Sim B

One of the joys of living on the coast is fresh fish. Hubby is a keen fisherman but it’s rare to catch anything from the shore in our parts. Most often we pick up our fish from our local fishmonger … or if we’re lucky we get given some from our friend Chris who fishes off a a surf-ski. This weekend hubby went out with John (a friends dad) on his boat … it was an early start (4am!) but the weather started off perfect … clear blue skies. I off course stayed happily tucked up and asleep in bed. They managed to catch eight Natal Snoek (on the greenlist for SASSI) between them … and so we got to enjoy the spoils for lunch!

I wisely avoided any of the messy bits … leaving the men to do the gutting and filleting! This fish was so fresh that you hardly needed to do anything to it – it was so perfect and pink.

I decided on a little lemon, garlic, ginger and chilli “rub”. For 5 large fillets I used :

3 crushed cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon of crushed ginger

zest of 2 lemons

salt & ground chilli pepper

drizzle of olive oil

I popped the fillets in the fridge for about an hour –  with some damp wax wrap to cover them – and left them to soak up some of the flavours.

To cook the fish, I dipped the fillets in some polenta, just a light sprinkling really (this gives a lovely crispy golden topping – but you could also use some flour) and then fried them in a very hot pan with some olive oil. Squeeze a little fresh lemon juice over the fish and let it bubble up in the pan and mingle with the juices.

Served with a beetroot pesto (recipe to follow) and a chick-pea salad.

For more info on the SASSI list:

http://www.wwfsassi.co.za/?m=5&s=5&idkey=1110

Happy fishing! x Sim x