Spiced Mackerel

2 June 2007

Another Olive recipe into the test kitchen: spiced mackerel fillets with potato salad. Another recipe that's really a bit of a non-recipe ...

Buy your mackerel - the fishmonger will fillet it for you and mackerel aren't known for their scales so running your hand over the skin will be enough to ready the fillet for cooking. Do buy a whole fish from a fish monger, as you will be able to pick a nice big fish. We only needed one fish between two of us.

In a mortar and pestle, crush equal quantities of cumin and coriander seeds (for 2 people sharing a fish, it was 1 tsp of each), cayenne pepper (or chilli powder, or chilli flakes) to taste, a dash of tumeric and enough lemon juice to make a paste.

Score the mackerel (on the skin side) and rub the paste all over. Leave to marinate.

While marinating, prepare the potato salad. Boil up some new potatoes until tender. When cooked, drain and to the pot add chopped spring onions, some lemon juice, some olive oil and some parsley. Put the lid on and give it all a good shake together. To serve at room temperature, keep it covered until ready to serve.

To cook the mackerel, grill (and I recommend this rather than frying, which is what we did, because the skin didn't hold together particularly well) - skin side up until done.

Serve with the potato salad. We also served with runner beans in a light tomato, garlic and chillli sauce.
The cumin and coriander flavour works really well with the oily, rich fish and I really enjoyed the simple potato salad. The beans added a bit of colour and, with their chilli flavours, complimented the fish. A quick, simple supper - and one that could be adapted quite easily.

Easy peasy. We served with Señorio de Sarría Viñedo no 5 2005, from Navarra (£7.99 from Hoults). It was a lovely wine - smelt like berries, but quite dry and citrussy on the palate, finishing with a touch of red fruit. It went well with the fish but would also be good as an apéritif.

tagged with: mackerel, potato, fish

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Chilli Crusted Steak

I recently took up the offer of a super cheap 3 month subscription to Olive. In fact, it turned out to be cheaper than I expected, because I thought it was 3 issues for £1 each, when it was actually 3 issues for £1 all up.

First recipe into the domestic kitchen was chilli-crusted steak with mustard mash. I'm not sure how much of a recipe you really need for this type of thing, but we did follow it and had a very pleasant, quick meal.

For the steak: combine breadcrumbs with some olive oil, chilli flakes to taste, and some chopped chives and parsley. This will be the topping.

For the mash, boil up your potatoes and then mash, adding in butter, milk and wholegrain mustard, again to taste.

The recipe said to use rump but we used sirloin. Heat the griddle, and cook the steak on both sides, before adding the topping (pat it down so it sits nicely) and popping into a 180C oven, to finish off the cooking and crisp up the topping. We served with roast carrots, parsnips and sweet potato.


We drank a bottle of Chateau Continel Elixir 2001, from Fronton (£9.99 from Hoults). This turned out to be quite a find. The wine is made from, predominantly, the négrette grape, something I haven't tried before. Although the wine did need a good decant and breathe, it had lovely leather and tobacco notes on the nose and followed these up with a very meaty palate. It was quite soft on the tannins but had good structure and moderate length. It was quite a hit and went well with the steak.

tagged with: steak, négrette

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