The Fish-man Cometh

[debitha]

Every Tuesday a man with a van drives down to Chippenham from Grimsby, all stocked up with fresh fish, and parks conveniently over the road from my work.

So the other week I succumbed to curiosity and bought some halibut fillet. I have always feared cooking fish. Undercooking it is bad, and overcooking it is easy. But what the hell, right? To keep it simple I foil-baked it with lemon and a few capers (which I took off when I served it). Success! Served with potatoes boiled, sliced and fried with rock salt, pepper and fresh chives (and loads of butter).

Yesterday I got some catfish. I decided to do a quick internet recipe check before I cooked it, which was good. Catfish is pretty robust and gets cooked with quite tasty things, so I basted with lemon juice, worcester sauce and chilli pepper. Sadly I overcooked it a bit, but tasty! Served with baby potatoes tossed in lemon butter with basil.

On an entirely different note, I uploaded a song for the lovely Miss Scarlet, so might as well have it too. Learn to love Thea Gilmore.

Is is comedy? Is it tragedy?
You know my character witness just went down for perjury.

Comments

[giffydoll.livejournal.com]

Yay for baked fish! Beau and I are also trying to learn the way of the Fish as we have awesome market with fresh fish near our house.

[debitha.livejournal.com]

Foil baking cannot fail. And Halibut is good.

I'm going to have to give the catfish another go. I will marinate it overnight and not cook it for as long.

Is your market an all-the-time market? We have a good Farmers Market, but it is only on Saturday mornings, so I have a high miss rate.

[giffydoll.livejournal.com]

It's a 9-5 6-days a week market. So pretty good. I'm going to miss it when we go back to NZ.

[debitha.livejournal.com]

Oooh, nice. There's a pretty good greengrocer in 'Nam that I like to go to, but nothing else convenient.

Why is it that buying from a stall, or a van is more appealing than going into a specialty shop? There is a very good (I'm told) fishmongers in Bath, but I've never even been in. Weird.

[giffydoll.livejournal.com]

I have decided that when we return to NZ I will try specialty shops more. Support the local community and all that jazz ;)

Hey now, hey now....

[lazyknight.livejournal.com]

Hang on a minute, isn't JN from Grimsby? He drives all that way and back just to brig you fish? :-)

Fish is good. Fish with capers is good. Pizza with anchovies and capers is even better :-) I've restocked my freezer with scallops after a weekend's diving in Portland, and even came back with a crab.... the lobster, however, escaped.

I like the new(*) style on the blog.

--
MJW
*: for some definition of new

Re: Hey now, hey now....

[debitha.livejournal.com]

What can I say? He's quite devoted to me really.

I just always struggle with cooking fish, particularly when I have to time it with something else. I'm rubbish at that with anything.

Ooooh fresh scallops.

The "new" style has been around for a while now - much nicer than the green.

Must sleep now. Karaoke has been committed...