Recipes: Lemon Sole

Recipe: Whole roast lemon sole

Lemon sole

It's early June and we are still in lockdown due to the Covid19 virus and as I am in isolation and shielding, am unable to go to the shops. Fortunately, however, I live about a kilometre from the Portslade harbour and FISH, our local wholesale and retail fishmonger, delivers fresh from the boat to my door.

This week they were offering wild lemon sole.  It's not a true sole and it doesn't taste of lemon and its name is probably from the French name, limande.  That, in turn, might come from the French word for a file/sander in view of its rough sandpaper like skin or the French word for silt referring to its habitat.  Whatever the derivation of its name, it is related to the flounder, dab and plaice which are known as Dextral flatfish.  Flatfish such as Turbot, Brill and Megrim sole are Sinistral flatfish.

The thing about flatfish is that, although they start out in life like most other fish, with a rounded body and one eye on each side of the head, at some stage, for some reason, they turn on to one side and spend the rest of their lives in this position. Some species turn on to their right side and others to their left.

Having done so, they swim along the bottom of the sea on their side and the downside skin becomes paler and paler and the uppermost side changes colour and darkens, often to mimic the surrounding seabed, providing camouflage.  At the same time the eye and the nostril on the underside gradually move and migrate to the uppermost side.

Species which turn on to their right hand side and have their eyes and nostrils on the left are called Sinistral and if drawn or photographed with the mouth up the right way would be pictured with their head on the left and tail on the right.  Those with their eyes and nostrils on the right are called Dextral and should be pictured with their head on the right and tail on the left.

Whatever the differences, this recipe is suitable for all flatfish - and also round fish such as seabass or varieties of sea bream.  You will need to adjust the length of time for cooking according to their size and thickness,

Ingredients:

1 Lemon sole

1 Lemon

1/4 preserved lemon (or zest of above)

salt and pepper

1 clove garlic

1 piece fresh ginger (app 2 -3 cms)

cherry tomatoes

fresh herbs

olive oil

deep slashes on the top side (right hand side)

deep slashes on the underneath (left side)

garlic and ginger

Place slivers of ginger, garlic and lemon in the slits you have cut in the skin.  As I have a plentiful supply of Preserved lemons , I used the peel of these instead of fresh lemons/zest.

If using preserved lemons, go easy on the salt seasoning; the lemons are very salty as they are preserved in salt.  

Heat the oven to 200C (Fan oven 180C)

fresh herbs and cherry tomatoes

Put some fresh herbs, in the body cavity of the fish with any remaining ginger and garlic. Lay the fish on a sprig of fresh herbs and a couple of bay leaves in a roasting tin or dish, surrounded by the cherry tomatoes.  I used fresh basil and savory but oregano is also very good. 

If you are using fresh lemon, slice ½ lemon and add the slices to the roasting dish. Add the cherry tomatoes and drizzle a little olive oil over the skin of the fish and the tomatoes. 

Roast in the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes. Check that the fish is almost cooked and beginning to come away from the bone.  Pour over a small glass of dry white wine, dry sherry or dry vermouth and a squeeze of lemon juice and replace in the oven for a further 5 mins. 

Roast Lemon Sole - ready to serve

Remove from the oven, spoon over the juices in the pan and serve.

John Austin

Hove, June 2020

STONE BASS - What is it?

Stone Bass - what is it?

On our first visit to Fishmekan in Hove earlier this year they had "Stone Bass" on the menu and Sylvi asked me if I knew what it was.  I couldn't recall exactly but thought it was a fish similar to the Grouper. Regrettably we didn't try it and it wasn't on the menu when we visited again recently.

After our first visit, I checked  to see if my memory was right - and it was (or was it?).  Nothing is ever simple with fish names as my blog on fish names shows

Stone Bass is an English name for Wreckfish which we had seen in Spain as Cherna and also under its Catalan name rascas (not to be confused with rascacio which is Scorpion Fish).  The Grouper family includes Grouper (Mero in Spain and Merou in France) and a variety of related species all called Grouper in English which include in Spain Cherne de Ley, Cherne Denton and Gitano.

The Grouper is highly esteemed in Spain and is also very popular in South East Asian cuisine. I had first been  introduced to Grouper in the 80s by my Vietnamese work colleague, Troung Tran, but later found it widely available in restaurants and markets in Malaysia and Thailand often steamed whole.

Grouper appears from time to time on English restaurant menus but I was surprised to see Wreckfish and did some further research.  Google Stone Bass and most sites will rightly describe it as Wreckfish but, intriguingly, not The Fish Society!  Their website says it is Meagre, one of the Croaker or Drum Fish.  I contacted them to find out more and they said that you would be unlikely to find Wreck Fish on menus in the UK as there was no market for it.  Alan Davison confirms this in Mediterranean Seafood saying that it is "not found in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and is not common in the market, as it has to be fished with a line and hook at a depth of 150 metres or so"

The Fish Society told me that it was not easy to find large sea bass that could be cooked as steaks but that Meagre were much larger and similar in texture and flavour to sea bass and could yield good steaks.  They informed me that if I saw Stone Bass on a menu in the UK it would almost certainly be Meagre.

The Fish Society is not what it's name might suggest, however. It is a wholesale fish merchant supplying many restaurants in the U.K. And on their website they say

So what is stone bass?

Dare we say it? Stone bass is, in fact, a ‘marketing’ name for a fish species called meagre from the Sciaenide family. You can understand why they didn’t think it’s normal name was that sexy can’t you? If you would like to learn more about meagre it’s latin name is Argyrosomus regius. Depending on where you are in the world you may see it described as salmon bass, shade-fish or even corvina.

Now Corvina is a fish that I am familiar with as we often have it in Spain when we have a large gathering and cook it whole as you might sea bass. I posted a recipe for Corvina in November 2016 

 Mystery solved!

John Austin

Hove, May 2018

SHARKS

SHARKS - SHOULD WE EAT THEM?

In January there was a bargain on the fish counter at Carrefour in Santa Pola, tintorera.  It had been previously frozen and hence the very cheap price.  I was aware that it was from the Shark family but it had a certificate of provenance from the Department of Agriculture, so I assumed it was OK.

Perhaps I should have read my posting from 4 years ago and erred on the side of caution.
Stocks in and around Europe have increased following catch limitations set by the EU (and the catch in Spain is legal) but all species of shark appear to be at risk or vulnerable so should we be eating them?

In his book on Mediterranean Seafood, Alan Davidson lists the 7 best varieties for eating as:

Porbeagle (Spanish caillon) Hammerhead, Nurse-hound dogfish, lesser spotted dogfish (rough hound), smooth hound, spur dog & angel shark but he does say that the tope (Spanish cazon) and  blue shark (Spanish tintorera) are also good

In his book on the Seafood of Spain and Portugal, Davidson mentions other species including the Mako (marrajo), Thresher shark (Zorro) and several varieties of dogfish but singles out the tope as being one of the best for eating and also rates Porbeagle among the highest followed by Mako and then blue shark.

All of the species mentioned are found regularly in British waters (except the hammerhead which may be an occasional visitor) as well as in the Atlantic and parts of the Mediterranean.

Apart from the issue of sustainability some people appear to have an aversion to eating shark "because they eat people" but generally sharks found in European waters pose no threat to humans and are not aggressive. They usually inhabit deep waters and rarely come close to the shore. I have read that there have been only a dozen recorded incidents involving people and blue sharks in the last 500 years!

On the other hand, the white shark is dangerous but is not usually found around Europe and you are unlikely to find it on the fishmonger's counter.  You won't find basking sharks either. Basking sharks, the gentle giants of the sea, and the second largest fish, are common visitors to the UK but are a protected species throughout the EU.

There is a cap on blue shark catch in the North Atlantic as part of an international agreement but similar rules do not apply in the south Atlantic. For the present, fish caught and landed in the North Atlantic should be OK but the situation will need to be closely monitored.  The biggest threat to the blue shark comes from the market for shark fins for soup in China and other parts of southeast Asia and the practice of catching them for the fins only and the bodies being tossed back into the sea.

In the UK, blue sharks appear to be caught mainly for "sport"  and then returned alive to the sea. The largest on record, caught off the coast of Cornwall, near Penzance in 2017, was 9 feet long and weighed 256lb beating the previous 58-year record of 214lbs.

British record blue shark

Another reason given for not eating members of the shark family is the smell and a belief that they urinate through their skin.  In my teens I regularly dissected dogfish as part of the A-Level Zoology syllabus, and can confirm that they do have a conventional urinary system. They have kidneys and a urinary duct just like any other vertebrate and excrete quite a lot of waste products in their urine in the normal way.

So what is the myth about them urinating through their skin?  All fish have a problem that their blood and body fluids are less salty than the sea and therefore they lose water through osmosis. Bony fishes overcome this by constant drinking of water and passing it over their gills to get rid of excessive salt and they excrete nitrogenous waste in the form of ammonia, which is a very toxic compound.

The cartilaginous (non-bony) fish such as sharks, on the other hand, convert ammonia to less toxic urea which is stored in the blood and prevents the loss of water through osmosis.  Unlike bony fishes they do not have to constantly drink water and they excrete nitrogenous wastes as urea, which is less harmful to the environment than ammonia.  In a live shark, ammonia doesn't accumulate because it is quickly converted to urea. When the shark dies, however, the urea breaks down forming ammonia, which is why fresh shark meat and other cartilaginous fish, such as skate (rays) may smell of ammonia. Sharks which are bled when caught and cut into steaks are less likely to have this smell when they reach the fishmonger.  The cartilaginous fish eaten mostly in the UK are dogfish (usually marketed as Huss, Rock Salmon or Flake) and skate.

Some cookery books suggest eating skate when it is one or two days old when the ammoniacal smell will have disappeared or soaking the flesh in water or lemon juice before cooking.  Others say this is unnecessary as the smell indicates that the urea has been converted to ammonia and that in any smell, and the ammonia itself, will disappear in cooking.  So long as stocks remain sustainable, I for one will continue eating skate but will check the species and source.

And of course, the one big advantage of eating cartilaginous fish - and a great plus with children (and me) is they have no bones!

John Austin

Santa Pola, April 2018

GURNARD

Oven baked whole gurnard

After a night of gale force winds, there was sunshine and clear blue skies so I took a stroll along the promenade to Hove Lagoon to buy some fish.

The winds had deposited part of the beach on the promenade

Hove Promenade

Beach huts on the Promenade, Hove Lagoon

It's only a 15 minute walk from home to Hove Lagoon and the eastern end of Shoreham harbour.....

Shoreham harbour, Hove

.....where the fish is landed and sold to the public at the Brighton and Newhaven Fish shop.

Most of the catch goes to retailers, fish markets and local restaurants - I was told that some is exported to France!

There was a plentiful supply of locally caught fresh fish as well as some farmed. I was spoilt for choice - lots of shellfish, grey mullet, monkfish, sea bream, plaice, lemon sole, brill, sea bass, red mullet and more.....

But finally I settled on the local gurnard - which was also the cheapest!

Gurnard is not a pretty creature - unless perhaps to another gurnard - but it is delicious and, as any French chef will tell you, an essential ingredient of bouillabaisse.

Often recipes for gurnard are for fillets. If I were having friends round for dinner, I would probably get the fishmonger to fillet it and I would serve it pan fried, or cook it whole in advance, remove the flesh when cooked, and use in a recipe requiring cooked fish such as Gurnard linguini

It's not usually a dignified or tidy experience eating a whole roasted gurnard - the two top fillets come away quite easily when cooked but to get the rest, especially some of the best bits towards the head, fingers are best!  And when you think it has all been eaten there are always more pickings on the tail and underneath.

Our specimen, at 800g, was more than enough for two, with a little left over for fishcakes the following day.  Don't throw away the head and the bones.  I boiled these up with the remaining juices from the pan and some added water, a chopped stick of celery and a chopped carrot, to produce a great gelatinous fish stock which when sieved and left to cool can be kept in the fridge for a couple of days or frozen for future use for poaching or as the base for a fish stew. (As many people ask their fishmonger to fillet gurnard, they may have several heads to spare - they are excellent for making stock - so it might be worth asking if they have any.)

In America, the red gurnard is known as sea robin probably because of its colour and its large pectoral fins which fan out like wings when it is swimming, giving an appearance of flying in the water

wing-like fins

The fish also has 6 "legs" - actually modified fins - with which it walks on the sea bed and very sharp dorsal spines - beware!  These spines are mildly poisonous before cooking but are not usually dangerous, although some people may have an allergic reaction if pricked by them - and they can be sharp.  Any poison or allergen in the spines is completely destroyed by cooking.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 whole gurnard (around 750g) gutted and cleaned

1 lemon sliced or the peel of half a preserved lemon sliced

1 piece of fresh ginger (about 2 cms) peeled and sliced

2 cloves of garlic

1 sprig fresh thyme (or herb of choice)

olive oil

glass or two of white wine

salt and pepper to season (go easy on the salt if using preserved lemons)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan)

Season the inside of the body cavity with freshly ground pepper and salt (do not use salt in the body cavity if using preserved lemons as they will be salty enough). Stuff the cavity with the fresh herbs (I used thyme but you could substitute rosemary, oregano, marjoram or tarragon), chopped lemons, garlic and ginger.

When you have stuffed the body cavity, place the fish in an oven proof dish

Drizzle olive oil over the fish, pour over a glass or two of dry white wine - I used dry vermouth. Season with salt and pepper and tightly cover the dish with foil (or you can put the fish in a loose parcel of foil) so that the fish steams as it cooks.  Leave to cook for 15 minutes then remove the foil  (or open the parcel), baste the fish with the pan juices (if the juices have dried up, pour over a glass of wine or water, drizzle with a little oil and the juice of a squeezed lemon) and continue cooking for a further 5 minutes. 

Check that the fish is cooked (if the flesh is still translucent cook for a further few minutes).

Cut down each side of the dorsal spines to remove the fillets. Any juices in the pan can be poured over the fish. Serve with mashed potato and spinach or a green salad.  

It was delicious - and tomorrow we have fishcakes!

John Austin

Hove January 2018

ASIAN STYLE COD

Asian style, oven baked cod -

with courgette & beetroot spaghetti and silver chard

This recipe is basically for the cod (or any firm white fish) - the courgette, beetroot and chard are there because we have a glut on the allotment - luckily we love all three and the added bonus is they are good for you!

Ingredients (for 2)

2 generous portions of cod fillet (150-200g each)

Olive oil or sunflower oil and/or butter

2 garlic cloves, (chopped or minced)

Fresh ginger (about 2cms) peeled and chopped or grated

1 small red chilli

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

Salt and pepper to season

juice of half a lemon

1/2 glass dry white wine (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan oven).

Cut two pieces of cooking foil large enough to make a parcel for each portion of fish. Place each fillet on an oiled piece of foil, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, spread the chopped garlic and ginger over each fillet, sprinkle over the chopped chilli add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and drizzle over the light soy sauce. (I then folded up the edges of the foil and added a splash of dry white wine but this optional).

Scrunch up the foil to seal the fish in a loose parcel - some space is needed so that the fish steams as it cooks and remains moist.

Place the parcels on a baking tray and put in the pre-heated oven and cook for 15 minutes.

Strip the leaves from the chard stalks. Cut the stalks in pieces about 1 cm and gently soften over a medium heat with olive oil or butter and a chopped garlic clove.

chopped chard stalks

chard stalks softened in olive oil or butter with garlic

Slice or roughly chop the chard leaves

shredded chard leaves

Gently steam the chard leaves for 2-3 minutes, then add to the softened chard stalks and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Spiralise the beetroot and courgette and steam for 2-3 minutes.

spiralised beetroot and courgette

When the fish is cooked, put a portion of cooked chard on a warmed plate....

....and top with the lightly steamed beetroot and courgette

Unwrap the fish and place each fillet on the pile of vegetables and pour over any juices from the parcel.

If you don't have chard, beetroot and courgettes, this is excellent served on a bed of wilted spinach with creamy mashed potatoes (and the mash is even better with some added chopped preserved lemons ).

John Austin

Hove August 2017

REDFISH (Norway Haddock)

Redfish

I just spotted this redfish at my local fishmonger down by the harbour and as it was a good price decided to buy it.  I had assumed by its appearance that it was Norway haddock a deep water fish found in the Atlantic and around Scandinavia and Iceland. It is also marketed as Ocean perch, red perch, Atlantic redfish and sometimes erroneously red bream

The name can be confusing, however, as the name redfish is also used to describe the red drum (or croaker) found in the South Atlantic and southern oceans - a fish related to the European corvina, popular in Spain and Portugal (see my blog).  I knew it wasn't red drum as my fishmonger only sells locally landed fresh fish and fishing boats from the Gulf of Mexico don't land their catch in Sussex!  To add to the confusion, the term redfish is also applied (especially in the US) to the red sea bream as well as to red snappers.

When filleted, redfish can be treated as any firm fleshed white fish such as haddock or cod and is often skinned before cooking if being pan fried.

I decided to pan fry it very simply with the skin on.

Ingredients (for two)

1 redfish fillet app. 250-350g
salt
pepper
olive oil
garlic
herbs or spices of choice
1 lemon

Method

Cut the fillet in two and rub both sides with a little olive oil. Season both sides with salt and pepper.  I then seasoned the flesh side with a little dried oregano and a pinch of sumac. Almost any flavours will suit - a sprinkling of pimenton/parika, hot or sweet according to your taste or rubbed with a little crushed ginger.... it's up to you.

Having seasoned the fish, I left it for 15 minutes to absorb the flavours.

Rub a heavy frying pan with garlic then bring to high heat, place the fish fillets skin-side down and press down to ensure all the the skin is in contact with the pan. Lower the heat to medium and cook for 2-3 minutes.  You will see the flesh gradually turning opaque as it cooks. At this stage you can add about a tablespoon of olive oil whilst is is cooking.

After 3 minutes turn the fish over and cook for a further 2 minutes.  When it is cooked, drizzle over the juice of a small lemon and serve skin-side up.  The skin should be very crispy and is popular with some people; if you don't like the skin it can easily be peeled off in one piece.

I served the fillets on a bed of spinach with steamed new potatoes - just because we have loads of both on the allotment.  It goes equally well with lemon or garlic mash potatoes or served with a green salad and of course a glass or two of chilled white wine!

John Austin

Hove, September 2017

Sea Bream

Whole roast gilt head bream

The gilt head sea bream gets its name from, and is easily identified by, the gold colouring on the side of the head and the distinctive gold band between the eyes.











It is generally regarded as the best of the breams for eating, although I recall Rick Stein waxing lyrical about the dentex on one of his Mediterranean adventures, describing it as better than sea bass and saying that gilt head sea bream came close in flavour.  We have eaten dentex in Spain (dentón) and I don't wish to enter into the dentón versus dorada debate except to say they are both excellent! 

Gilt head sea bream is found in British waters and is readily available in the UK.  It is common throughout the Mediterranean - (dorada in Spanish, daurade in French and orata in Italian) and is farmed extensively in Greece.

All the breams can be successfully roasted, baked, grilled, poached whole or pan-fried when filleted.


On this occasion, I chose to roast in a parcel - you may see such recipes described as en papillote in French restaurants, al cartoccio in Italian.


I had some fresh tarragon in the garden, some recently harvested garlic from the allotment and a jar of home preserved lemons in salt. A perfect combination.

Ingredients

1 whole sea bream
bunch of fresh tarragon (preferably French tarragon)
3-4 cloves of garlic
half a preserved lemon
half a glass of dry white wine (or dry vermouth or dry sherry)

Method

Gut, scale, trim the fish and remove gills - or ask the fishmonger to do this for you.

Cut a rectangle of grease-proof/baking paper slightly larger than the fish and place on a sheet of foil large enough to wrap round the fish.

Brush the baking paper lightly with olive oil, and place the fish on top

Make deep diagonal slashes on either side of the fish, down to the bone.

Peel and cut the garlic into thin slivers.  Remove flesh from the preserved lemons and discard. Rinse the peel well in running water and cut into thin slivers.  Stuff the slivers of garlic and lemon and tarragon leaves in the slits on both sides of the fish.

Place any remaining tarragon, garlic and lemon peel inside the body cavity and on top of the fish.

Fold up the sides of the foil and pour over half a glass of dry white wine

Fold the foil over the fish to make a neat sealed parcel, but do this loosely so the fish can steam as it is cooking and will remain moist.

Heat the oven to 180C. Place fish on a baking tray and cook for 15 minutes. You may wish to open the parcel for a few minutes towards the end of cooking - a) to check that the fish is cooked and b) to crisp up the skin.

The top fillets can easily be removed and placed on a serving dish, then the central bone can be easily removed to access the two remaining fillets.  

Pour over any juices from the parcel and serve.

John Austin

Hove August 2017 

OVEN ROAST BRILL

Oven roasted whole brill

We live in the Wish area of Hove and a few hundred meters from the eastern end of Shoreham harbour. I recently discovered that "Wish" is a word deriving from Old English meaning a meadow or land liable to be flooded and read a fascinating history of the harbour which is now a thriving port 

I asked the fishmonger to clean and trim the fish.

Ingredients:

1 whole Brill, about 1 - 2 kg, cleaned and trimmed 

2 sprigs of fresh oregano

2 bay leaves

1/2 Preserved lemon*

1 lemon

Olive oil

75mls Dry white wine, dry sherry or dry vermouth

1 piece fresh ginger app 2-3 cms

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

* if you don’t have preserved lemons use the thinly pared peel of a fresh lemon or lime.

Method:

Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan oven)     

Make some diagonal incisions into the flesh of the fish. Take the preserved lemon, remove all the flesh and discard. Cut the peel into very thin slices. Slice the fresh ginger into thin matchstick strips and do the same with the garlic.  Insert the slivers of lemon, garlic and ginger into the slits in the fish and then season with salt** and freshly ground pepper

Method:

Heat the oven to 200C (Fan oven 180C)

Put the oregano bay leaves and some salt** and pepper in roasting tin with any remaining preserved lemon, garlic and herbs, reserving some to put in the body cavity of the fish.  If using fresh lemon, slice ½ lemon and add the slices to the tin.

Lay the fish on top of the oregano, bay and lemon and drizzle a little s olive oil over the skin.

Roast in the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes (15mins if it is a larger fish) Check that the fish is almost cooked and coming away from the bone.  Pour over the glass of wine and a squeeze of lemon juice over the fish and replace in the oven for 5 mins, a little longer if you want the skin crispy. (or crisp up for a couple of minutes under a hot grill). If you don’t want to eat the skin it will lift away from the flesh and the flesh will come away from the bone. You will have 4 good portions.

Put each serving of fish on a plate and pour over the juices from the tin.

Two of us ate three portions.  We saved the remaining portion to add to a seafood linguine dish the following day and boiled up the bones and remaining skin for a fish stock. 

**Go easy on the salt seasoning if using preserved lemons as they are very salty.

John Austin

Hove July 2017