The recipe: p151, "Sweet and Sour Fish"
Seriously, these recipe names are getting silly now. This week's ingredient list calls for cod; at no point does it so much as suggest that the reader use anything other than cod; and yet the resulting dish labours under the name "Sweet and Sour Fish". Uninspiring much?
Anyway, where were we? Hello! Welcome to the 35th weekly trawl through my collection of cookbooks, aided and abetted by random.org. I suppose "uninspiring" is appropriate for this week's selection, since the Good Housekeeping bible has no aspirations beyond compiling a set of good, solid recipes for the good, solid British kitchen. And in that kitchen, why wouldn't a fish be called a fish? None of your fancy continental "names" here.
My relationship with sweet and sour isn't the best. I associate it with crap supermarket ready meals and the gloopy, MSG-heavy sauces that seem to plague every single dish on the menu at Chinese restaurants in Germany (a decade since I moved back, I'm still scarred). Or, worse yet, the vats of Mystery Meat you get at €3.99 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets on Lanzarote and Gran Canaria, where you have to hope they're making a hell of a mark-up on the drinks as otherwise they're definitely not employing cleaners.
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| If there's a mistake on the bill, for god's sake don't protest |
Still, making a sauce from scratch and pairing it with fish for a change sounds like the kind of thing that could yet win me over to the sweet and sour side, so I'm game.
The prep: The ingredient list is reassuringly lengthy, although very little of it falls outwith the realms of the store cupboard. It's only the fresh ingredients I have to buy in: a red pepper and some spring onions (I have mushrooms in the fridge already, while the recipe calls for frozen green beans - I haz a skeptical). And the "fish", of course - four cod fillets, to be precise. Shortly-before-closing supermarket stock issues require that I buy a pack of smoked fillets along with the regular variety, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
And that's it on the preparation front. A quick check of the recipe and the accompanying photo confirms my suspicions - this really is just going to be fish and some veg. I'm immediately put in mind of the gently sexist "NO CARBS FRÄULEIN?" option at the otherwise impeccable Herman ze German. Still, I'm won over by the promise of a main meal that's a mere 400 calories (the recipe says "200 calories/serving", but I know better than to expect this to serve four people).
The making: The cod fillets are halved lengthwise, then rolled up "neatly with the skinned side inside". This isn't as easy as it might look, particularly since the fillets are unevenly sized in the first place, resulting in correspondingly uneven rolls o' cod. I opt to use toothpicks to hold them in place for the time being, as otherwise they'd risk unravelling pretty speedily.
Next, the sweet and sour component is prepared by mixing together soy sauce, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, honey, tomato ketchup (a decidedly Brexit addition to proceedings), garlic and paprika. Duly whisked, this sauce is gently heated in a sauté pan before the rolled-up fish fillets are added and given a right good basting.
Further scepticism ensues when I note that 10-12 minutes on the hob is supposed to be enough to cook the fish rolls without any flipping or turning (probably for the best, I suppose, considering they'd likely fall apart). A second glance shows that I've missed a key detail, namely that the pan needs to be covered so that the fish is basically steamed. That makes more sense. I don't have a big enough lid, but an upside-down dinner plate will do.
The recipe doesn't tell me to, but it seems to make sense to baste the fish throughout the cooking process, so I do - although I can't say it's terribly promising when the sauce gradually gets thinned out by the fish juices, ending up with lots of little bits of cod floating in it. Er, yum...?
In the meantime, the aforementioned vegetables are chopped up and stir-fried. I would describe this in greater detail, but you've made a stir-fry before.
That done, we're all ready to assemble a low-carb, low-calorie, hopefully high-flavour dinner.
The eating: Considering how simple it is, this one actually scrubs up pretty well. The cod rolls hold together even with the toothpicks removed, and from the right angle they almost looks deep-fried (though sadly for the taste buds - if fortunately for the waistline - they aren't).
Despite my prior reservations about the frozen green beans, the veg are just the right side of crunchy, while the fish is lovely and succulent thanks to all that basting (and - yes - actually cooked through!). Going half-and-half on smoked and unsmoked cod works pretty well for an accident of chance, adding some handy variety to what could otherwise have been a slightly bland dish.
And even the suspicious-looking sauce is fine once it's been drizzled over the fish and veg for serving. It's not a terribly interesting flavour (lest it overpower the fish, I suppose), but there's none of that gloopy sweetness I've come to expect and fear from sweet and sour, so that's a minor win in itself. If I were making it again, I'd probably use more soy sauce and chuck in some red chillies and basically make it into a darker, less authentic, but more satisfying dish.
Anyway, like several of the Random Kitchen selections so far, this ends up being more "a different way of preparing and arranging the kind of meal I'd consider making anyway" than something entirely new and exciting - but hey, that's useful too. And the calorie count is commendable, particularly compared with the fish and cheese pie on the adjacent page...
One-word verdict: Wholesome.
If you're worried that I seem to be enjoying this healthy food rather too much, you might have a point - it's fuelling my training for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, which I'll be running in early October to raise money for Parkinson's UK. If you're enjoying The Random Kitchen, I'd be very grateful if you'd consider donating to my fundraising page. Thanks!
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