Pan-fried Sea Bass with a quick tomato salsa

You could serve this salsa with salmon, mackerel - any white fish; it would also be great spooned over a piece of chicken snatched straight off the barbie. I hear the weather forecast for tomorrow is a bit grim, so we're seizing the opportunity to have something light and summery while the going's good.

2 Line-caught Sea Bass fillets
A small punnet of cherry tomatoes, chopped
1 Shallot, finely chopped
1 Red chilli, finely chopped
The juice of 1 lime
2tsp Fish sauce
1tsp Sugar
A pinch of salt
Fresh coriander leaves
Rapeseed oil

1 Season the fillets with salt and pepper. Mix the the tomatoes, shallot and chilli together in a bowl, stir in the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and coriander then put to one side.
2 Heat a splash of oil in a frying pan. Place the fillets skin side down in the pan and fry for 4-5 minutes, after which the skin should be nice and crispy. Flip over with a spatula and cook on the white side for about a minute. Plate up, then serve with a generous spoonful of salsa.

Chunky fish and potato stew

Circa 1987, having a food-based forename lent itself to some pretty

creative verbal roughhousing at school.

"Yeah? Well, why don't you make a stew, cook it in an oven, then

eat it in your den? With some art".

Or words to such effect. Even at the time it was amusing in it's absence of bite;

I just thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't Michael Pratt come morning break.

This week it's all about fish stew; complete with art (primitive chalk spoon),

briefly cooked in an oven and consumed in an impromptu residence under

the stairs. I lied about the stairs bit.

Serves 4

400g Skinless sustainable white fish (I used Coley)

400g Red skinned pototoes, cut into rough chunks

120g Chorizo, chopped into small pieces

1 Large red onion, sliced

1 Red chilli, chopped

1 Green chilli, chopped

2 Garlic cloves, finely chopped

4 Tomatoes, chopped

2tsp Smoked paprika

300ml Fish stock

1 Bay leaf

A few thyme sprigs, stalks removed

A small bunch of parsley, roughly chopped

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Briefly soften the garlic and chilli in a

pan on the hob before stirring in the chorizo; then add the onion, thyme and bay.

Sauté everything for 5-10 minutes on a medium heat. Tip in the potatoes,

sprinkle with paprika, then add the tomatoes and stock. Simmer for about

10 minutes until the liquid has reduced slightly, and the potatoes are nearly done.

Pour everything into an oven-proof dish, then carefully stir in the fish. Put the lid on

and pop into the oven for 10 minutes. Serve with a sprinkling of chopped parsley

and crusty bread.

Mackerel Pate

In event terms, the creation of a batch of Mackerel Pate in the Ovenden household is a high ranker. Normally it resides in an old souffle dish in the fridge to spread across toast as and when the need arises, but I've adapted it slightly to make it into individual servings.

Makes enough to fill 3 ramekins
250g Smoked Mackerel fillets
150g Cottage cheese
75g Unsalted butter
Juice of 1/2 lemon
A good grating of fresh horseradish root
Salt & pepper
Bay leaves

Melt 25g of the butter in a pan. Peel the skin off the mackerel fillets and flake into a bowl, removing any bones you spot along the way. Use a wooden spoon to crush the fish to a paste, then pass the cottage cheese through a seive into the bowl. Add the melted butter, lemon juice, horseradish and seasoning, then mix everything together. Spoon into ramekins; stop about 5mm from the top and level off with the back of a spoon.

To clarify the butter, slowly melt the remaining butter in a pan and skim the foamy milk solids off the surface with a spoon. Carefully pour the clear yellow butterfat into a jug - make sure that the sunken cloudy layer at the bottom of the pan doesn't come with it. Slowly pour the clarified butter over the pate-filled ramekins. A bay leaf pushed into the seal before the butter sets looks dead posh like.