Vanilla Zulu’s Fish and Seafood night
Who wants an easy but beautiful fish dish?
You just can’t go wrong with fresh fish. This gorgeous snapper was baked whole (we removed the bones) in a very fresh and simple marinade of garlic, lime zest and juice, turmeric, ginger and shrimp paste. The wings of a fish are generally discarded but our favourite fishmonger, Neil from VJ’s, treated us to this amazingly tender and meaty morsel…and didn’t it make a great garnish!
I used Snapper, but this would work with most fish…
Ingredients for flavour paste:
1 teaspoon freshly crushed garlic
1 tablespoon freshly crushed ginger
1 level teaspoon shrimp paste or use fish sauce If you don’t have
1 teaspoon turmeric fresh or ground
1 small onion finely diced
1 small chilli optional
Blend in a food processor or crush in a pestle and mortar until it forms a nice fragrant paste and then simply rub into the fish, inside and out. Place on a greased baking tray lined with foil and bake hot and fast at about 200c until the flesh is cooked and easily flakes off, about 25 minutes but you will have to check!
We simply dipped the lime wedges in black seeds, we used Nigella seeds but you could use poppy or sesame even, and the other side with chopped herbs, we used dill for garnish.
The wings were easy. Simply dip them into seasoned flour and then shallow fry each side until crisp and delicious!
I then used a lovely sweet chilli sauce to garnish the plate, as well as edible flowers! If you need the recipe for the sweet chilli sauce or advice on the petals, let me know and I’ll be happy to assist!
Wild about cooking…
Mel
The Vanilla Zulu