CHEESY FISH GRILL
People are scared of fish and it’s no wonder coz, if you muck up a fish recipe, it’s often an expensive mistake that’ll just taste of boney muck. So here’s our fave fish dish which comes from page 27 of the “Get Stuffed” Cookbook. It’s a doodle to make and it’s so good, you’ll be licking the pan clean.
But
firstly, here’s something that you’ll never read in ANY cookbook
... when cooking something for the first time, it’s a good idea
to cook it just for yourself - so that you manage to get a grip on what
you ought to be doing before you start hosting huge dinner parties which
include: local dignitaries, the Chancellor of your University, members
of the Royal Family, etc. For this reason, the quantities given in this
recipe are only for one person. Multiply up when cooking for more people
or, if you are totally drongo-thick (at the level of a Jamie Oliver apprentice)
get someone with a GCSE in Maths to do the sums for you! Or a 7-year-old
...
INGREDIENTS
- Cod - get a fillet that weight about 200g. or looks like the size that you could manage eating in one go.Make sure that it’s got the skin on. Don’t get cod “steaks” or anything that’s still frozen. What you want should be fairly flattish, about 15cms long and about 1cm. thick.
- Onion - actually you only need a half onion, but you’ll make a total ass of yourself if you try to buy a half onion. So buy a whole one. Get one that’s medium sized - nothing special, just a bog-starndard, cheap onion will do. If, as happened to me yesterday, some slack-shouldered, acne-pocked oik tries to charge you 80p for it, then stamp your little foot and scweem and scweem and scweem until the Boss Man comes and suggests a more realistic price. Like 14p.
- Cheese - get some dead cheap mousetrap, such as coloured cheddar. You’ll only need about 100g. but you’ll probably have to buy a bigger lump.
- Mustard powder - get good ol’, strong English mustard powder. You’ll find it squatting shyly on supermarket shelves in a nervous proximity to all the poncy mustards.
- Olive oil - or just use vegetable oil. Or melted butter would be ok.
- Salt and pepper. Never ever buy anything other than cheap cooking salt for cooking. IMHO, everyone who advises you to buy or use “rock salt” (or any other nonsense) is a dirty rotten scoundrel who is laughing at you behind your back and has the ulterior motive of separating you from the hard-earned spondulies that clink in your pocket. Anyway, the recommended daily intake for salt is less than 6g. so you’re probably already eating too much of the stuff. And, if there isn’t a suspiciously large quantity of salt in your house, it’ll save about 10 hours of arguments if you ever get raided by the Drug Squad.
METHOD
Grate about 100g of the cheese.
Finely chop up half the onion. It needs to be very finely chopped so, if Santa ever got you a food processor, now’s the time to use it. If you’re chopping the onion with a knife, it’s gonna take you at least three minutes and you’ll be weeping like a baby.
In a bowl, mix together the grated cheese, with the finely chopped onion, with a teaspoon of the mustard powder, with a pinch of salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, heat the grill (full blast) and try to pluck out of the fish any of its extraneous bones. Use your fingers dipped in salt coz this’ll give you a better grip.
Then lightly dampen the piece of cod with the oil. Lay the cod, skin side up, on the rack of a grill pan and put it under the hot grill for about 3 minutes. Don’t let it burn. Then, carefully turn the piece of cod over so that it doesn’t disintegrate. The white flesh side of the cod will now be facing upwards. Drizzle on a bit more oil and grill for another 3 minutes.
Now
carefully arrange the cheesy oniony mixture on top of the fish. Put the
fish back under the hot grill and wait for a couple of minutes until all
the cheese has melted. Kinda like welsh rarebit. Geddit? Don’t let
it burn.
Now, carefully arrange the cheesy grilled cod on a hot plate. Be careful wh en you take the fish off the grill rack because the cooking will have made it all quite fragile.
Hoorah. The fish is cooked.
Whilst you were preparing and cooking the fish, you could have been sorting yourself out with something to eat with it.
A good suggestion would be:
Mixed boiled vegetables. (which come from the freezer cabinet in supermarkets
and are dead easy to cook - just bung ‘em in boiling water for five
minutes).
Baked or mashed potatoes. (I’m not gonna tell you how to cook potatoes
coz I am writing this at 10.00pm on Sat. nite and I’m supposed to
be going to a party. Byeee).
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