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Do you like cooking fish? Most people I know don’t, and for a very good reason - it is so, so difficult to find affordable fresh fish in shops; we are stuck with choices of frozen or defrosted or what they call “fresh” simply because it hasn’t been frozen but has been sitting on ice for days and days and has that “fishy” smell. And then there is farmed fish which many people don’t like buying for environmental reasons. Anyway - the point is, with fish, it’s all about freshness, and the best fish is the fish caught just a few hours before it finds itself on my grill. If I lived by one of the Great Lakes, I would probably eat fish daily, that’s how much I love it. I cook fish many different ways, but my favorite is the simplest one - pan-fried, grilled, or steamed, with basic seasoning and lemon. When you cook fish, you really don’t need much of a recipe (unless you use fish as part of a complex dish like fish tagine, fish biryani, or bouillabaisse). I read this advice somewhere: cook fish for ten minutes for each inch of thickness, regardless of the method of cooking. This guideline works really well for high-heat methods such as grilling, pan-frying, or roasting. Baking or poaching might take a bit longer, depending on the temperature. When we were camping, I would season the fish with salt and lemon juice and grill it on high heat using this guideline, flipping it mid-way. I usually pre-cut fish into serving sizes to make flipping easier. I love pan-fried potatoes with a couple of rashers of bacon for the “surf and turf” vibe as a side for the fish. This dish is great by itself, as well. I first cook chopped bacon on low heat to render fat. While bacon is cooking, I cut potatoes into small bite-size pieces. Once the bacon is done, I remove it from the pan and add potatoes with a bit of salt. I cook potatoes on medium heat until they brown up. I then add some water - not too much, just enough to generate some steam, - cover the pan and lower the heat. The potatoes will now steam and cook fairly quickly. You need to check periodically, to flip and add more water if it all evaporated. Once they are cooked through, add the bacon back in. (Of course, you can skip bacon and cook potatoes in olive oil, as well.) Topping it with chopped parsley or dill is always nice. Delicious!
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