Prawn cocktail

Prawn cocktail, for me, is inextricably associated with my childhood, when it was the fall-back starter at every dinner table. I remember a friend inviting another friend and me back for tea on her 12th birthday; we had prawn cocktail and then tandoori chicken and we thought that we were the epitome of cool. Or rather she did - I predictably didn't really like prawns and was frantically thinking up ways to avoid the starter, whilst maintaining an air of sophistication. I don't remember how or if I contrived not to eat it. That episode apart, prawn cocktail was utterly ubiquitous as I was growing up, and then it did a vanishing act and I forgot about it completely until a few years ago, when I tried Delia's version for the 21st century and was bowled over- that version, like Jamie's, has avocado in it, and I can't resist avocado in any form. I am also alarmingly keen on the vile-sounding Marie Rose sauce, which by rights should terrify anyone. So if anyone is planning a retro dinner party, I'd be happy to come along.

Anyway, to make this particular prawn cocktail, I washed and drained a round and a little gem lettuce and dressed them with lemon juice, seasoning and a little olive oil. I made the Marie Rose sauce with mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and - this was a new one for me - a little brandy. I know brandy sounds really odd. I knew that as I added it, hoping it would turn out okay and wouldn't ruin that implausibly tasty sauce. To serve, I laid wedges of avocado on a plate, added the prawns and the lettuce leaves and spooned over the sauce, drizzling it around the plate, then smattering the dish with cayenne. On the side, as suggested, we had pangrattato made from stale white bread. I should add that prawn cocktail is often served in a glass; Jamie's, in the picture, is on a plate. I asked Simon what he thought about serving it in a glass and he insisted that that would be naff, so we stuck to the simple white plate. The kitsch exhibitionist in me quite liked the idea of the glass, but in the end the plate looked pretty good too...


What to say? It was really good; the brandy didn't ruin the sauce at all (although I am not convinced that the brandy is absolutely essential). It reminded me why retro isn't necessarily a bad thing and that the revival of the prawn cocktail is definitely a good thing (as long as it isn't the only starter doing the dinner party rounds). Who knows - maybe I'll kickstart the retro food revolution round here.

Grilled and roasted red mullet with pancetta and thyme

Finally, finally back to Jamie. It is one of those weeks, jammed full of tedious meetings and flurries of paperwork, that I read and promptly forget the content of. There are weeks like that. Luckily there's nothing on television so I don't feel I'm missing out too much when the papers come home with me. Anyway yesterday Simon managed to use his lunch break to go to the fishmonger so we were lucky enough to be able to get red mullet. I don't know if I'd had red mullet before - I don't remember, but then I've had all sorts of fish in France that I didn't know the names for at the time, so I might have had. In any case I certainly never cooked it before so it felt more exciting than the usual suspects (salmon being most frequently called upon, mainly out of convenience). The only thing was that I was rushing around a lot yesterday and so hardly had time to brief Simon on what fish to buy. He returned from the fishmonger and announced he had found 2 red mullet, scaled, cleaned and gutted, but headless. I was disappointed because I liked the aesthetics of the head-on red mullet gleaming out of Jamie's photo; when it comes to food photos, I can be a bit superficial. I got over it quickly enough when we got home and unwrapped the fish - they looked pearly pink and beautiful, even without their heads. And losing the heads does make eating them feel a bit less visceral, somehow.

This is another simple recipe, which is good for those nights when you hurry home from work late under yet another raincloud and can't be bothered with fancy cooking. Basically, rub each fish with olive oil and season them, inside and out; stuff with lemon slices and sprigs of thyme or marjoram. Griddle on each side for 1 minute, remove to a chopping board, wrap each fish in two slices of pancetta and top with an anchovy fillet, then roast, topped with extra herbs, until cooked.


I had no idea how this was going to taste. I was hoping that the herbs, combined with lemon, pancetta and anchovy would make the dullest fish taste good. I was right, except that red mullet isn't dull at all - it had an amazing flavour. I really enjoyed this; it was incredibly tasty and, although headless, still exquisitely pink and pretty. I ate it almost drooling, and the bones for once didn't bother me, because the fish was so good. I can't believe I waited 31 years to try red mullet and I will definitely try it again, soon. Yum.

I've missed Jamie's recipes over the last week. The problem is simply finding an opportunity to locate ingredients and/or to find time to, for example, make pasta for dinner. If we get home by 6, it's fine. Any later and we're eating the wallpaper. Well, not literally, because we don't have wallpaper, but I have never been one to allow literality to cramp my style. The problem is I'm already craving red mullet again, but next I need to track down some John Dory, or a whole salmon small enough to feed two. Not to mention attend another series of meetings and read some more ozone-layer killing stacks of papers.

Fabulous fish stew

I should confess here that once upon a time fish stew was the stuff of my nightmares- literally. I remember fish soups from childhood holidays in France; I found them utterly repugnant and would never have dreamed of even touching the seafood with my finger, let alone putting it into my mouth. I was, as I've said before, the quintessentially Picky English Child, who arrives in France and wonders why meat has blood oozing out of it and why fish doesn't always come battered. Campsites were social places and my parents always seemed to befriend French people with fish fetishes (or so it appeared to me); I remember one party where my brother and I were forced to go and there was very little we would eat. I repeated, over and over, polite but unyielding, 'non merci', to caviar, to what looked like raw bacon (I'd never had that kind of ham in Britain), to smelly cheese, indeed, to everything but the hunks of white baguette. Luckily my grandmother sneaked us back to our caravan for a Nutella sandwich and some Opal Fruits, smuggled in from England to appease us when necessary. Going out for dinner was okay, because there were creperies, where I inevitably ordered a ham and cheese crepe (I once braved a chocolate crepe, but the chocolate was too dark for me and I left it; I saw that as the result of changing a routine and learnt my lesson). There were also restaurants with lobsters and crabs on display, waiting to be killed and served up, that Grandma ordered, but these places also had non-fishy offerings and so I wasn't forced to starve.

Fastforward a few years. In September 1995 I arrived in the south of France to begin a year as an English assistant in two French schools. I had no idea what to expect: Cambridge didn't prepare me one bit for independent living in another country, other than ensuring that I was au fait with that country's literature and philosophy. I suppose that's a start, but it doesn't help when you're confronted with bewildering bureaucracy on the one hand, and an infuriating laid-back refusal to take anything seriously on the other. For the first month, I didn't even know what my timetable was because the two schools were at war with each other, using me as the pawn in their struggle. I felt tired all the time, worn out by listening to the southern French accent for hours on end, by the unfamiliar heat in late September, by waiting in queues at various bureaucratic places only to be told that the office was closed for a four hour lunch break. In the middle of all this, I was invited out for dinner a lot, which was welcome, but terrifying; nobody ever asked me what I did and didn't eat. I can't remember if this was a mid-90s thing (before we all got allergy obsessed) or if it was a French thing. Certainly in Cambridge we hadn't needed to consider food in that light: we either ate in the canteen, which ran a rota of stodgy but safe dinners (macaroni cheese, chicken casserole, deep fried fish) or we cooked, which in practice meant that we made pasta, stirfries or warmed up pizzas. Nobody cooked particularly adventurous food so we never really needed to ask what people ate or did not eat. In France, though, the first time I went out it was to the local tennis club, where my landlady's boyfriend was a member; we ate outside, very late in the evening, and the meal was bouillabaisse with aioli and crusty bread. I remember seeing the huge bowl in front of me; I remember thinking I would be sick if I had to eat it, but I had no idea how to refuse. In the end I ate it slowly, tempering it with bread, chewing methodically and deliberately not tasting it. I wasn't sick. I hoped it might be a one-off but it wasn't: people were always inviting me for a casual supper and every time that supper turned out to be bouillabaisse. After a while, I came to like it, which was a relief. (The same happened with olives. To my eternal regret I never managed to get to like raw tomatoes)

Despite my slow conversion to it, I have never cooked fish stew, partly because Simon only recently discovered that he liked seafood other than prawns and partly (this is going to sound feeble, but I'll say it anyway) because it's messy food and I like food to be neat; I like smooth soups more than chunky ones, for instance. It's all about perception and nothing about taste. I do eat messy food, but I tend not to cook it. Anyway, yesterday I went to the fishmongers and got the wherewithall for Jamie's fish stew. I bought a teeny bit of monkfish, a filleted sea bass, mussels, no clams because there weren't any, red mullet, and langoustines. I should say that I won't be going back to that fishmonger (it wasn't the one I've been going to, in town; it was another, further away) because she was utterly graceless and her filleting was decidedly odd.

Onto the recipe. The stew is served with saffron aioli (mayonnaise smashed with garlic, saffron and little salt and lemon) and crusty bread. To make the stew part, I simmered white wine, garlic, basil stalks and a tin of tomatoes for 10-15 minutes or so, then added all the fish and seafood in one layer (to do this, you need a very big pan. The biggest one I had was just big enough), put the lid on, and simmered for 10 minutes or so.

When the stew was ready, I toasted two slices of bread and put each in the base of a serving bowl. I poured over the stew and topped with fennel tops, basil leaves, a little olive oil and a big spoonful of saffron aioli.


We both enjoyed the stew a lot. I liked how the sauce soaked into the bread, and I loved the saffron aioli - it went really well with the tomatoey broth. Mmm. It is messy food, both to look at and to eat, but it tastes great. Shame that most people I know wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. I wonder if they should have the French treatment - come round and be told it's fish stew or just bread for dinner, tough if you don't like it/have an allergy/prefer meat. Once I invited someone for dinner and she asked what I was cooking; it was a mid-week dinner and I replied 'chicken curry'. She twisted her face like a contortionist and said 'I prefer lamb - could you do lamb for me instead?' This woman is so picky that she has a social as well as a food problem (she basically only likes lamb curry, beef pizza, and biscuits); I won't get started on her eating habits or we won't be eating tonight, but I dream of revenge in the form of a scary fish stew, complete with saffron mayo and protruding seafood limbs.

Shell-roasted scallops

I vaguely recall Gordon Ramsay rebuking a hapless restaurant owner/chef for serving food in scallop shells; I can't remember the exact expletives but his scorn has stayed with me. Sorry Gordon, but I'm not a restaurant owner and I cooked scallops in their shells. Is that such a crime against food? Or public taste? I don't think so. I didn't set out to cook scallops yesterday. I went to court in the morning, accompanying a colleague who had got on the wrong side of the DVLA (note to anyone out there contemplating battle with the DVLA: don't) and, thanks to a series of errors, beginning with her garage failing to send the DVLA the appropriate documentation on time and complicated by the DVLA sending her mail to an old address, she was summoned to court by the Secretary of State for Transport. The whole thing felt Kafkaesque; the magistrate perched behind a high bar while we sat down below on those ubiquitous blue chairs that seem de rigeur in all functionary buildings now, including university buildings, if you are lucky enough to be in one that has been renovated (there are also ageing red ones with stuffing oozing out). Anyway the magistrate looked like a caricature of a television magistrate, straining in his old-fashioned suit and peering out of little round glasses. I kept wanting to laugh, except that it was serious. Luckily the magistrate had the sense to annul the judgement with reasonable speed. I came back into town on the metro; some students got on near town and began to debate the intensity of their hangovers. I got off the metro, wandered past the fishmonger and found scallops in their shells, so I bought them and decided to try out Jamie's recipes. I should say that they were pretty expensive; scallops aren't something you should buy on the spur of the moment as you pass the fishmonger, particularly large, juicy king scallops. Or maybe they are...

Jamie has three recipes for scallops in their shells and suggests making them as a starter - presumably choosing one of the three recipes. I decided to try all three; since I had six scallops, I made two of each so we both got to try each one.

Scallops the old-school French way:

Sit the scallops in their shells over chopped spinach and top with a mix of butter, lemon zest, parsley, garlic and nutmeg; drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Bake on top of a layer of rice or salt for 12 minutes.

Scallops with sweet tomato and basil

Blitz fresh tomatoes, garlic, basil, balsamic vinegar and seasoning with a knob of butter; spoon into the scallop shells and put the scallop on top, covering with a rasher of pancetta. Bake on top of a layer of rice or salt for 15 minutes.

Scallops with ginger, soy and coriander

Lay scallops in their shells and pour over a mix of soy, lime, ginger, sugar, sesame oil and coriander, drizzle with olive oil and bake on top of a layer of rice or salt for 12 minutes.


The French-style scallop was nice; the Asian-style scallop tastier still and the Italian-style scallop (with tomatoes and basil and pancetta) was absolutely delicious. The bacon had infused the scallop and worked really well with the tomato and basil sauce. It would be a fantastic starter, always presuming your guests are the sort of people you can feed scallops to, which isn't a given around here, because you can layer up the scallop in advance and refrigerate until you're ready to bake it. I suppose you might not want to serve scallops in their shells to Gordon Ramsay, but I thought they looked and tasted lovely; as Jamie says, they might look like '1980s retro campness on a plate', but who said there was anything wrong with 1980s retro campness? I defy anyone not to succumb to a scallop, baked in its shell.

Grilled or roasted monkfish with black olive sauce and lemon mash

I honestly don't recall ever eating monkfish when I was younger. I don't remember anyone eating monkfish. It entered my consciousness about the same time as rocket, which I now eat almost every day, and as sundried tomatoes. Probably I was a bit slow to catch on because I was a student living in the culinary backwater of Cambridge and living on stir-fries and nights out in the local pub; I was hardly at the front of cutting edge food trends. That said, I am convinced that I ate monkfish in France, reasonably often, before I tasted it here. My favourite monkfish recipe comes from Happy Days, Jamie's third book, that my brother bought for me in 2001; at that point I already owned the first two books, The Naked Chef in paperback and its sequel in hardback. I found Happy Days immediately appealing and accessible, more so than the first two books, although time has nuanced that impression and I have come to love the Naked Chef in particular. Anyway from Happy Days I tried the baked onion recipe - which is to die for, almost literally, given the cream and bacon - the parsnip and pancetta tagliatelle, the chicken in a bag, the roast vegetables, and the roasted monkfish smeared with blitzed sundried tomatoes, basil, garlic and oil and wrapped in prosciutto. I now make a cheapo version using other white fish fillets, because monkfish is trendily expensive in this country. Anyway I had been looking forward to this new monkfish recipe as an excuse to splurge on monkfish, instead of making do with cheaper fish fillets, and as a chance to try lemon mash, which sounded intriguing.

Jamie points out that monkfish can leach out juices when cooking and thus the recipe involves bashing up salt, rosemary and lemon zest in a pestle and mortar and rubbing it into the fish before leaving the fish to marinate for an hour. After an hour, rub it dry and either grill it or fry it for 2 mins in an oven-proof frying pan and then turn over and move the pan to a hot oven for 6-8 minutes, until cooked. Meanwhile, make the salsa, which consists of chopped basil, parsley and marjoram, celery heart leaves, garlic, lemon juice, black olives and red chilli, and also boil floury potatoes for the lemon mash. When cooked, mash the potatoes with olive oil, milk, lemon juice and seasoning. Serve with rocket dressed in lemon juice and olive oil.


This is a very nice recipe. The lemon mash was quite a revelation, but I suggest anyone who finds lemon overpowering beware; I love lemon, and I loved the lemony mash, but I am probably more citrus-obsessed than most. I will definitely make that again. The monkfish was deliciously meaty and the salsa very tangy - I will probably repeat the salsa with different fish too, as it has masses of flavour. This was a lovely dinner, ideal for a Thursday night treat when you're exhausted and the working week is grinding slowly to its conclusion and the weekend is finally approaching, though it would be a lovely dinner party meal too... Well, it would if your guests like olives and fish, which in my world is actually not to be taken for granted. Don't get me started on picky people, although I am coming to realize that I am closer to the picky child I once was and now mainly despise than I tend to believe. I'm not really in the mood for dinner parties at the moment: teaching is a pretty sociable activity, and at the moment I talk almost all day long, so I don't really feel like opening my mouth much in the evening. I just want to cook, eat something delicious and slump into a novel or the television and shut out the world. Monkfish with black olive salsa and lemony mash is a pretty classy way of doing that and comes highly recommended if anyone feels like giving it a go.

My favourite crunchy squid with lime and chilli mayonnaise

I'm scared of deep-frying. I know I'm not alone; there are probably therapy sessions to teach nervy souls like me how to cope with a deep fat-fryer, but I'm not about to enrol on one. This fear dates back to my childhood when I used to rush out of the kitchen whenever the deep fat fryer was turned on; the sizzling fat did more to put me off cooking than school dinners, even. I've always been a scaredy-cat sort of person. Simon does the deep fat frying in our house, although to be honest we don't eat deep-fried food much (which has to be a good thing). Yesterday we bought some squid and decided to make Jamie's crunchy squid, which is effectively a euphemism for deep-fried squid, but sounds less off-putting to the health police. It goes with lime and chilli mayonnaise, which is enough reason to make it - who could resist lime and chilli mayo? As I wrote that last, apparently rhetorical, question, I realized that my friend Litlove will be recoiling in horror as she reads this. Litlove is even more squeamish than me. Quite a lot more sqeamish than me, in fact. In the days when a friend of mine tested my stomach to its absolute limit with some seriously dodgy food, Litlove would listen to my stories and I could almost see her stomach churn in empathetic repulsion. Anyway, going back to last night's dinner, crunchy squid and lime and chilli mayo sounded perfect to me.

First, make the mayo: mix 4 heaped tablespoons of mayonnaise with chopped red chilli, lemon and lime zest and juice so that it is zingily citrussy.

Then toss the squid in seasoned flour and deep-fry at 180 C until crispy and golden. Drain on kitchen towel, season, and slice at an angle. Serve with the mayo.


The photo definitely doesn't do the dinner justice; squid isn't very photogenic and the mayo, thinned down with lemon and lime juice, was runny. Never mind - it was as yummy as deep fried food inevitably is; and the mayonnaise was delicious and will definitely be repeated. I served this as suggested with a root veg salad, the same one I made at the weekend. The combo worked pretty well and the veggies in the salad made me feel as though I wasn't breaking every health rule in the book. Oh, and I managed to stay in the kitchen while the squid sizzled dangerously. I must be overcoming some of my fears.

Crispy fragrant jumbo prawns

Thursday night is late-night shopping here, which means that the high street stores close at eight or nine rather than at six in the evening (hardly late-night, but late enough to allow me a chance to browse after work). I like shopping, even if admitting it to my colleagues earns me raised eyebrows and ill-disguised contempt (most of them eschew the city for nature and muddy walks, and despise shopping to the point that one colleague even sends other people to buy her clothes and shoes...), but then what they don't understand is that I like to wander around looking almost as much as I like to buy. In fact, I often come home empty-handed or simply with a book or two (I don't count books, since they denote necessity rather than luxury in my financial code). Anyway on Thursday I went to pick up the almond cream Kitchenaid blender that I had ordered on Wednesday - it was on sale, and I simply couldn't resist it. I had a blender already, so this was sheer profligacy, but it does go beautifully with my mixer and it is more sophisticated than my previous blender (which I am going to give to a friend whose blender was broken by her accident-prone mother). En route to collect the blender, we stopped at the fishmongers and bought some raw medium sized prawns; we knew we wouldn't have lots of time to cook when we got home and this breadcrumbed prawn dish seemed ideal for a night when you hit the kitchen running.

First, whizz white bread into breadcrumbs, then mix with chopped parsley, lemon zest, olive oil and Parmesan and lay the mixture on a tray to dry.

Toss the prawns in seasoned flour, then dip into whisked egg, then coat in the breadcrumbs. It is assembly line cooking, doesn't require a great deal of thought, and is pretty speedy. Place the crumbed prawns on an oiled baking tray and bake for 10 minutes or so until crispy and golden at 220C.

Sprinkle the prawns with salt and serve with rocket dressed with lemon juice and olive oil; serve with lemon quarters.


Jamie's photo shows a very restrained serving, with two huge prawns and just a few rocket leaves. My prawns were smaller but also we were eating this as a main meal (with bread), so I upped the quantities of both prawns and rocket (I am a tad obsessive about eating enough greens). I also used lemon salt to season both flour and prawns, to heighten the flavour. It was absolutely delicious - a dinner to repeat, definitely; Jamie suggests using squid, scallops or sardines as alternatives, which could also be good to try - and it was all so quickly done! Fast food again.

(In case anyone's interested and as an aside, I have tried out the blender. We had smoothies this morning - raspberries and blueberries blitzed with apple juice and yoghurt. They were pretty invigorating.)

Southern Indian crab curry

Friday night in our house is, as I've said before, very frequently curry night. Sometimes this means takeaway; other times I feel like cooking it myself (curry isn't difficult to make, but on Fridays I often prefer to inhabit the living room rather than the kitchen. The rest of the time, the kitchen feels like my space). Yesterday, I had decided to cook and bought some freshly picked crabmeat in preparation for this curry, but my throat began to hurt on the way home from work and I realized I was coming down with a cold. I used to get colds a lot - at university, they struck me down fairly regularly, as soon as the holidays began, and when I first began to teach then I inevitably caught a cold in Fresher's week (commonly known as Freshers' Flu) along with all the new undergraduates. More recently I have been careful to ward that off by stoking up my vitamin C levels and not opening my mouth too wide when in the same room as alcohol-dulled and sleep-deprived Freshers, making the most of their first time away from home. I haven't had many colds in the last couple of years (touching wood as I write this); Simon catches colds more than me these days. I am, however, not entirely immune and last night I found myself with a scratchy throat and runny nose - that is, in the condition I like to describe as 'cold-infested'.

Cold notwithstanding, the crab curry turned out to be easy and quick. Fry fennel seeds, black mustard seeds, cardamom pods (crushed and husks removed), cumin seeds, chopped ginger, garlic, onion and red chilli until lightly golden; add turmeric, butter and brown crabmeat. After a minute add coconut milk and water; simmer for five minutes, then add lemon juice and simmer for around 10 minutes. Stir in some coriander and white crabmeat and simmer for a few minutes, check the seasoning and add more lemon juice if you like, then serve sprinkled with more coriander leaves.


In the book, Jamie's curry looks brown-ish; mine is more yellow, possibly because I was, as usual, converting a recipe for 4-6 to serve 2 and didn't pay attention to the turmeric, and also I didn't have any black mustard seeds and had to use standard ones. That aside, I like the bright and fresh appearance of this curry and it tasted fragrant and light, an elegant and vibrant sort of curry. I would make this again with prawns instead of or as well as crab, I think.

Mussels steamed with fennel and creme fraiche

Three months ago, Simon tasted (and liked!) his first mussel, tested in Jamie's recipe for spaghetti with mussels and basil oil. Thankfully he wasn't scared off and has turned himself into a guinea pig par excellence for seafood. I love mussels and would take up any excuse to eat them, except that I do find cleaning and debearding them a bit tiresome. Mussels I buy seem to be very hairy and I wouldn't like to taste a strand of mussel beard in the scrumptious white wine and cream sauces that invariably accompany them. Yesterday I made it to the fishmongers after work (late night shopping on Thursday) and we could therefore have mussels for dinner. It is no surprise by now that there is fennel in this dish - Jamie's favourite ingredient, or so it would seem. There is also creme fraiche and white wine, which are two of my favourite ingredients, particularly together...

To make this dish: for four people, chop half a fennel bulb and an onion. Sweat them with 4 chopped cloves of garlic, leaves of 2 sprigs of fresh thyme and 1-2 crumbled dried red chilli, until soft. Turn up the heat and add 1 kg mussels, 340 ml creme fraiche and 1 large glass white wine. Mix together vigorously, put the lid on, let it cook for a couple of minutes, check it, shake the pan, wait until mussels open and then lift them into bowls with a slotted spoon. Season with salt and pepper. Check the sauce; if it needs thickening put it back on the heat, season and then pour over the mussels. Sprinkle with fennel tops plus the other half of the fennel used earlier, shaved finely, and some drizzled olive oil. Serve with warm crusty bread and white wine.

Mussels don't look as good as they taste, do they? They were delicious though - the sauce was divine. I loved the aniseedy sourness of the creamy sauce; it was perfect. We ate it with crusty bread and scooped up the sauce left once the mussels had gone with hunks of the bread. I am now, predictably, fantasizing about a trip to France for moules-frites (amongst other things).

Delicious roasted white fish wrapped in smoked bacon with lemon mayonnaise and asparagus

Before I decided to embark on this project, at the stage when I was flicking through the book idly wondering what I would decide to cook from it (apparently most people never make more than three recipes from any one cookbook, but I bet they imagine making more as they first skim through the book. I always do, and I don't always get round to making all those recipes that first caught my eye, for one reason or another - and I am quite an obsessive cook compared to many), this recipe was one that I knew I would definitely make, along with various pasta dishes, the chicken dishes, the pork chops, salmon fillets, and chocolate brownies. This doesn't mean that these were the recipes that stood out most or excited me most; they are simply, realistically, the ones I was most likely to make. Again it doesn't just mean that they are the easiest recipes, but they work with the most familiar and accessible ingredients and don't take too long and therefore they slot most easily into weekday dinners. This particular recipe caught my eye because I love white fish wrapped in prosciutto or pancetta, not to mention lemony mayonnaise.

It is clearly unseasonal, but forget that for now (and see my previous post); January is sluggish enough without too many foodie prohibitions being slapped on it. This recipe is a perfect weeknight dinner, particularly if like me you use decent bought mayonnaise. To make it, you season fish fillets with chopped rosemary, grated lemon zest and pepper, and wrap the fish inside flattened out slices of smoked bacon or pancetta. Fry the fish briefly then transfer to the oven (preheated to 200C) and roast for 10-12 minutes. Steam the asparagus (or boil it) and spike some mayonnaise with lemon juice and pepper; it will be a thinner texture than usual, but this makes it more of a sauce. Serve with the mayo drizzled over.


I changed the recipe slightly because where Jamie suggested 1 inch thick fish fillets, mine were pretty thin; I didn't use the oven at all and simply fried the fish wrapped in pancetta on the hob, which worked beautifully (the fish began to turn an appealingly golden shade.) The lemony mayo was delicious as usual and the fish was tasty - but then, anything wrapped in smoked bacon is likely to be. Most importantly, probably, this is the kind of dinner you can rustle up easily after work without breaking into a sweat; it is probably the perfect meal for a mid-week supper, when the weekend seems a long way off and you want to eat something nice but you don't want to be chained to the stove.

Poached salmon steak

It is probably worth prefacing this post with an admission. On Monday, deadened by the return to work and toothache, I misread Jamie's book. This happens from time to time, thanks to my habit of reading cookery books while I dry my hair every morning at 7 am. At that time, I am still half asleep and only half-focused; this is considerably worse on a Monday morning, when I can't quite believe the weekend has ended so abruptly, and even more so this Monday. Anyway, cold and achey and a bit grumpy on Monday morning, I skim-read Jamie's recipe for poached salmon and picked up only the last paragraph, where Jamie offers suggestions as to what to do with your poached salmon - flake it into mashed potato with parsley to make fishcakes, into farfalle with peas and cream, blitz with creme fraiche and lemon juice to make pate, and so on. Immediately I assumed that these were the end result of the recipe and began to fantasize about fishcakes; I hugged the prospect of comforting fishcakes to me all day as I re-immersed myself in the working environment I had temporarily forgotten. When I got home and re-read the recipe, I realized that the first and clearly main suggestion is to eat the poached salmon with the vegetables it was poached with. I know that sounds obvious and I sound deranged for not even imagining it; well, guilty as charged. I could of course have abandoned the fishcake idea at that point, but I couldn't, not really; my mouth was craving fishcakes. So I give you: Jamie's poached salmon steak, with one of his suggested variations - that is, salmon fishcakes.

I did do everything Jamie said in the recipe (I am an obedient sort of person, really). I put chopped fennel, carrot, onion, celery, tomatoes, thyme, bay leaves, parsley, white wine, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper, water, and beetroot, into a large saucepan, filled it up with cold water and brought to the boil. I added the salmon and when the water was boiling again, simmered for 5 minutes on the heat before turning off the heat and letting the fish sit in the liquor for another 5 minutes for the residual heat.

I then drained the water and flaked the fish into the potatoes I had boiled and mashed, with parsley. I served with broccoli and mayo gently spiked with lemon, just because I like lemony mayonnaise.



This dinner was as comforting as I had imagined all day, the food equivalent of a hug. I should say that lots of fishcakes involve breadcrumbs or polenta crusts, or Matzo meal in Nigella's storecupboard tinned salmon fishcake recipe from Nigella Bites. The guru of comfort food, Nigel Slater, wrote somewhere that fishcakes don't need this crust, and I tend to agree; while the crust is lovely, fishcakes are delicious as they are. Everyone likes fishcakes, even people who don't like fish all that much, or so my experience tells me. I am glad I misread the recipe on Monday morning, because I couldn't have imagined anything more reassuring than the fishcakes we ate on Monday evening, while the wind raged around the roof (literally) and we returned to a normal routine.

Old-fashioned potted crab

Potted crab makes me think of Enid Blyton and the Famous Five, going on picnics with lashings of ginger beer and tinned sardines, or perhaps Malory Towers and their carefully planned illicit midnight feasts, and the tuck boxes full of home-made sponge cakes that they would share with their schoolmates. (Does anyone other than me remember the unfortunately named Alma Pudden in St Clare's, who used to steal the other girls' stashes of sweet treats?) I suppose it goes without saying that I've never eaten potted crab before. In fact, I haven't eaten a lot of crab full stop, because once upon a time I was too picky and since then I haven't actually seen much crab around to buy. I like crab, though, and Jamie has several crab recipes, which have long been calling for me to try them. There is of course the exciting option of buying a live crab, killing and cooking it myself; I would need to go to the coast to find one, probably, and I didn't, yesterday - I just bought a cooked one. I was impressed by how cheap it was, until I realized that it wasn't going to yield a lot of meat. As a crab novice, I found Jamie's apparently extensive instructions needed some back-up which Simon found via a Rick Stein book (of course); by coincidence I watched Rachel Allen take the meat from a cooked crab this morning on television and discovered that we did do it right. I must admit, though, that her crab was a bigger and healthier looking specimen than mine. Anyway once we had picked the meat from the crab, separating white and brown, checking that no scary shards of shell had sneaked into the two (annoyingly small) piles of crabmeat, I potted the crab. I had never potted anything in my life and I have to admit that this is one recipe I wouldn't have tried were it not for the project, because it isn't really my sort of recipe. I am more likely to eat crab with chilli and rocket and pasta, or in Thai-style fishcakes, than potted in a little ramekin to eat with hot toast. Which is exactly why this project has honestly revolutionized how we eat: not because we were unadventurous before - I love trying new dishes -but because my adventurous cooking never really took me out of my own taste comfort zone; I might have learnt to make pastry, to bake bread, have experimented with endless curries, but I'd never have bothered potting a crab because it just wouldn't have occurred to me. Back to the method: I smashed up fennel seeds, chilli and lemon zest in the pestle and mortar and scrunched them into softened butter and the brown crabmeat, grating over nutmeg and stirring in the white crabmeat. I seasoned it, shared it between two ramekins and spooned melted butter over, topping with chopped parsley, and refrigerating.

I had already decided that potted crab was a good thing when I tasted the mixture before it went into the ramekin; when I took the ramekins out of the fridge they did look like potted crab, but somehow potted crab doesn't look appetising, particularly.
I spread the mixture on toast and couldn't believe how delicious it was - it was absolutely lovely. I will never turn up my nose at potted anything again (apart from those little jars of potted meat you see in the supermarket - and wonder who on earth buys them). Jamie suggests potting prawns instead and I am definitely going to give that a go next; this was a flavour sensation to me, and I am now a reformed potted crab sceptic (turned evangelist).

Yesterday I also made stuffed vine leaves, because I had bought a packet in brine ages ago and forgotten about them until I read the Prawn Cocktail Years and remembered them. They are a world away from the ones you buy in jars: I stuffed them with rice, tomato, minced lamb, cinnamon, toasted pine nuts, garlic and cooked them very slowly in lemon juice and water for two hours. I served them with a homemade tomato sauce.


They don't look anything special but they are really good, way better than the ones you buy - and pretty different too. Mmm.

Pan-roasted bream with a quick crispy fennel salad

Fennel again. Good thing I'm not a fennel-hater, since Jamie seems to use a lot in this book; he doesn't seem to know about the fennel-hating brigade (people who don't like fennel tend to be as zealous in their vitriol for fennel as the Brussel-sprout hating lot are for innocent sprouts). I wonder if people shelve their picky dislikes when Jamie cooks for them, or if he just knows more adventurous people than I do. Anyway I happen to like fennel - a lot. I particularly like that salami and fennel pasta from Happy Days with the Naked Chef, but I suspect that salami might be another risky ingredient for some of my occasional dinner guests. The decision to make this dish yesterday was spontaneous when I went to the fishmonger (yes! I went to the fishmonger. I am off work this week and so I can do things like go to the fishmonger, which is ridiculously exciting for me. Other people take time off work and go skiing or lie on a beach in Tenerife, whilst I loll around reading crime novels and dreaming about food, and going to the fishmonger) and saw some lovely sea bream which I had filleted. I didn't ask the guy to scale the fish, which was a mistake because then the sous-chef was charged with scaling it and scales rained gently across the kitchen. Surely the nice fishmonger could have guessed we didn't want the scales? Oh well, my fault for not asking.

Scaling apart, the dish was another nice and easy one. I shaved a fennel bulb (tops reserved) with a speed peeler and put it in a bowl of iced water for 10 minutes to crisp up. Meanwhile, Simon scored the skin of the fish (this time he found a sharper knife and the task was rendered 100 times easier) and I sprinked the fish with salt, pepper and bashed up fennel seeds and dried chilli. I fried the fish on both sides on a medium heat; while the fish was cooking, I drained the fennel, mixed it with the reserved fennel tops and marjoram leaves and dressed it with lemon juice and olive oil, then chopped sun-dried tomatoes and light seasoning. I plated the fish and piled the salad on top.


We ate this with crusty bread and good white wine. It was a lovely dinner, absolutely bursting with flavour - fast food (faster if the fillets are scaled for you!) but bearing little resemblance to the usual fare that comes into that category. Another keeper...

Grandad Ken's crispy grilled trout with parsley and lemon

It is New Year's Eve - the end of another calendar year, which as usual means little to me because I've always lived by the academic year rather than the calendar year, so that the year seems to end in July rather than December. Last year we spent a few days over the New Year period with my parents-in-law in Devon and saw the new year in with champagne and a trio of fish that apparently constitute Prince Charles's breakfast; what I remember most is that on New Year's morning, foggy from the late night and still tasting mackerel, I was absorbed in a gripping thriller and found it almost impossible to wrench myself away and make polite conversation. Memo to self: do not go to visit relatives with a good book - always take a boring, worthy tome that will a) make me look erudite and b) not distract me from the duty of socializing. Ulysses is clearly next time's book of choice, since I have never managed to get past page one. This year, though, we are at home over the New Year period and I have a reassuring stack of novels to usher me into 2007, not to mention the pile of cookbooks I've already mentioned.

A hideous cliche, but New Year's Eve is a time to remember as well as to anticipate and it is only too fitting that I should find myself blogging this particular dish (which we ate yesterday) at this moment in time. Jamie calls it Granddad Ken's crispy grilled trout with parsley and lemon and affectionately recalls going fishing with his granddad as a small child. I associate whole fish with my grandma, who died a few years ago and who was an inspiration in many ways. Grandma had eclectic tastes; she liked Chinese takeaway and lasagne as well as roast dinners and fish. When my brother and I were little, we used to go on holiday to France every summer with our parents and grandparents; after my grandpa died when I was nine, Grandma kept coming, even when confined to a wheelchair, and even though she couldn't speak French. For reasons I can't recall, my parents always seemed to befriend people who went fishing and would bring live fish to our caravan for our dinner. Stuart and I naturally behaved the way two picky English children would when faced with live fish as a prospect for dinner: we squeaked and squawked and refused to go near it, and exclaimed in disgust when the others tried to. Grandma was the only one who wasn't honestly freaked out by the fish and so she was in charge of gutting them and preparing them to be eaten, which she did stoically, ignoring the high-pitched protests coming from the direction of my brother and me and the more muted but equally intense revulsion coming from my parents, who didn't really want the fish either. Once, my parents put a fish back in the water; we never knew if it survived. I tell all this because whole fish still makes me think of Grandma, who, before she died, suffered a lot of pain and never, ever complained; the stoic expression she wore as she gutted fish was emblematic of her attitude to life. It wasn't just that she never complained: she was a naturally optimistic and happy person who saw the best in everything, not in an infuriating Pollyanna way, but in a funny way. I wish she was still here and I could have given her some of Granddad Ken's crispy grilled trout: my parents wouldn't thank you for it, but Grandma would have loved seeing me eat it.

Anyway, back to Jamie's recipe: first, you slash each trout about ten times on each side with a sharp knife, which should be simple but in fact wasn't, for me. My knife skills are on a par with those of a clumsy ten year old; either that or we have blunt knives, which seemed to be confirmed by the fact that the sous-chef also struggled when drafted in to help. That done, I rubbed the fish in olive oil, seasoned them, and stuffed them with chopped parsley and lemon slices, before placing them on a baking tray and scattering lemon zest over. I halved another lemon and put the two halves on the baking tray, dabbed the fish with butter, and then grilled, 6 minutes each side, until crispy and golden.


It was okay. I don't hate whole fish anymore, in fact I'd love a nice seabass, but I remain unconvinced by the merits of trout, which seems to me to be a pretty boring fish. The lemon and parsley gave it a good flavour, but it just didn't blow me away. I suppose it is a decent midweek meal, a nice midweek meal even, but nothing special. I ate it with Jamie's simple crunchy side salad which was, however, absolutely fantastic. It doesn't need its own post, I don't think: it is just torn little gem and cos lettuce, with thinly sliced carrot and cucumber, celery heart, and a handful of blanched fine green beans, plus flat leaf parsley and a choice of dressing (balsamic, lemon or creamy French). I went for balsamic, which is simply balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil in a ratio of 1:3. It was delicious.


Finally, I was given a silicone loaf tin for Christmas, cunningly in the same pale blue as all my Nigella Living Kitchen accessories, and I made Bill Granger's coconut bread for breakfast today. It was very good and incredibly easy for something so lovely - you slice and toast it with icing sugar drizzled over, and slices will freeze easily too - definitely worth a try.



Anyway the Old Year is drawing to a close, and I need to get on with preparing dinner (and my last 'Jamie project' recipe for 2006!). I'll be back next year.

Pan-fried scallops with lentils, crispy pancetta and lemon creme fraiche

I can still remember my first scallop - I was twenty, teaching in the south of France, and at a dinner party was given foie gras and coquilles St-Jacques - as a taste of heaven. I had written sanctimonious A-level French essays on the evils of foie gras and I was torn between eating it to be polite and refusing it to be ethical; I did eat some, but I don't remember how it tasted - I must have been feeling too guilty to taste it properly. I do remember the scallops though - it was one of my defining moments in the road to taking food seriously. I haven't eaten that many scallops since - the rubbery variety in so many Chinese restaurants hardly inspire me - but I have continued to put them high on my food pedestal. Since Simon now likes scallops too, I was longing to try this scallops dish with Puy lentils, pancetta and creme fraiche, partly because it looks fabby in Jamie's picture but partly because, let's face it, it sounds droolsomely like the sort of dish I would order, salivating, in a nice restaurant. Which isn't so off the mark since Jamie's blurb says that this is served in Fifteen.

This was a fun dish to make. I cooked the lentils in water with a bay leaf, tomato, potato, and 2 unpeeled garlic cloves, simmering for 20-25 minutes until soft (but not mushy). Then I drained off most of the water, got rid of the bay leaf and the tomato and garlic skins, and mashed the potato and tomato into the lentils. Well I would have, only my waxy potato remained resolutely solid and resisted my mashing, so I mashed some of it and discarded the rest.

To make the lemon creme fraiche I simply mixed half fat creme fraiche with the juice of a lemon, salt and pepper (measuring the lemon juice by tasting it until it had a twang - cook's privilege...).

Meanwhile, I fried the rashers of pancetta in a hot pan until golden and crisp, removing them and placing asparagus spears and scallops in the pan in their place, so that they cooked in the bacon fat until golden. I removed these, added olive oil to the pan and fried some sage leaves until crisp.

To serve, I divided the lentils between the plates and put the scallops on top, scattering the pancetta, asparagus and sage over them and finishing off with a generous dollop of lemony creme fraiche.



The picture doesn't at all convey quite how divine this dinner was. I have a new favourite! I loved the contrasting flavours and textures; I loved how the scallops and asparagus had inhaled the bacon fat; I loved the whole thing. A really fun dish to cook and eat and absolutely delicious - another little taste of heaven.

I was thinking earlier about what this project has done for me. Some people have asked fairly bluntly what the point is. I am sure the point is not to be able to say I have cooked every recipe in Jamie's latest book - that would be incredibly sad, in every sense of the word. To me, the point is mainly cooking different things, trying the recipes that I would typically ignore. Apparently most people don't try more than 3 recipes from any one cookbook; many try none. That means that we might never leave our comfort zone - might never learn to be challenged by different techniques or flavours. I feel I have left my comfort zone, and Simon has certainly left his, and that is incredibly exciting because the dishes you might never have given a second glance at sometimes can really surprise you and you open yourself up to a whole world of new tastes, which is intimidating as well as fun. Scallops, for anyone who hasn't tried them, are a fantastic place to start, as long as you don't start with the rubbery supermarket ones, because, I promise you, they really are the angels of the food world.

Pan-fried lemon sole fillets with salsa verde

There was a time, somewhere in between the Picky Years and the Adventurous Years (i.e. the last few years), when I was neither picky nor particularly adventurous: during that time I was a student. I was a student for a long time - a four year BA, a one year Masters and a three year PhD. I got used to living on a tiny stipend and eating within a budget; I got used to pooling resources and concocting weird combinations of food with similarly economically-challenged friends. I ate a lot of stirfry, with a lot of cheap veggies (courgettes, onions, carrots) and not a lot of meat; I ate masses of bacon, chopped into pasta sauces or into stirfries, or on top of an array of steamed vegetables, and I ate tinned tuna. Wine tended to cost 2.99 a bottle, 3.99 if I was pushing the boat out or had been invited out for dinner (I had some standards). Anyway during those times I mainly ate spicy food -stirfries, curries, pasta with chilli-style sauces - and I forgot that somewhere out there people still ate meat or fish and two veg. I hardly ever, ever ate a potato - I thought that was what cavemen ate. When I went out for dinner, it was often pizza, curry or Thai; sometimes we went to Cafe rouge and very very occasionally we went to Brown's for steak. Then I moved and started work and work-life is different from student-life, and I got more interested in food because I wasn't perpetually skint/rushing out to the pub/eating Marmite on toast with my neighbours, and I could finally afford fresh fish.

All this comes as a preamble mainly because I realized yesterday while cooking that I would have despised what I was cooking in times gone by. Fillets of fish, potatoes, broccoli. How boring can you get? And yet now I find this sort of food immensely soothing (I still eat a lot of spicy food too - or I did before I started this project!). A couple of caveats: I used plaice not lemon sole as I had plaice and not lemon sole. I also hate the term pan-fried (it goes with oven-roasted as utterly pointless) but I can see its relevance: plain 'fried fish' sounds like the battered deep fried chip shop special, and probably puts the home cook off. Finally I have never made salsa verde before although I have eaten it a few times- my parents brought me some back from Spain and I liked it a lot. It is always good to learn how to cook something you've only ever eaten out of a jar.

Jamie said this was incredibly speedy. I was not incredible speedy, mainly because all the chopping required for the salsa verde took me an eternity (and in fact my lovely sous-chef took over!). Anyway to make salsa verde, you chop garlic and add capers, chopped gherkins, anchovies, parsley, basil and mint, then Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, and olive oil, plus pepper. It sounds very easy and it was easy, but I am not a particularly speedy chopper.

I boiled some salad potatoes and steamed broccoli (Jamie suggested purple sprouting - I only had calabrese). Meanwhile, I tossed the plaice fillets in salt, pepper and flour and then fried in olive oil and a little butter. Jamie instructs to then wait 20 seconds before squeezing in lemon juice, which I did.

I served with pan juices drizzled over and salsa verde spooned over fish and vegetables.

This was really nice, despite my little changes to the recipe. Salsa verde is really, really good - though anchovy-haters beware; the anchovies in it don't melt away as they do when cooked into sauces. I know the pic makes the meal look a bit white and green but it was very nice, honestly! Salsa verde is tasty and fresh; it has a kind of zing that makes you feel alive when you eat it (as opposed to say, risotto, which makes you feel cocooned). If only I were a better chopper, this would be a very speedy dinner. I need to improve my knife skills! Thank goodness for the sous-chef, who has infinitely better knife skills than me and a lot more patience - and who eats, appreciates and supports this project on a near-daily basis. Mmm - another recipe that I look forward to repeating.

Jamie's black cod with steamed pak choi and cucumber

The Japanese food revolution, I must confess, seems to have passed me by. There are Japanese restaurants in the area and I have of course seen the trays of sushi in M and S, not to mention the ad-hoc Japanese section in our local Tesco, sporting a plethora of oddly-named ingredients in red packets and including instant miso soup and sushi sheets. For some reason, though, the only Japanese ingredients I have bought have been Kikkoman's soy sauce and wasabi paste (originally for a Nigella recipe I have forgotten about, but it has a kick like horseradish...). Consequently I didn't really know what black cod was, nor was I particularly bothered about finding out; black cod didn't sound all that appealing, to be honest.

This recipe is Jamie's take on Nobu's black cod and it is pleasingly simple - in fact, it is incredibly easy. The fish (cod or other white fish fillets) is marinaded overnight in a cooked and cooled mixture of honey, miso paste, sake or alternatively white wine, ginger, red chilli and lemon grass. The blurb suggests that you 'might have to duck and dive' for the miso paste (which is a soya bean paste) but that it is in any good Asian store or supermarket. Needless to say it wasn't in the giant Tesco Extra near our house, at least, it wasn't in the main part of the shop, but I found it in the healthfood shop that seems to be inside yet curiously separate from Tesco itself. I didn't bother buying sake and used white wine.

After the fish has marinaded for 24 hours, it is simply grilled until the top of the fish has caramelized slightly.

Jamie suggests serving this fish with steamed pak choi and cucumber; the cucumber is peeled, halved, deseeded, and sliced into strips, while the pak choi is roughly quartered.

The fish and steamed greens are served with leftover miso marinade loosened with lime juice and a few drizzles of soy sauce; I wasn't sure how much flavour the fish would have so we just put the soy and the miso marinade on the table to serve ourselves. As it turned out, the fish had an incredibly rich flavour - the miso is already strong and salty-sweet in itself, but it is enriched further by the chilli, ginger, lemongrass and honey. The steamed greens offered a lovely fresh contrast. If this is Japanese food, even Jamie's take on Japanese food, then I would love to try more. This fish dish is the sort of food that wakes you up, zesty, heady, invigorating, without ever being overpowering or heavy. Again I am so glad to have embarked on this project or I would have overlooked this completely; instead, I am eagerly anticipating venturing further down the road of Japanese (or pseudo-Japanese) cooking.

Steamed Thai-style sea bass and rice

Sea bass is possibly my favourite fish. If not, it is certainly high up in the queue. I know that I am not alone in my preference, given that sea bass is one fish that is in danger of being over-fished. My defence in buying it this time was that I very, very rarely do, although admittedly it is a question of price as much as over-farming. Anyway. I found a lovely-looking sea bass in the fishmongers in town and asked the fishmonger to fillet it for me. I had been dying to try this recipe because I love Thai food, particularly infused with lime and coriander, and it looked, as Jamie said 'really fragrant and light' and 'exciting to eat'. Perfect after the rich belly pork - and also since I hadn't had Thai food in a while and I could feel a craving coming on.

So. I whizzed up coriander, ginger, garlic, chillies, sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice and zest and coconut milk to make a sauce. I cooked the rice until just undercooked, drained it, then decanted it over a baking tray, pouring over the sauce and tossing to spread it evenly. I laid the bass fillets on top, then threw over some mangetout peas, covered the tray in foil and baked for 15 minutes. To serve, I scattered chopped spring onions, sliced chilli, and coriander leaves, plated it up and added a wedge of lime.

It was very delicious indeed. I must admit that steamed fish and steamed rice sometimes sounds a bit virtuous to me - light, tasty, but not a dish I would crave on a cold October evening when it has started to get dark earlier and you need the heating on. This was really different - the sauce infused the rice with so much flavour that to be honest the rice without the fish would still be a nice dinner. With the delicate fish and the hit of lime, chilli, coriander, plus the soothing coconut, it is a perfect dinner. He who eats my concoctions pronounced it 'yum' and 'lush' - OK so he's not trying to sound like Michael Winner (and thank goodness he doesn't LOOK like Michael Winner) - but you get the point. A grade A dinner, which honestly knocks any steamed fish and rice I've had before out of the league.

Pan-roasted salmon with broccoli and anchovy-rosemary sauce

According to Jamie, Brits aren't eating enough fish. His view was echoed in a recent episode of Food Uncut, where a short survey as to why British people weren't choosing to eat fish threw up the following results: it was seen as too expensive; too time-consuming; too complicated. The reasons people gave for not eating fish sounded like excuses and probably were. Why would salmon fillets be complicated or time-consuming? In some ways fish is the ultimate fast food. What is difficult, here at least, is finding it.

I read Joanna Blythman's eye-opening book, Shopped! The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets which really makes you think about where you shop and what you buy for all sorts of reasons. In terms of fish, supermarkets typically freeze it before defrosting it and plonking it on ice on the 'fresh fish' counter. They also transport it unnecessarily far. It is unlikely that supermarket fish will be so fresh that it doesn't smell of fish. The solution is to find a decent fishmonger. But that is easier said than done. In a working day, I would have to find a fishmonger nearish to work (in the centre of a city). There is one, to my knowledge. But I tend to have to go there towards the end of the day when there is hardly anything left. The sheer lack of real fishmongers in a city only a few miles from the sea is ridiculous, really. So I do often end up with fake-fresh supermarket fish.

Anyway rant over and back to Jamie. This recipe is simple: pan-fry the fish skin side down, then briefly roast it. Make a sauce of bashed-up rosemary, anchovy fillets, lemon juice, black pepper and oil. Boil some purple sprouting broccoli. I did everything the recipe asked apart from the broccoli - I used normal broccoli instead. This is because (again thanks in part to Joanna Blythman) I try not to buy veg at the supermarket and buy it in a local farm shop at the weekend, and I buy what they have, and they had locally grown broccoli but not of the purple sprouting variety.

The recipe was simple but very good. For people who don't like anchovies, you can definitely taste them; this isn't a recipe where they lend flavour but become almost hidden. I like anchovies so it wasn't a problem. And, I realize, in effect, I have almost had 2 helpings of fish in one go. Which is another bonus.