Tag Archives: Fish

Thai Style Tamarind Fish

December 14, 2021 The Captain & the Cook 2 Comments

While in Australia, I made this recipe while waiting to get back to our boat in Thailand. We were missing Thai food, and one of our favourite dishes is tamarind fish. There are several places in Phuket where we enjoy this fish, so I decided to recreate it to eat at home. It turned out just like the fish at one of our favourite restaurants (which has unfortunately since closed down). It is unfortunate how the COVID-19 virus has hit places that rely on tourism!

Ingredients

1 whole fish (we used barramundi)
6 coriander roots
6 garlic cloves
2 small hot chillies
1 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh ginger
1/2 cup tamarind paste
4 tablespoons of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
Bran oil for deep frying
1/2 cup of plain flour
1/2 cup of rice flour or cornflour

To Garnish

1 long red chilli, sliced
Coriander, chopped
Fried garlic slices (fried and removed before I add the fish to the oil)

Method

Prepare the fish

Scale the fish and then cut a fillet from both sides of the whole fish, leaving plenty of meat still on the frame. Rinse both the fish and frame under running water. Chop the fillets into bite-size chunks.

For the sauce

Pound the coriander, garlic, chilli and salt in a mortar and pestle to a paste. Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil to a wok or pan over medium heat and stir-fry for the paste for a minute to release the fragrance.

Add the ginger and stir-fry for another minute. Add tamarind, sugar and fish sauce and a few tablespoons of water. Mix well and let boil. If the sauce gets too thick, add more water to get the consistency you desire.

Set the sauce aside (you can reheat the sauce when you are ready to serve).

Cook the fish

Heat the bran oil for deep frying.

Mix the plain flour and rice flour with salt and pepper and coat the fish carcass. When the oil is hot, use tongs to submerge the fish in the oil and cook until crisp and golden. Remove and drain on paper towels. Place on a serving dish.

Coat the cubed fish pieces with the flour mixture and cook in the hot oil in batches until crispy and golden. Drain on paper towels.

To serve

Place the crispy fish cubes on the concave fish frame and drizzle the dressing over the fish and fish cubes. Sprinkle with finely sliced chilli, chopped coriander and some fried garlic. You can serve excess fish on another serving plate.

You can make this recipe with fish fillets instead of a whole fish if you prefer. Just serve the crispy golden chunks of fish on a serving dish, drizzled with tamarind sauce and garnished with chilli, coriander and fried garlic.

Like this recipe? Please share or pin using the image below… thank you!

Fish

Fish Mousseline Terrine

November 24, 2021 The Captain & the Cook 4 Comments

I made this fish terrine as part of an eight-course degustation for hubby’s birthday dinner. It was a good choice as such an extensive degustation needed something light and fresh, and this terrine hit the mark.

The light, fluffy mousseline was perfectly paired with horseradish and dill cream and a little smoked salmon.

Ingredients

400g boneless, skinless white fish
3 – 4 spring onions
3 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cream

Smoked salmon, dill or thinly sliced chives to garnish.

Method

Line a terrine pan or a loaf tin with baking paper, leaving a couple of inches overhanging on the two long sides of the pan. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).

The fish should be very cold when working with it. Place the fillets in the freezer for 10-15 minutes before chopping them. Roughly chop the fish and put it in a food processor.

Finely slice the green part of the spring onions and set them aside. Roughly chop the white part of the spring onion.

Add the white spring onions to the food processor, along with the salt and pepper and egg white. Blend well until very smooth.

Add the cream and blend again for a few seconds.

Remove the blender blade and gently stir the sliced green spring onions into the mix.

Pour the mix into the terrine pan, press down and smooth the top. Fold the baking paper over the top. Cover the pan with alfoil (kitchen foil) or the pan’s lid if there is one.

Place your terrine pan into a larger pan and add enough simmering water to come about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way up the mould’s sides.

Place the pan on a rack in the middle of the oven. Bake the terrine for 30 or 40 minutes until the centre registers 50°C (120°F) when tested with a thermometer.

Remove the terrine from the oven and let it cool. Top with a piece of cardboard wrapped in alfoil and weigh it down with a load such as canned food. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Remove from the pan, slice and serve cold, with Horseradish and Dill Cream, smoked salmon, trout or grilled white fish.

Like this recipe? Please share, or pin using the image below… thank you!

Condiments

Horseradish and Dill Cream

November 24, 2021 The Captain & the Cook 1 Comment

This simple, delicious creamy sauce is fabulous with my Fish Mousseline Terrine. Also super tasty with other fish dishes, including smoked salmon and trout.

Ingredients

190g of sour cream
35g of prepared horseradish cream
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup of finely chopped fresh dill
Salt and pepper

Method

Blend the first four ingredients in a bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Like this recipe? Please share or pin using the image below.. thank you!

Fish, From the galley, Thailand

Thai Fish Cakes

February 4, 2019 The Captain & the Cook Leave a comment

I have been making these fish cakes for years. They are quick and easy to make, and very tasty when served hot with a nice salad. I have also used this recipe to make finger food, which I can serve cold at picnics or when out sailing (did you know we live on a boat?) and they have been well received. Swap your dipping sauce flavours to add variety and get creative with garnishes. Spriggs of coriander look pretty or add different texture by sprinkling with deep fried basil leaves.

Thai style fish cakes - white fish, rice flour, coriander, egg, fish sauce, red curry paste - easy to ensure gluten-free (choose gluten-free curry paste)

Ingredients
500g firm white fish fillets
1 egg
1 Tablespoon fish sauce
3 Tablespoons white rice flour
½ cup fresh coriander leaves
3 teaspoons red curry paste
4 – 5 green beans, very thinly sliced
2 spring onions, very thinly sliced
oil for cooking

Method
Process fish in a food processor until well minced and then scoop it into a mixing bowl.

Next place the egg, fish sauce, rice flour, coriander leaves, and curry paste into the food processor and process until well combined. Add this mix to the fish along with the beans and the spring onion. Mix well.

Form one heaped tablespoon of fish mixture into small patties (use damp hands). Heat cooking oil in a frypan over medium heat and cook the fishcakes in batches, for a few minutes each side or until golden brown.

Drain on a paper towel and serve with a dipping sauce such as sweet chilli sauce or Nam Jim.

Like this recipe? Save for later by pinning to Pinterest using the image below … thank you!

Fish, Soup

Smoked Fish Chowder

March 18, 2018 The Captain & the Cook 2 Comments

After our first attempt smoking fish in our mak e-shift disposable smoker, I had a craving for smoked fish chowder. I based my chowder on the type of chowder I had made before, using smoked haddock or cod. The smoke perch or barramundi from the previous recipe was just perfect. This chowder had nice chunky bits of fish, potato and a smoky creaminess to die for!

Ingredients

2 Tbs of butter
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely diced
1-2 rashers of streaky bacon, finely diced
1 stick of celery, finely diced
2 Tbs of plain flour
1 cup of white wine
4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cups fish or vegetable stock
2 cups of water
1 tsp crushed peppercorns
400g smoked fish
1 cup of cream
fresh parsley, finely chopped

Method

Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add bacon, onion, garlic and celery. Sauté for a few minutes to soften then add the flour and cook stirring continually for a minute.

Add the white wine and simmer on low heat until it starts to thicken. Then add the stock, water and potatoes. Bring to the boil and then cook uncovered until potatoes are cooked.

Add the smoked fish and cream and bring almost to the boil. Add the black pepper and some chopped parsley. Continue to heat until warmed through and of good consistency.

Serve with another sprinkle of fresh parsley.

OMG! This is perfect after a long sail, or on a cold night. Serve with some crusty bread for a perfect “comfort food” meal.

Bon appetite!

Like this recipe? Please pin and share… thank you!

Fish

Tea Smoked Fish

February 27, 2018 The Captain & the Cook 5 Comments

We love smoked fish and had the desire to make some. We were anchored at Langkawi, and we had a couple of problems to overcome before we could make our own smoked fish. The first was we didn’t have a smoker and the second is we could not find any hickory wood chips (or similar) on the island.

Not usually one to be deterred from doing something just because it is not straightforward, Dwayne set about thinking about how to make an easy smoker. He came up with something we could use on the beach with two aluminium foil trays, some bulldog clips and a rack.

In the meantime, I had decided we could use a tea mixture instead of wood chips as the smoking mix and set about making something that may just add a delicious flavour to our fish.

This is what we came up with…

For the smoker…

2 aluminium foil trays
6 bulldog clips
1 oven rack or trivet
1 empty beer can
white spirits (metho)
sand
(or coals or wood for fire)

Ingredients

Fish

For the brine…

1 cup of water
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup tightly packed brown sugar

For the tea smoke mixture…

1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
2 clove
1 cup of uncooked rice
1/2 cup of tea
1/4 cup sugar

And this is how we smoked our fish…

I made the brine by dissolving the salt and sugar into 1/2 a cup of boiling water. Then I add 1/2 a cup of ice cold water. I then let the brine cool down before I added the fish.

I let the fish soak in the brine for 1/2 hour, then removed it and dried it with paper towels. Then set it in the fridge until we were ready to smoke it.

For the tea smoking mixture, I crushed up the cinnamon stick, star anise and cloves in my mortar and mixed it with the tea, sugar and rice.

When we were organised we went to the beach to set up our smoker.

Once on shore, we placed some of the tea mixture on the bottom of one of the trays then, because my rack doesn’t have legs, we used some old rocks from the beach and placed the rack on those so it was sitting over the tea mix. Next, we placed the fish on the trivet and topped with the other tray. Using the bulldog clips we secured the two trays together. The ‘smoker’ was then placed on top of a couple of bricks allowing space for the burner underneath.

Now we needed a flame. Dwayne, always willing to do one for the team, then skulled a can of beer, proudly producing the much-needed burner equipment. He cut the beer can in half and filled it with dry sand and then poured the white spirits over the sand. He lit this mix-up and placed it under the tray…. we now had our smoker and we could sit back with a refreshing glass of white wine while we let the smoker do its job.

(Alternatively, you can use coals as your heat source or even a wood fire.)

We smoked the fish for about an hour. The cooking time will obviously depend on how hot you have it cooking.

We were extremely happy with the result! Next time I’ll tell you how to make my yummy smoked fish chowder!

Liked this post? Please pin and share on social media… thank you!

Cambodian, Cooking with Local Ingredients, Fish

Fish Amok

July 21, 2017 The Captain & the Cook Leave a comment

A couple of years ago we visited Cambodia. We bought a motorbike and explored Cambodia before crossing the border to Vietnam. In Cambodia, I did my first cooking class. In fact, I did two on the same day. Dwayne and I both did the Cambodian cooking classes and really enjoyed them. One dish we made at both classes was the fish amok.

At each class, they were made slightly different and I have used ideas from both and come up with my own take on Cambodian Fish Amok. I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but Dwayne said it was his favourite! LOL, he says that all the time…. but what surprised me is that he barely remembers the fish amok we had in Cambodia and so he, therefore, believes mine to be so much better than what we had there. Needless to say, I think it turned out pretty good otherwise I would not be passing on my creation to you guys… I would hide it away with all my other failures!

In the class we made baskets, with a banana leaf, to steam the fish in. I didn’t get a chance to buy any banana leaves so I used a couple of ramekins I have on board instead. I also had to use a make-shift steamer because I don’t currently have one. I managed with what I had on board and our lunch, which we ate while anchored off Koh Kradan in Thailand was delicious.

Cambodian Fish Amok

Ingredients (for two)
300g fish
2 stalks of lemongrass, white part only, hard outer lay removed
3 large cloves of garlic
2 small Asian shallots or half a small-medium red onion
5cm x 1cm length of turmeric
3cm x 2cm piece of galangal
2cm x 2cm piece of ginger
1 large double kaffir lime leaf
2 tsp dried chilli flakes
1/2 tsp shrimp paste
200ml coconut cream (reserve 4 tbs)
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp chicken stock powder
pinch of salt
about 50 g of thinly sliced kale (or noni (amok) leaf if you have it)
1/2 tsp of corn flour (or use rice flour like I did if you don’t have it)

Method
Slice fish and set aside in refrigerator until needed.

Thinly slice the kaffir lime leaf add to a mortar and with the pestle grind it until it is well crushed.

Then add to the mortar thinly sliced lemongrass, crushed garlic, finely diced shallots, thinly sliced ginger and galangal. And continue to crush and grind making it into a paste.

Add the chilli flakes and shrimp paste and continue to crush and grind until you have a fine paste.

Mix the paste with the fish, coconut cream, sugar, salt, chicken stock and thinly sliced kale.

Let the mix marinate for 20 minutes and then put it into ramekins or banana leaf baskets.

Steam for 25 min and then remove from steamer.

Gently heat the reserved coconut cream with the cornflour until it thickens a little. Pour a little of the coconut cream on to the fish amok and garnish with thinly sliced red chilli and thinly sliced kaffir leaf.

Serve with rice.

Liked this article? Please “Pin” it and share with your friends!

Cooking Our Catch, Shell Fish, Soup

Seafood Chowder with Goolwa Cockles!

Image January 21, 2016 The Captain & the Cook 5 Comments

Goolwa cockles otherwise known as pipis are bivalve molluscs, similar in their two shelled structure to a clam, or mussel. A popular place to gather pipis is Goolwa Beach in South Australia. They are not only, and exclusively, at this beach, but on a nice summer day, Goolwa beach will often be busy with swimmers, surfers and people gathering cockles. Some people use them as bait but many others are now cooking them and making delicious meals of steamed cockles in white wine and garlic, rich marinara sauces or, like me, putting them in a creamy seafood chowder for that little touch of something different.

We are currently visiting family and friends in Adelaide, South Australia, and really, what is more Australian, more South Australian and more Goolwanian than a day at the beach gathering cockles…. not much. Dwayne, myself and two of our boys were joined by friend’s Sarah and Phil May, and their children plus other friends and family.

While I found it difficult to get in the cold water like the rest of them, surfing and boogie boarding, I did manage to get in deep enough to start hunting for cockles. Collecting the cockles is really very simple. You simply dig your feet into the sand and as the water washes around your feet and the wave ebbs, the sand is washed away and your feet sink deeper into the sand. When you feel the cockles beneath your feet and bend down to scoop them up. Put the cockles into a bucket or esky (i.e. chilly bin, cooler, icebox). The cockles then need to be encouraged to purge or spit out all their sand. The purging occurs when the cockles are kept in the bucket or an esky with fresh clean seawater for at least 24 hours. This is easy if you are near a beach and can replenish and freshen the seawater regularly.

So once my cockles were purged I set about making a creamy seafood chowder which I then served in a toasted bread roll bowl. Yummo!

This is what you will need…

50g butter
2 slices bacon, finely chopped
1 large leek, finely sliced
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/3 cup plain flour
4 cups fish stock
500g white fish, chopped into cubes
400g prawns, peeled
1kg Goolwa cockles
250ml cream
1/3 cup parsley, chopped
Salt and cracked black pepper
4-6 bread rolls

And this is what I did…

To make a bread roll serving bowl I sliced the top off each bread roll and set it aside to use as the lid. Then I dug out the inner soft bread and baked the rolls, and their lids, in a moderate oven until they are hard & crispy (about 10-15 minutes).

Crispy toasted bread roll… a perfect bowl and accompaniment for this chowder!

For the chowder…

I heated the butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Added the bacon and cooked over low heat for about 5 minutes. I then added onion, carrot, celery, potato and cooked for 5 minutes or until softened (do not brown).

Next, I added the flour and cooked for one minute. Then I gradually added the fish stock and cooked while stirring for about five minutes or until mixture boiled and thickened. I let it simmer over low heat for another five minutes uncovered while I stirred occasionally.

I then added the seafood and simmered again while stirring occasionally. I added the cream and simmered for another 5 minutes without letting it boil. I then seasoned with salt and cracked pepper and tossed in a handful of chopped parsley.

I ladled the soup between the toasted rolls and served immediately.

Note: I have made this recipe with fish and lobster that we caught while camping at Canunda National Park, and I have used fish, scallops and squid that we caught at Stansbury while anchored there. At home, I have used a marinara mix or a mix of prawns, fish, scallops and mussels. Any mix of seafood is great in this chowder.

When the “bowl” starts to fall apart.

Mum loves this chowder!

So good… and so easy!

Pin this recipe so you never lose it!

Cephalopod, Cooking with Local Ingredients, Crustacean, Fish, Indonesia

Dwayne’s Chilli Seafood

June 24, 2015 The Captain & the Cook 1 Comment

While cruising Indonesia we were lucky enough to visit a tiny fishing village on the island of Panebangan. The people were exceptionally friendly and welcomed us with huge smiles and a large bunch of bananas! It was at this village, the following morning, that we were invited onto a fishing boat for breakfast. Dwayne watched how the fisherman made chilli fish and it has since become Dwayne’s signature dish! This is great for when I don’t feel like cooking…. i.e. “I’d really love your chilli fish for dinner tonight Dwayne!”

Dwayne has made this a couple of times for dinner. Once he used fish and squid and the other time he used crayfish.

It’s simple and tasty. This is how he does it…

fresh chillies, chopped
fresh garlic, chopped
asian shallots, chopped
salt

Blend all the above ingredients with the mortar and pestle.

Add oil to a pan and heat.
Add the spice mix, fry until fragrant.
Add the seafood (fish or what ever you want) and fry it for a while.
Then add some water and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasional.
Season with salt as needed.

Serve with steamed rice.

For the full story of Panebangan check out “Karamata and Surrounding Islands“

Guess what we are having for dinner tonight!

Cooking Our Catch, Marlin

Marlin fettuccine with Cherry Tomatoes and Capers

November 30, 2014 The Captain & the Cook Leave a comment

This pasta meal was another simple way we enjoyed the marlin we had ample supply of.

While the fettuccini was cooking, I simply sautéed baby capers, finely diced capsicum and garlic in olive oil. After a few minutes I added halved cherry tomatoes and the diced marlin and cooked for a further few minutes until the fish was cooked through but not over done.

To serve I topped the fettuccine with the marlin and tomato, garnished with sliced spring onions and drizzled with a little olive oil. Simple and delicious.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Like this recipe? Please pin and share… thank you!

Share this:

Like this:

This is what we came up with…

And this is how we smoked our fish…

Liked this post? Please pin and share on social media… thank you!

Share this:

Like this:

Liked this article? Please “Pin” it and share with your friends!

Share this:

Like this:

Pin this recipe so you never lose it!

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: