The Fishy Fishy brasserie is the result of a long held dream of three close friends: James Ginzler, Paul Shovlin and Loz Talent.    Importantly all the fish served is local, seasonal and sustainable.     The first Fishy Fishy opened in Brighton with a second restaurant in Poole.

Bizarrely as someone who loves fish, I do not cook it that often.  With all the recent coverage on waste and sustainability, knowing what to buy can be tricky.   The Fishy Fishy cookbook is not just a recipe book, but also is crammed with fish facts, explaining how fish are caught, how to select which fish to buy and how to prepare them.

There are over 90 recipes, most with a full colour photo.  The book is divided in to starters, BBQ & al fresco eating, everyday fish & shellfish, special occasions and sauces, side dishes and desserts.

By and large the recipes are simple, concentrating on the quality of the ingredients to showcase the flavours.  As long as you can source good fish (which the book tells you how to do) all the other ingredients will be available in any supermarket and you should be able to product restaurant quality dishes at home.

Recipes that have caught my eye are scallops with chorizo or tempura oysters with chilli jam for a first course.  The marinated Asian style fish fillets can be adapted to any fish and cooked on either a griddle or BBQ.  An everyday classic fish pie is made both luxurious and economical by using off cuts of lots of different fish.     For a special occasion there is a lobster feast with three different ways of cooking lobster, or a mixed fish platter with roasted potatoes.

The sauces section tells you how to make every accompaniment in the book encompassing mayonnaise, flavoured butters through to sauce vierge, rouille and mushy peas.    Puddings are simple featuring chocolate brownies, tarte au citron and pear tart tartin amongst others.

All in all a fantastic first fish cookbook giving great achievable recipes, and, importantly, the knowledge and confidence to buy and cook fish successfully.

Fuss Free Star Rating ****

New Holland have kindly given me permission to share the recipe for fish burgers from the book.

Classic Fish Burgers

Makes 6

Ingredients

600 g line-caught pollock fillet (or any other white fish), skinned and boned
1 large shallot, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon cornichons
1 tablespoon capers
2 tablespoons chopped parsley flour, for dusting
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 ciabatta rolls, to serve
1 large tomato, sliced
few lettuce leaves
mayonnaise

Method

Homemade fish burgers are infinitely superior to the shop bought variety and are very quick and easy to make.

Dice the fish into 5-cm cubes, place in a food processor and process to a rough purée. Transfer the purée to a large mixing bowl. Put the shallot, cornichons, capers, parsley and seasoning in the food processor and purée until evenly blended. Tip out and mix with the fish purée.

With floured hands, shape the mixture into 6 burgers. Chill in the fridge for 1 hour to firm up.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the fishburgers, two at a time. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side, or until nicely browned. Take care not to overheat the pan or the fishburgers will burn. Once cooked through and crispy set aside and cook the remaining burgers. Serve in a ciabatta roll with a slice of tomato, a lettuce leaf and some mayonnaise.

Fishy Fishy is published by New Holland £16.99.

Thank you to New Holland for my review copy.

If you are an Apple user and want to try the book before you buy there is now a Fishy Fishy App , click for more info.

Usually I cook everything from scratch, but in the last few months I have been lucky enough to be invited to attend several tastings for quite astonishingly good ready made products (namely Bertolli Sauces and Tilda Stir Fry Rices) that I am more than happy to keep in the cupboard and use on the occasions when I am tired or would otherwise call for a takeaway.    I think that anyone can cook with products of this quality – using them as a base to embellish according to their taste, and the contents of fridge and cupboard.

Here is my take on one of the recipes that Gennaro Contaldo made for a group of bloggers at the Bertolli tasting.   I used spaghetti, Bertolli Arrabiata from the store cupboard, capers from the fridge and two haddock fillets* from the freezer.    Absolutely delicious and very easy to put together simply poach the fish in the  sauce whilst the pasta cooks.  I am a caper lover, if you are not, black olives would work well here too.

* Waitrose sell boxes of individually frozen fish fillets which are perfect to keep in the freezer, the individual fillets defrost rapidly ready for use.  All Waitrose fish is sustainable and Marine Stewardship Council approved. 

Speedy Tomato Spaghetti with Haddock and Capers (Serves 2)

Two fish fillets – I used Haddock
Spaghetti for 2
1/2 jar Bertolli Arrabiata Sauce (or homemade)
1 tbs capers

If using frozen fish allow to defrost for as long as you can, I regularly poach half frozen fish and have never come to any harm, just cook it for a little longer.

Put the pasta on to cook.  Pour the pasta sauce into a shallow pan, add a little water and bring to a gentle simmer, add the capers (or olives) and lie the fish in the sauce.   Cook for about 5 minutes until done.     Serve on top of a bed of pasta.

Delicious and so so fast.

I am sending this to this week’s Presto Pasta Nights hosted this week by More Than Burnt Toast.

A classic tapenade usually consists of black olives, capers and anchovies mixed in varying proportions.  I added some seeds to this pungent mix, to both lighten taste & colour and to add a dose of healthy omega 3 & 6s.    My seeds were a mixture of flax (linseed), pumpkin, sunflower and sesame.     The seeds diluted the pungent tapenade from a concentrated spread to the perfect base for a dip or sauce.    I stirred a good dollop of seed tapenade and some semi dried cherry tomatoes into hot pasta for a quick end of week supper.  Ground flax seed is really rather gloopy and the paste will need some thinning.

Having just missed the deadline for this week’s Presto Pasta Night I am sending this to fellow Londoner, Abby at Eat The Right Stuff for next week’s round up.

Four Seed Tapenade (Makes pasta sauce for 4)

2oz black olives (stoned)
1oz seeds (I used roughly equal quantities of flax, pumpkin, sunflower & sesame)
About 8 anchovy fillets (I used a 50g tin)
1 oz capers
1 small clove garlic
Juice and zest of one lemon
Olive oil

Blitz all the ingredients either in the small bowl of your food processor or with a stick blender.   I added the oil from my anchovies, but if you prefer drain them and add an extra glug of olive oil.      If necessary thin the paste with a little oil or, if bothered about the fat content, water.

I can think of several variations of this, using either parmesan or miso in place of the anchovies,

According to the date of the photo I made this several months ago, in March to be exact.   I know it was utterly delicious, so the photo was thus placed in the “To be blogged at a later date when I have time” file.    Usually, unless I blog within 2 days of making something, the odds of the photo making its way from my laptop to the internet are very slim, but the person that I made this for reminded me the other day how she had enjoyed it, promoting me  to act upon my original intention to write about it.

Use the bestest, freshest, creamiest buffalo Mozzarella you can buy, mine came from a wonderful Italian deli opposite Hammersmith (Circle line) Underground Station. 

Marinated Mozzarella & Parmesan (Serves 2)

1 ball Mozzarella
1 tbs good olive oil
1 small clove garlic – finely chopped
Juice & zest of half a lemon
2 oz / 50g Parmesan
1 tsp capers
few basil leaves

Simply slice the mozzarella into 1/4″ / 0.5cm slices and arrange in a shallow bowl.   Pour over the olive oil, lemon zest & juice and the finely chopped garlic.    Using a peeler cut the Parmesan into slivers and sprinkle with the capers over the mozzarella.     Allow to stand for a few hours.    Sprinkle with torn basil leaves and serve with crusty bread.

I am not sure what it is called, or where I found the recipe originally, it is basically a tomatoless Puttenesca – or “Whore’s Style” a dish that originated in Naples.

I adore anchovies and always have a jar of them in the fridge. I enjoy their robust salty strong flavour and they are useful in a number of dishes. The wonderful thing about anchovies is that if you fry them in some good olive oil over a low heat they magically melt into a lovely paste that will coat pasta or stir into a sauce. Add some other flavours and you have a sublime but very simple base of a dish.

Anchovy, Chilli and Caper Pasta

For one person:

“Melt” a few (or if you are me rather more) anchovy fillets in good olive oil in a small frying pan, keep the pan on a low heat, I use my smallest gas burner on the lowest heat and also use the diffuser. Nudge the anchovies with a wooden spoon and move them around, they will soon start to disintegrate and melt into the oil, this takes some minutes. Meanwhile boil the kettle and put the pasta on to boil.

When the anchovies are melted add capers, chopped chillis (I used very lazy), garlic (again very lazy) and a snipped up pickled green chilli, and stir in to make the sauce.

For variation here you can add tinned tuna, sweetcorn, olives, preserved lemons, white wine. My secret food shame is that I sometimes used chopped up and fried hot dog sausages in place of the anchovies. I know that frankfurters are not meant to be nice, but I do rather like them from time to time……

When the pasta is cooked, drain and pour into the pan with the anchovy, chilli, caper etc mixture in, quickly stir, sprinkle with Parmesan (I grate loads at once and freeze in a large Tupperware box), chilli flakes and S&P; to taste.

Simple food but so so good and the perfect quick Saturday lunch.

Other recipes with capers include
Asparagus & Tofu Salad with Charred Caper & Mustard Dressing
Pepper & Caper Salad