SEA BASS WITH ST GEORGES MUSHROOMS, POTATO, AND BEURRE NOISETTE

This is a wonderful way to utilise a fantastic seasonal ingredient: St George’s mushrooms. So-named because they typically start to appear during celebrations for the patron saint. They are common in fields and grassland throughout the country to the end of May. However, if unavailable, chestnut mushrooms that can be found at most supermarkets make a great alternative. Sustainably-sourced wild seabass is also now in season and the dish is a great way to showcase both ingredients, served with a simple yet elegant beurre noisette sauce.

Ingrediants Serves 4

4 sea bass fillets, roughly 150g each

300g new potatoes, diced and boiled

250g St George’s mushrooms, medium dice

80g diced pancetta

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 sprigs of thyme

5 tbsp butter

2 tbsp lemon juice

Olive oil

Sea salt, lemon juice and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Method

1 To make the beurre noisette add 4 tbsp of the butter to a small saucepan over medium heat. Let the butter melt and stir frequently until the butter starts to caramelise and smell nutty and fragrant. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice plus salt to taste, and stir well until incorporated. Keep warm.

2 Add olive oil and the pancetta to a large frying pan over medium heat. Stir and cook until crisp, and remove the pancetta.

3 Add the mushrooms, garlic and leaves from the thyme sprigs to the same pan with 1 tbsp of butter. Sauté for around 7 minutes or until golden.

4 Add the potatoes and continue to cook for a further 3 minutes. Return the pancetta to the pan and season to taste with salt and pepper.

5 To cook the fish, add olive oil to a frying pan at medium-high heat. Gently lay the fillets into the pan skin side down, season with salt and pepper and pan fry for around 4 minutes. Flip each fillet and cook for a further 2 minutes, or until just cooked.

6 To plate, simply heap the potatoes and mushrooms neatly on each plate and top with the fish. Finish with the butter sauce.

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Tamarind

Safia Hothi-Bellamy, Pure Punjabi

Tamarind - or perhaps tamarind paste - is a fruit that you may have noticed on ingredients lists for Asian (or Asian-inspired) recipes. Growing up in my maternal North Indian family, tamarind has featured throughout my childhood. The preparation of this wonderful fruit is often misunderstood, so let’s delve into the finer detail.

Tamarind is a fruit that grows in pods that have a hard, brittle shell. Once this outer shell is broken, the soft fruit can be found inside, along with a fibrous casing (which supports the shape of the soft fruit) and seeds. There are two main varieties of tamarind. The sweet variety, which is slightly smaller, can be eaten straight from the tree and has a flavour and texture similar to dates.

The second variety of tamarind is slightly larger and has a more ‘sweet/sour’ taste profile – think of the complex ‘tang’ of a good elderflower cordial. It makes the insides of your cheeks tingle. This second variety is what is used in cooking and for making sauces or chutneys as they are called in India. Did you know that the word ‘chutney’ came from India?

The larger tamarind is also slightly more fibrous. When harvested, it is processed in machines that

The manufacture of shop-bought tamarind paste involves diluting and boiling down the beautiful pulp – much like the process of taking freshly squeezed oranges to make ‘juice from concentrate’. Personally, I would never consider buying or using tamarind paste in cooking - it doesn’t do justice to the real thing and the taste doesn’t come close to the beautiful hard-won pulp.

TAMARIND CHICKEN

Our family recipe is typical of most home-style North Indian chicken dishes – full of flavour (no sauce or gravy), using a marinade to draw flavour into the chicken, as well as tenderise before the cooking process. There are many ingredients in this marinade that provide flavour but also heat or warmth (ginger, pepper, cinnamon) so you will also see jaggery (unrefined cane sugar) within the ingredients which provides a sweetness for balance but without the intense taste of refined sugar. This dish is perfect for when entertaining (indoor or outdoor) or for a delicious dinner when you are short on preparation time and want something special without complicated steps.

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

1-inch piece of ginger, finely minced

1 green birds eye chilli, finely chopped

1 teaspoon garam masala

(we always use pure punjabi garam masala, of course)

½ teaspoon pepper

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons fresh tamarind pulp (as previously described)*

1 tablespoon sunflower oil

50g jaggery (or molasses/dark brown sugar)

Juice of ½ a lemon

4 chicken breasts (or paneer as a vegetarian option) (total weight somewhere between 500-600g)

Method

1 Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly, massaging the ingredients together for at least 2 minutes (this pushes the flavour into the chicken and aids the marinating process).

2 Leave to marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours but ideally a couple of days (or longer if the ‘use by’ date on the chicken allows for this).

3 Remove the chicken from the fridge 20 minutes before cooking – this allows the raw meat to relax at room temperature, which gives a more tender result once cooked.

4 Grill or barbecue on a medium heat until the chicken is cooked through.

5 Serve hot with either rice or flatbread, a side salad and some yoghurt.

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