Out & About April 2017

Festive fish Easter is a great time to go all out and enjoy some special fish treats. SIMON RHODES makes some suggestions and has a couple of simple recipes for you to try at home

Left: Sea Bass baked in salt, below Salmon Wellingon

Napoleon? Or is the name related to Wellington in New Zealand? A topic for discussion over the dinner table perhaps? Anyway, this dish is awesome with a capital AWWW.. Method: Melt some butter in a pan and sweat down some finely chopped leeks, then add a glass of white wine and reduce by a third. When the wine has reduced, add a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach and cook down until it has wilted. Take off the heat and add a good helping of soft cheese or cream cheese. (Ricotta is ideal) and stir into the mixture. Brush the salmon fillet with a mixture of balsamic vinegar, brown sugar and salt and spread the cheese, leek and spinach mixture on top of the salmon. To make this even easier wrap the salmon in ready made puff pastry. Bake in the oven for approx. 30 mins at 180c, or until the pastry is golden brown. So, along with chocolate eggs and hot cross buns make fish part of your Easter tradition.

T raditionally fish is eaten as a important date in the Christian calendar. Many of our customers push the boat out (excuse the pun) and treat themselves to some fantastic fish such as turbot, halibut, lobster, salmon, tuna and scallops, and turn them into mouth-watering dishes. You can use this time of the year to go to town and create something really special. Why not have a go at some sea bass baked in salt ? This old method of cooking fish is fantastic at bringing out the best flavour of the bass and believe it or not it is not salty. Cooking fish in a salt crust may seem a bit scary, but is, in fact, quite easy and is extremely popular in Spain. It’s just a matter of placing the fish in a salt parcel and the salt will seal in the juices. To give good theatre to your guests present the whole salt-crusted fish at the table. To prepare a salt crust: Combine salt, water and herbes de Provence in a bowl; mix until it’s the consistency of wet sand. Spread half the salt mixture on the prepared baking sheet in a rectangle just larger than the fish. Place the prepared sea bass on top of the salt and cover the fish with the salt making sure there are no gaps and simply bake in the oven replacement for meat over the Easter period, especially on Good Friday, an

for 30 minutes. Then remove the sea bass from the oven and break open the crust and carefully remove the skin to reveal a delicate, soft flesh of the fish which can be filleted or eaten off the bone. Accompany the sea bass with either a good homemade hollandaise sauce or melted lemon butter. This recipe works equally well with salmon too.

Simon Rhodes owns: The Lobster Pot Fishmongers. Cobbs Farmshop, Bath Road, Hungerford, Berkshire RG17 0SP Telephone: (01488) 686770 About the author

Talking of salmon, why not go full steam ahead with a delicious salmon Wellington . Was this dish an adaptation of the beef Wellington, so named after the defeat of

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