layer of fish.

Turn the fish over, and repeat the same process again, and then spoon over any juices from the parcel onto the fish and serve with wilted greens.

To make the wilted greens just sautee your choice of chopped vegetables in a wok for a few minutes with some oil.

I decided to keep the fish whole to eat, although I did have to cover up the head, don’t like that eye looking at me! I also threw some potatoes in the oven to have on the side of this dish.

I was really excited about how this fish would taste, but I ended up being a bit disappointed – the flavour was not intense as I was expecting. It still tasted nice though, and was really easy to do.

Week 27 of the Cookbook Challenge, gosh I’m so behind in posting all my recipes! For this challenge the theme was Insect. Now I’m not really keen on using actual insects in my cooking, I’m not that adventurous, so decided to go with the “insects of the sea” – prawns.

I used my good old reliable curry cookbook, the aptly named “Best Ever Curry Cookbook”.

Ingredients:

675g raw tiger prawns (as you can see from my picture I cheated a bit and got cooked prawns)
4 dried red chillies
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 large onion, chopped
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 bay leaves
1 inch piece of fresh root ginger, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon ground corriander
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 tomatoes, finely chopped
plain boiled rice, to serve

Peel the prawns and remove the thin black intestinal vein. Put the dried chillies, coconut, mustard seeds and onion in a wok and dry-fry over a medium heat for 5-6 minutes or until the mixture begins to brown. Stir continuously to ensure even browning and to avoid burning the coconut. Put into a food processor or blender and process to a coarse paste.

Heat the vegetable oil in the pan and fry the bay leaves for 1 minute. Add the chopped ginger and the garlic, and fry for 2-3 minutes.

Add the ground corriander, chilli powder, salt and the paste and fry for about 5 minutes.

Stir in the tomatoes and about 175ml (3/4 cup) water and simmer for 5-6 minutes or until thickened.

Add the prawns and cook for about 4-5 minutes, or until they turn pink.

Serve the curry on plain boiled rice.

I loved this curry, it was quite simple to make, very aromatic and it was interesting using desiccated coconut instead of coconut milk – it gave it a sweeter and lighter taste and is a bit healthier than using the milk so you don’t feel so bad having seconds

Cookbook Challenge week 22, the theme is Red. When I think of red I think of beetroot, strawberries, tomato and paprika. Fortunately I couldn’t find a recipe that combined all of those ingredients (!) so I decided to have my main ingredient as paprika.

I have a beautiful Hungarian cookbook, Culinaria Hungary. My mum bought me this book when it became apparent that I wasn’t very good at learning the traditional Hungarian way of learning recipes: a bit of this, a bit of that, cook until it looks good!

It’s amazing what paprika will do to a dish – this recipe is so so so simple, minimal ingredients, just a dash of paprika totally makes all the flavour come through in the fish.

Ingredients

About 1.5kg fish (eg. carp, catfish, perch – you can use a mixture)

Salt

1 capsicum

1 tomato

2 medium onions

1 tablespoon sweet paprika (not the hot paprika)

1-2 hot peppers (optional)

Chopped parsley (my addition)

I have adapted this recipe a bit – it’s a very traditional recipe that uses all parts of the fish, I took the easy way out and just use fillets so made the recipe a bit easier as a result.

Scale and gut the fish, remove the bones and wash (to avoid this step I just used a boneless fillet of fish!). Cut the fish into bite sized pieces and season with salt. Chop the capsicum and tomato into small pieces, and slice the onion. Place the fish and onions in a pot and add enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, add the paprika and simmer gently for 1 hour. Add the tomato and capsicum  and cook over high heat for 20 minutes.

I added some chopped parsley to give the soup a bit more colour.