Jamie said cook... fish

Hwsgo cooked for me again. I'm not sure if he's being nice about the damaged wrist, or just terrified at the thought of my cooking, but once again he scurried round my kitchen making delicious things out of everyday green and vegetal stuff that usually just sits in the fridge and glowers at me for a week (what can I say: I've been busy working til late every day).

So today's dinner was stuffed, rolled and baked sardines with pine nuts and fresh herbs. Or rather, it was stuffed, rolled etc mackeral with etc etc because my local supermarkets have still not got their act together on the fish front. Again. So having looked at the beautifully displayed set of less-than-appetising swimmers in Sainsbury's (which is probably as good a metaphor for style over substance as we'll get this week), we trotted off into the place whose name we omit. Which to be fair has a good fish counter, with non-sunken eyes and a lady on it who was both civil and helpful about what we could substitute because they (and she was genuinely apologetic about this) didn't have any fresh sardines. So four little mackeral heavier, we went home to cook. Or rather Hwsgo went home to cook: I went home to watch the master at work and look helpful in the hope of being allowed to wield a big knife at something soft.

Hswgo modifed the recipe a bit. He'd been baking some glowering tomatoes that had been rapidly reaching the too-soft-to-fight state of their existence, so he used some of these, in the recipe, removing their skins because they were a bit too hot to handle. He also left out the garlic (I think) and the fennel (definitely), and toasted some fresh bread because its breadcrumbs were too soft. One cooking note though: since the mixture goes underneath the fish, it makes sense to prepare the mix before the fish instead of the order (fish first) suggested in the book.

Anyways, this all produced a most excellent lunch, evidenced perhaps by the complete lack of leftovers afterwards (and the lethargy with which we crawled from the table to the sofa to doze). Hwsgo told me a while ago about a Sicilian dish that he'd like to try sometime, and fromt he comments he made about this, it sounds like the Jamie fish recipe (modified) was very similar to it. It was, of course, delicious, and I suspect that Hwsgo was very wise in holding on the fennel: as it was, it was a perfectly balanced set of ingredients having a very civilised Sunday lunch together.