friederike's Reviews
4 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 4Sort by: Title 
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North Atlantic Seafood: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes
By Alan Davidson
Ten Speed Press - 2003
Cullen Skink : page 439
DH walked into the kitchen tonight, looked into the pots and said, 'oh, liquid fish pie!' - and to be honest, that was spot on, it really was liquid fish pie. Unfortunately, due to the smoked fish it was also very/too salty despite me not having added any salt.
As I couldn't get any Finnian haddock, I used 300 g smoked herring - the alternatives would have been smoked mackerel, eel, trout or salmon. I wonder if Finnian haddock might be less salty, or perhaps a 'medium-sized' haddock is less than the herring I used. Also, the herring didn't have any noteworthy bones to speak of, so I just left the fish in the broth, flaked it as much as I could, and then added the milk without straining the bones and onion out of broth. I didn't cook the broth for an hour either; as I used a shallow but very wide pan, any liquid would have evaporated within 20 min anyway.
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Eliza Acton's Baked Soles : page 458
Not a great success, unfortunately. The nutmeg and macis overpowered any nice taste the sole might have had, except for that strange aftertaste that seemed to come from the fish. Hmm.
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Mackerel with Rhubarb : page 473
I really enjoyed this dish! Part of my pleasure of course came because someone had taken the effort and cooked and plated this dish, and it looked really nice! But that left aside: It was an unusual combination (for me, at least), it looked beautiful and was very delicious.
The dish was actually quite simple to prepare. The sauce is a bit prone to dry out, but that can be solved by adding water. The recipe recommends to place the filling on the mackerel and roll it up. Actually, we found it worked best when the mackerel was rolled up first, placed against the side of a baking dish, and then filled.
We did talk a while about the sauce and the filling, whether these were too sour, or too strong for the mackerel. Personally, I liked it the way it was (following the recipe instructions). The sauce was not too sweet for a main dish, but appeared to be sweet, at least sweeter than the rest. The filling was slightly sour (very little), but that was necessary to bump up the oily mackerel, in my opinion. And the flavour of the onion in the filling was just brilliant! All in all, the other flavours were quite strong, making it difficult for the mackerel to stand up against them, but that may have been for the better, as I don't think I would have managed to eat it otherwise, never much how much I enjoy mackerel (and fish!). DB probably would have added some sugar to the sauce, and would have prepared the filling without rhubarb, thereby eliminating the slighty sour flavour.
We had potato gratin and green beans as side dishes, but would recommend something different for the vegetable; but what? Perhaps fennel.
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Very delicious, healthy, and really simple, the ideal thing to eat for a quick snack. Or breakfast.
Make sure you have enough shrimps (I didn't really think about it and just bought one pack for the two of us, for two slices each - which is, err, 25g instead of 100g per slice). You can add a few drops of lemon to the shrimp, to bring out that shrimpy taste. And enjoy!
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