fresh mackerel cooked in pomegranate, lime juice & tequila with a crunchy fennel salad

This is an unusual way to cook and serve fish. It’s so tasty. If you’re interested in cooking then you should challenge your taste buds — and this is just the recipe to do it with! The finished dish is only as good as the fish that you start off with, so get yourself some nice fresh mackerel and wow your friends at your next dinner party.

SERVES 4

You can make this on the morning of your dinner party. Heat the vinegar with 1 heaped teaspoon of sea salt in a pan until lukewarm. Remove from the heat. Place the 2 mackerel fillets in a snug-fitting dish and cover with the vinegar. Allow to sit all day (for around 7 hours), then drain and put to one side while you make the dressing. Juice 2 of the pomegranates by squeezing them over a sieve into a bowl, or use a lemon juicer, but be careful not to wear anything white when you juice them — when I do it I always cover myself in juice and I always get a rollicking from Jools. Squeeze in the lime juice, then add the tequila, sesame oil and ginger to the pomegranate juice.

Place the fillets in half the pomegranate juice mixture and allow them to sit for 30 minutes, making sure both sides of the fish are covered. This will slowly ‘cold cook’ the mackerel and will give it a really fantastic flavour.

While the fish is ‘cooking’, finely slice the fennel and pick out the pomegranate seeds from the remaining pomegranate. You may think that this is a bit of a palaver but in fact all you have to do is break the pomegranate up and dislodge all the little capsules — it’s quite easy and good fun. Divide the fennel between 4 plates. Drain the mackerel and pat dry, then slice it up across the fillets as thin as you like. Place on top of the fennel, then sprinkle with the pomegranate seeds and fennel tops and grate over the lime zest. Carefully drizzle over some of the remaining pomegranate juice mixture and a little extra virgin olive oil to finish.

SEGMENTING CITRUS FRUIT

quick-cooked white fish with blood orange, lemongrass & sesame seeds

This recipe is really flexible for all kinds of finely sliced white fish, such as brill, halibut, bass or turbot. Even red mullet is great. To get fine slices, use a really sharp carving knife. And it’s such a simple fresh starter for any meal. This requires the freshest fish you can get your hands on. See page 14 for advice on shopping for fresh fish.

SERVES 4

Place the fish fillet in front of you and, slicing away from you, cut it into the thinnest slices you can. A little trick we use in the restaurant to get the slices even thinner is to place them between 2 bits of clingfilm and bat them out very lightly with something flat until they are nice and thin. Divide the fish slices between 4 plates, in the centre of each. To make it look a bit more rustic, try not to lay the fish flat on the plate — you can let some curl up and you can leave gaps in the middle to trap little pools of dressing.

To make the dressing, remove the tough outer part of the lemongrass, discard it and very finely slice across the pale tender ends. Put in a bowl with the juice of the 2 halved blood oranges, the ginger, a little pinch of sea salt and 4 tablespoons of oil. Finely grate the lime zest and put to one side, then squeeze over the lime juice. At this point you will need to taste — you want it to be nice and acidic, but if the limes are very sour you can mellow it slightly with a little more oil, which won’t hurt at all.

Finely slice the spring onions at an angle and mix with the orange segments and the sliced fennel. Lay this over the middle of the fish. Divide the tangy dressing between the 4 plates, making sure you drizzle it over the fish. Sprinkle with the lime zest and scatter over the herby fennel tops and sesame seeds. Serve straight away.

‘it’s great that world cuisine can be found in one city’
‘it’s great that world cuisine can be found in one city’

citrus-seared tuna with crispy noodles, herbs & chilli

Tuna is a wonderfully rich, slightly fatty fish. Using grapefruit to sear it gives a really nice contrast of flavours. It’s quick to prepare and it will definitely be a talking point when you have guests round for dinner. The noodles are a great part of this dish, but can be an optional extra — whatever you prefer.

SERVES 4

Squeeze the grapefruit juice into a sandwich bag, then add the fish sauce and tuna. Tie up the bag, squeezing out most of the air so the tuna is completely covered in the liquid. Leave for 40 minutes, or until the outside of the tuna is pale and ‘cooked’. Now carefully pour the liquid from the bag into a bowl, pat the tuna dry and put to one side.

For the dressing, mix 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, 6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the chillies into the reserved liquid. Use as much chilli as you like, and season to taste with sea salt and black pepper. Tear off a good handful of coriander and mint from the bunches and put aside for garnish later. Pick and finely chop the remaining herbs and really pat these around the tuna to cover it. Wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge until needed.

Cook the noodles in boiling salted water for 1 minute, or until they’re slightly flexible, then drain and allow to steam dry and cool. Add a little olive oil to a hot non-stick pan, add the noodles and leave them until they are nice and crisp on one side. Now flip them over and do the same on the other side — it doesn’t matter if some stick to the pan, just scrape them up and turn them over. Divide the crispy noodles between 4 plates. Slice the tuna ½cm thick — in Japan it’s a sign of generosity to have nice thick slices of tuna, but I like them a little thinner as they are more delicate in the mouth.

Place the tuna on the noodles, sprinkle over the reserved herbs and spring onions, then drizzle over 2 spoonfuls of the dressing. Before your eyes you will see the cut sides of the slices of fish begin to change colour and ‘cook’. Serve straight away.

ceviche of raw crayfish with kaffir lime leaves, chilli & ginger

This is a great one and quite unexpected. I had something similar in a Spanish/Latino/Peruvian-style restaurant in New York where they specialize in ceviches. This is a good recipe to do as a canapé or pre-starter — you can whack some in the middle of the table and everyone can help themselves. It will really get the taste buds going for dinner. You can buy fresh lime leaves and banana leaves in Asian grocery shops and some supermarkets.

SERVES 4

Bash the lime leaves in a pestle and mortar with a pinch of sea salt (or use a metal bowl and the end of a rolling pin). Really bruise and break them up. Put them in a sandwich bag with the chillies, ginger, lime juice, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil and 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if needed.

Cut the crayfish or prawns down the back of each shell and open them up, pull out the vein and remove the head. This will help to make the fish look nicer but, more importantly, it makes the surface area bigger so that the acid can cook them more quickly. Add the crayfish to the dressing in the sandwich bag, squeezing out all the air before tying it up and leaving it for half an hour.

Divide the crayfish between 4 bowls and drizzle the dressing over each bowl, or you can use 4 small banana leaves if you want to. Hold them over a gas flame if you like so they become a deep green colour, and they’ll smell fantastic. I normally slice the leaves up and squash them into a bowl with 3 crayfish on top so that all the lovely juices will be caught in the leaves and you can slurp them up.

‘lovely live scallops’
‘lovely live scallops’

scallop spoons

This is a great way to turn heads at a dinner party. Something as silky and delicate as a scallop is fantastic flavoured like this and served in a crunchy leaf.

SERVES 4

By all means, get all your ingredients ready and prepared but don’t mix together until the last minute or it won’t taste as fresh. Finely dice the scallops and mango, then place in a bowl. Add the spring onion and basil leaves and stir in, then squeeze in the lime juice and add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and the chilli and ginger. Taste and check the seasoning. To serve, I love to divide little bite-sized portions of the mixture into small, crunchy iceberg lettuce leaves. Try and use the leaves from the centre of the lettuce as they are cup-shaped and will hold the filling really well.

Try this: Use gem lettuce or radicchio leaves or serve on dessert spoons on a plate of cracked ice.

quick marinated red mullet with crispy ginger, shallots & a citrus dressing

Red mullet is a great fish to cook in this way. For me, the reason this dish works is that you’ve got the silky softness of the fish contrasting with the almost biscuity crispness of the ginger and the sweetness of the shallots. Light tasty cooking.

SERVES 4

Lightly season the fish on both sides with sea salt and black pepper and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to draw out any excess moisture. Put 3cm of sunflower oil into a small, deep pan and place on a high heat. Place one slice of ginger in the oil. When it floats to the top and is sizzling nicely, the oil will be at the right temperature — about 180°C. Once ready, add all the ginger to the pan and fry on a medium-high heat until golden and crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon to kitchen paper to drain. Do the same with the shallots, removing when golden — you may want to work in batches. Divide the cress between 4 plates. Remove the fish from the fridge and pat dry, then thinly slice it across the fillet and divide between the plates, draping it over the cress. Make sure it’s not all flat and boring-looking. Put the soy sauce, coriander leaves and 6 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a bowl. Finely grate in the lime zest, squeeze over the juice and mix well. Drizzle this over the fish, sprinkle over the ginger and shallots and tuck in.

Try this: If you want to make this look more delicate and cheffy, use a 15cm pastry cutter as a frame or guide when placing the cress and fish on the plates. It makes it all look a bit more professional.

Or this: You can actually use most fresh fish for this, so if you can’t get red mullet try red snapper or whatever you fancy.

pomegranate & gin cocktail

This cocktail is great served at the end of a meal. The first time I had it was in a bar called MG Garage in Sydney, where they brought out frozen glasses, frozen gin and a tray full of pomegranates at the end of our meal. Since then I’ve used it as a good trick after a meal to clean the palate and relaunch the conversation. Buy a quality bottle of gin — you normally get what you pay for. Pop it in the freezer for an hour, along with a shot glass for each of your guests.

Peel some pomegranates and remove the beautiful deep purple-red capsules. At the end of the meal, simply fill the shot glass with pomegranate seeds, pour in some iced gin and shoot the cocktail back. Don’t swallow until you’ve crunched the pomegranate seeds and got a real burst of fragrance and flavour in your mouth, then swallow the lot and continue the conversation … or have another one.

pomegranate & gin cocktail
pomegranate & gin cocktail
‘after a couple of drinks anyone can be a barman’
‘after a couple of drinks anyone can be a barman’