I’ve been so busy lately I’ve not had time to browse through recipe books for new recipes but I really wanted to cook something a little more sophisticated tonight. When we stay in Dorset we try and visit the Hix restaurant in Lyme Regis, I bought the Hix Oyster & Chop House cookbook a while ago but hadn’t tried anything from it until today. Many of the recipes have slightly specialised ingredients and this one suggested Ling which I’d never heard of. However Ling is a firm white fish and as Haddock was on offer that was what I used. I made up the amount of sauce in the recipe for three of us so the quantities on the plate are a little more generous than they would be if you were making for four as the recipe suggests. This is lovely, simple to make and looks like it was more effort on the plate. I served with steamed samphire.
Ingredients
- 4 thick fillets of ling (or other firm white fish(, about 200g each, with skin)
- 150g freshly podded peas (about 300g before podding), or frozen peas
- 100g butter
- 6 rashers of streaky bacon, derinded and finely chopped
- 1 medium or 2-5 small leeks, trimmed, cut into rough 1cm squares and washed
- 200ml double cream
Instructions
- Season the fish fillets with salt and pepper.
- Add the peas to a pan of salted water and simmer for four to five minutes or until tender, then drain. (I like my peas less well cooked so I put frozen peas in bowl and covered with boiling water)
- In the meantime, melt half of the butter in a heavy-based saucepan and add the bacon and leeks. Cover and cook gently over a medium-low heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring every so often, until the leek is soft. (I started cooking the bacon in the sauting pan, cut off some of the larger bits of fat which I left in sauting pan, I then put cooked bacon into a heavy based saucepan with the leeks and cream and cooked gently)
- Roughly chop the peas ( much as I love to cook I feel life is too short to chop peas so I lightly mashed them with a potato masher) and add them to the leek and bacon with the cream. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for a few minutes until the cream has reduced and is just coating the peas.
- Meanwhile, heat the oil in a non-stick frying-pan over a medium-high heat and add the ling fillets, skin-side down. Cook for three to four minutes until nicely coloured, then turn the fillets and add the rest of the butter to the pan. Fry for a couple of minutes until the fish is just cooked through. I cooked the fish in the pan I’d cooked the bacon so whilst the fish was cooking the small pieces of bacon fat were crisping up nicely at the side of the pan.
- To serve, spoon the creamed peas, leeks and bacon on to warmed plates and place the fish on top. Hix serves skin side up, my picture is skin side down. I then topped with a little crispy bacon fat.
100 Cook Books 