Mission Fishy Fishy

Today is the day. I will be cooking a fish dish, from scratch, for le Boof and myself.

I'd like to think I have mastered the fish finger (out of the packet). But I've never cooked a meal containing fish. This is probably due to the fact that it usually takes me a year to eat anything with fish in, due to a slight anxiety about finding a bone in a mouthful of food. However, I think it might well be time I got to grips with this fear, as I approach the quarter of a decade mark (*sob*). Also I think le Boof and I have settled into the habit of eating too much red meat. Chicken is an option, although just breasts are too expensive to have frequently, and I've not explored the route of getting an entire chicken and getting hundreds of meals out of it, so things like diced pork and beef mince seem to be what our meals consist of most often.

I did some research when we were first settling in up here on where there were fishmongers in the city, and I'm sad to say it seems like there's only the one. Le boof and I checked it out yesterday, it's part of the daily market that the city has (which is another lovely thing about living here). They had only a small selection of fish, but I think they may have been closing down for the weekend by the time we got there. I had read up on what I thought I would go for, using this very useful webpage. I'm very keen on the idea of not going for the main three fish that seem to dominate the market, and to instead use this guide to pick out something less common. After some deliberation we went for a couple of fillets of Pouting. Which apparently is a fairly bland tasting fish! Yay. Oh well. I shall see it as a challenge.

For pudding we have jelly! Orange for me and blackcurrant for le Boof.









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OK, so dinner has now been cooked and consumed. It was one of the quickest main meals I've made in a while. We used this recipe for crusty topped pouting. I was on fish duty while le Boof made a wholegrain mustard, crème fraiche and white wine sauce. For our veg we fried up half a large leek in butter until soft, boiled up some taters and cheated with the peas by microwaving them. 

I was very pleased with the outcome of the meal. You grill the fish, which only takes about 4 minutes on either side. This is great for me, I can't eat anything that's too greasy, so no traditional fish and chips! The fish would have been quite bland on it's own but the recipe says to season both sides of the fish and the breadcrumb topping has plenty of herbs in. The sauce complimented it nicely and the leeks went well too.

Mission = success!

Next mission: pick a different fish and explore different methods of cooking it.


P.S. Jelly was just about ready by the time we got to puddings, although needed a bit of help coming out of the moulds!

My beautiful jelly

Le Boof's jelly...

P.P.S. It turned out to be cheaper to get a full bottle of white wine for the sauce than a tiny little one, this is a very good idea as neither of us really drink white wine.