One of the great charms of this time of year is the licence it gives us to cook up some comfort food. And eating comfort food, for me, so often involves reaching for a spoon. I'm not just talking about puddings, but savoury treats, too: stews, broths and casseroles. A little sauce makes me feel particularly cosseted.
While slow-cooked cuts of meat can form the backbone of such soothing dishes, I love a fish stew. Or soup. Or curry. The combination of some rich, aromatic liquor and a little gently poached fish flesh delivers just the right combination of luxury and lightness. A gently spiced fish laksa or a steaming bowl of mussels in white wine is often exactly what I feel like on a chilly, damp day. Such dishes are easy to make and far quicker than their meaty equivalents.
What little time and effort is required is all in building the foundation, creating a flavoursome broth or sauce. Onions should be sweated until sweet, tomatoes or peppers cooked until soft and rich, spices perhaps dry-roasted and ground for maximum flavour, wine simmered to mellowness. When that base is right, cooking the fish takes just a matter of minutes. In fact, you can stop cooking when the base is complete, chill or freeze it for another day, then reheat just before you want to add the fish.
I'm an avid fan of oily fish, particularly mackerel and sardines, but these are not the species to which I instinctively turn when it's a stew Ihave in mind. I'm more likely to look to sustainable white fish for this sort of meal: cod, coley, pouting, pollack, haddock, red or grey gurnard, black bream and grey mullet – the first four of these being the lightest, the second four a little meatier. Shellfish are good now, too, and lovely in a sauce; I'm thinking of farmed mussels, co*ckles and carpet shell clams, and maybe even a diver-caught scallop or three.
You may be surprised to find cod in the list above. It is, after all, asymbol of all that is wrong with our European fisheries. But it is possible to get sustainably caught specimens from well-managed fisheries. On the Marine Conservation Society's very useful website, fishonline.org, you'll see that cod scores between 2 (fish to eat) and 5 (fish to avoid). Of course, you can't always get the kind of information at the point of sale that tells you whether you are looking at a 2 cod or a 5 cod – but you can look out for MSC-certified fish, and that's always worth a shopping trolley vote.
It's better still, though, to ring the changes and buy more of the other white-fleshed fish I mention. Try to find out where your fish is from and how it was caught: line-caught is always preferable to trawled, for instance, and "day boat-caught" usually implies smaller boats and less damaging gear.
In all cases, if you are not confident with a filleting knife, get your fishmonger to do as much of the prep work as possible: gutting and filleting the fish, even taking it off the skin. Your aromatic, warming soup, stew or curry will then be very straightforward indeed.
Fish and chorizo stew
A great vehicle for all sorts of fish. I'd use a white or nearly white fish such as haddock, pollack, coley, pouting, bass or bream, then perhaps add pieces of squid or cuttlefish, mussels or even a scallop or two, sliced in half. Serves four.
1 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp fennel seeds (optional)
200g chorizo, cut into small pieces
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
2 onions, peeled and sliced
2 sticks celery, chopped
100ml white wine
2 400g tins plum tomatoes, crushed with your hands
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
About 200g scrubbed mussels (or sliced squid or cuttlefish; optional)
Around 750g fish fillets (see intro), skin and bones removed, cut into largish pieces
A little chopped parsley and/or fennel, to finish (optional)
Heat the oil in a large saucepan or casserole over a medium-low heat. Add the fennel seeds and cook for aminute or two, then add the chorizo and fry for a few minutes until the red fat starts to run. Add thegarlic, onion and celery, and cookgently, stirring often, for 12-15 minutes, until the onion is nice and soft. Add the wine and cook until ithas nearly all evaporated. Add the crushed tomatoes and their juice, and a little salt and pepper, and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring often, until rich and thick. Taste the sauce, and add more salt and pepper if needed. You can leave it at this stage and come back to it, or chill or freeze it for another day. Either way, bring it back to a simmer.
If you are using mussels, first discard any that are damaged or open, then add them to the simmering sauce. Cover the pan and cook for about five minutes. Uncover, give the pan a shake, then add the fish, turn gently in the sauce, cover and cook for another five minutes or so, until the fish is just cooked and all the mussels are open (discard any that do not open). (If you're not using mussels, just add the fish and/or squid, and cook for five minutes or so.)
Serve, scattered with parsley or fennel, if you like, with bread, rice, pasta or potatoes.
Curried fish in yogurt
My take on a Bengali dish, doi maach, based on a recipe by chef Vivek Singh. Serves four.
300g plain whole-milk yoghurt
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finelygrated
1 tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp chilli powder
Sea salt and freshly ground blackpepper
500g white fish fillets (pollack or sustainable haddock), skinned and cut into 4cm square pieces
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 bay leaf
2 cardamom pods, squashed
1 cinnamon stick
2-3 cloves
1 large onion, peeled and finelysliced
1 medium-hot green chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
Fresh coriander and black onion seeds (aka kalonji), to finish (optional)
Combine the yoghurt, ginger, garlic, turmeric, chilli and apinch of salt. Turn the fish in this marinade, coverand chill for 20-30 minutes.
Heat the oil in a large frying pan or wok over a medium heat. Add the bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. Let them pop and splutter for a minute or two, then turn down the heat. Add the onion and chilli, and cook for a good 10 minutes until the onion is soft and collapsed, and perhaps taking on a little colour.
Now add the fish and its yoghurty marinade, and more salt and some pepper. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for five to 10 minutes, stirring it carefully a couple of times, until the fish is cooked through – remember, it will continue cooking after you turn off the heat. The yoghurt will take on a slightly grainy appearance, but don't worry.
Taste, add more salt or pepper if needed and serve straight away with rice. Scatter over some coriander and/or black onion seeds, if you like.
Kipper, potato and spinach soup
Warming and smoky. Serves six.
200g spinach, coarse stalks removed
1.5 litres fish or vegetable stock
1 kipper (about 250g)
50g butter
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 leek, white part only, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced
300g potatoes, peeled and diced
100ml double cream or crème fraîche
Freshly ground black pepper
Put the spinach in a pan with the water that clings to it after washing. Cover and put over a medium heat for a few minutes, until wilted. Drain and allow to cool a little. Using your hands, squeeze out all the excess liquid from the spinach, then chop it finely and set aside.
Bring the stock to a gentle simmer in a large pan. Add the kipper and poach for about four minutes. Remove from the stock and leave to cool a little, then flake the flesh away from the skin, along the way removing as many of those tiny, hair-like bones as you can.
Melt the butter in a large pan over a medium-low heat. Add the onion, leek and garlic, and sweat gently until soft. Add the fishy stock, along with the potatoes, bring to a simmer and cook for around 20 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
Purée the soup until smooth. Return to the pan. Add the flaked kipper flesh, spinach and cream, season with black pepper and reheat gently. Don't let it boil. Serve in warmed bowls.
