This is a far cry from Becky Selengut’s original recipe, but when I saw her make this at the Queen Anne Farmers Market in Seattle with peaches instead of figs, I knew I could get away with a few changes. Now, she used peaches because they were in season, but as peach season had just ended in Montreal (well, Niagara peaches), and the figs were awful, I went with mangoes. Also, clearly not grown here. But I needed something juicy and with a bright sweetness, and it had to sear well. So mangoes won out over pears and apples.
You make a ratatouille of zucchini, onions and a few other savoury things, then you sear your fish (I used mackerel because they cheap, local, and affordable, but Selengut’s thick tuna steaks were MUCH better.
If only we could get sustainable tuna here.
So I filleted the mackerel, like so:
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They were small, so I treated them like sardines instead of big fin fish. This made everything a lot easier. Oh! but did I mention that I also made a snapper recipe and a porgy recipe the night before and when I was filleting those and entire fish head came out of the snapper??!! It ate another fish and the head got stuck in there. How that whole head got past the fish throat and into the stomach, I don’t know, but apparently, it ate it whole. Pretty cool. A little disgusting. Mostly cool.
Back to the recipe. Sardines and mackerel have a lot of guts that you just tear out and then pull out the vertebrae. Simple. Quick. Relatively painless. It’s a lot harder to make a big mess, besides all the guts. This is an upside. I know I’m not selling you on it, but trust me. You can also just get your fishmonger to fillet your fish, but then you don’t get to roast the skin until it’s crispy and eat it as an appetizer with salt. And you don’t get all the bones and heads to make stock. My stock came out bloody, but it was sweet and delicious. I think that’s fine if it’s a little bloody, right? You’re supposed to remove the gills. I clearly did not.
Right, recipe. So you sear the mackerel or tuna or whatever you have, then put it on a plate covered in aluminium. then sear the tomatoes and mangoes (or peaches or figs) in the fish fat and brown bits. Then remove those. Then deglaze the pan with red wine and then add chicken broth and cook it down with balsamic vinegar until it’s thick and delicious. Pour over fish (sliced if tuna. Whole if mackerel) on top of mangoes and tomatoes and ratatouille. Eat. Smile. Share with someone else, because this is a meal worth sharing and appreciating. Drink with same red wine you deglazed with. Smile again.
Whew! That’s a lot of steps! A lot of delicious steps!
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