Tomato & Anchovy Salad

The new fish stall on Coventry Market has made me very, very happy indeed. I am very partial to anchovies, both the heavily salted variety and those in a marinade - boquerones in Spanish tapas bars. I bought a massive container of them for £3! Having hardly dented them after a weekend of making tapas for friends, I made a tomato & anchovy salad as a starter. 

All it needed was a couple of ripe tomatoes, some homemade pickled cabbage (thank you Will!), fresh basil and roasted red pepper from the excellent Polish deli. I didn't even make a dressing: just a squeeze of lemon and a spot of Balsamic was perfect, topped off with a twist of the black pepper mill. 

Smoked Haddock & Apple Pie with a Kick

There's no pic of this one for the simple reason that we were feeding Nav, who brought some lovely Ryton Organic veg to accompany the pie and I forgot to take photos in all the excitement. 

The smoked haddock was a half price bargain from the Co-op, but I think the flavour would have been better from Clive Miller on the market. I incorporated the apple because I think we should work season free fruit into our meals where we can - hardly a chore as it was a real winner. 

Ingredients

2 filets of smoked haddock 

2 apples, cored and roughly chopped - no need to peel

Spring onions

A few of Mel's delicious French beans

Potatoes

Butter

Milk &/or cream

Cheese (I used cheddar)

Salt & pepper

Smoked paprika

For the cheese sauce:

Tablespoon butter

Tablespoon flour

Milk

Half tspn cayenne pepper

Ground black pepper

Grated cheese to taste, I used cheddar

Boil the potatoes for the mash. Add salt to the water if that's your thing. 

Fry the apples and the spring onion in the butter. Take the skin off the fish, roughly chop and add to the pan. Fry for a few minutes and then add the beans. Leave on a low heat while you make the sauce. 

This is a simple cheese sauce. I'm not a big measurer of ingredients (apart from rice - I'll always cook too much rice unless I weigh it) but if you keep the butter and the flour roughly equivalent, all you have to do is melt the butter then add the flour & the cayenne pepper and stir to make a roux. Add milk whilst stirring vigorously until you have a nice, smooth sauce. Then turn the heat down and add the cheese, stirring until it's melted in. Taste it and add more cheese to taste. The sauce will have a kick, but that will subside as the pie cooks, so don't panic at this stage. 

Put the fish into an oven-proof dish and pour the sauce in, then mix well. 

Drain and mash the potatoes. Don't stint on the butter and milk - add cream if you have some in the fridge. You want them fluffy. 

Spoon the mash onto the fish and sauce. Grate cheese onto the top and sprinkle smoked paprika. 

Pop into the oven for 20 - 25 minutes until the topping is golden brown. 

We served with buttered cauliflower and courgette. 

Smoked Haddock Fishcakes

Or how to feed a family of four with a £1.60 fillet of naturally smoked haddock...

As the Coley recipe suggested, I'm a big fan of Clive Miller on Coventry Market. I was really buying veg, but had a bit of a hankering for comfort food and purchased a small smoked haddock fillet. Natural in this case means without colourants. 

Ingredients 

Small smoked fish fillet

Butter

Cream (optional)

Milk

1 egg

Breadcrumbs 

6 small potatoes

Three spring onions

Peel and boil the potatoes until they're ready for mashing. Broadly, this means they fall off a fork if you prong them and they're starting to crumble. Drain and mash the potatoes. Add finely chopped spring onions. 

Whilst the potatoes are boiling you've time to prepare the fish. I deboned and pulled the black skin off the fish before putting it into a small frying pan with a knob of butter and enough milk to cover the bottom of the pan. Season with black pepper to taste. The butter will stop the fish sticking as the milk reduces. It needs about four minutes on each side. The trick is for the milk to reduce as the fish cooks, leaving a delicious reduction to fold into the potatoes. 

When the fish is cooked flake it and add it to the mash with the reduced milk and butter sauce. I added a little double cream at the stage because I had some in the fridge. Don't add too much or you'll not be able to form the fish cakes. 

You don't need to breadcrumb the fish cakes, but I had a crust and an egg going spare. I zapped the crust in a food processor, although you can use a grater. Some like to bake the breadcrumbs to make them crunchy, but I think that comes with the frying anyway. Breadcrumbing is easy but messy - into the flour, then the egg, then the crumbs. 

Your fish cakes are now ready for frying until golden on both sides. 

I served with stir fried pak choi and peas in a cheddar cream sauce and finely cut chips. 

If you want a bit more zing, finely chop a chilli (or use powder) and add to the pan when cooking the fish. 

Cajun Blackened Coley Steaks

A key theme of this blog is great food for those on small budgets and when it comes to fish there are some tasty options if we steer clear of the obvious. 

The finest fish in Coventry can be found in the Market - the natural home of the budget-conscious foodie. I asked Clive Miller, a fabulously knowledgeable fishmonger and supplier to Blue Bistro, what he'd recommend based on price and taste and he didn't hesitate: coley steaks. 

Coley is, despite the efforts of many great chefs, seen as a poor-mans cod. Well, great - if ignorance keeps this tasty fish in our price range. 

Clive, whose knowledge of how to cook fish is second to none, recommended a Thai curry. Delicious as this sounded I didn't have all the ingredients I needed.  So, keen to stick to my budget but with my taste buds tuned to spicy, I went over to the Nut Stall on a mission. 

If you don't know already, the Nut Stall has a great selection of spices and dried herbs, including exactly what I was looking for: a Cajun spice mix. Of course, I could produce a Cajun spice mix myself, but I'd be a muppet to design a dish on a budget that requires eight ingredients just for the flavouring. Their excellent Cajun mix cost just 60p and will be used for all sorts of delicious treats. 

Ingredients

Coley steaks

A good knob of butter

Three garlic cloves

Cajun spice mix

Melt the butter in a pan. Crush the garlic cloves and add them to the butter. Give it a minute or so to infuse the flavour of the garlic. 

Coat the steaks in the garlicky butter. This provides a deliciously sticky base for the Cajun spice - which you should apply liberally. I used a frying pan, but a griddle would do the trick. I reckon about 3 minutes on each side. The fish should be, as the title says, blackened. 

I dressed the fish with roasted sweet red peppers and served with a curry fried rice, a variety of which will be featured on the blog soon.  If I'd not run out of potatoes I'd probably have been tempted by smoked paprika roast potatoes as an alternative. 

The fish was delicious - we'll be seeing more Coley in the blog before too long.