A recipe for scallops on toast

You don’t usually find the words scallop and cheap in the same sentence. But here is a low-cost recipe using the luxury shellfish. The contrast between the crunchy toast and the tender scallop is very good indeed. You need one big or two small scallops per person. Mine was large and cost £1.50. 

Scallops on toast (serves 1)

1 slice bread
1 scallop

Cooking oil (I used rapeseed)
Butter

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 squeeze chilli puree or a small chilli, chopped
Lemon

Put the toast down.

If the scallop is large (over 2 cm high) cut it in half across so it cooks more quickly. Put some oil in a pan. When it's really hot, add the scallop and its coral. Cook for 1 minute on each side. 

Put the cooked scallop on the toast. Put the butter in the pan, add the garlic and chilli and cook for 30 seconds. Pour over the scallop, squeeze over some lemon juice, and eat with a green salad.

A squid on the beach

I went to the beach in Brighton today. It was sunny and very breezy. People sat defiant on the pebbles looking out to sea like ships’ figureheads.

I went to Sea Haze, a fishmonger's on the beach. It’s housed in an arch of the promenade above and, after the blustery seafront, it felt cool and cloister-like inside.

There was a neat selection of locally caught fish - stripy mackerel, pink gurnard and a-piano-just-fell-on-my-face plaice, but I went for a squid. I had some chorizo I wanted to introduce it to.

Back at home, I made a fry-up of chorizo, courgette, cooked potato, squid and spinach. It wasn’t pretty, but it was very tasty, the earthiness of the chorizo contrasting nicely with the otherworldliness of the squid. 

A recipe for mackerel with orange and lemon zest

I bought some Scottish mackerel and  Seville oranges this week. I hadn't planned to use them together, but then I wondered whether the oily fish and the tart citrus might get on quite well. I grated Seville zest into some oil, fried the fish in it, and it proved very tasty. However, as the Seville season is so short, I thought I’d better work out how to make the dish using normal oranges and lemons. This is the result...

Mackerel and citrus zest (serves 1)

It’s important to cook the fish and zest gently in very little oil. Otherwise you will make a mess of oily fish and burnt zest.

1 mackerel fillet

1 small garlic clove

1 orange, zest only

1 lemon, zest only

2 tsp rapeseed oil

If the orange and lemon are waxed, scrub them in hot water first. Chop the garlic and debone the mackerel fillet.

Put a frying pan over a low-medium heat and add the oil. Once the oil is gently sizzling, add the mackerel skin side down, and cook gently for three to five minutes until it’s cooked almost all the way through. Add the garlic, orange and lemon zest to the pan and wait until they start to sizzle. 

Turn the fish over so that it's on top of the garlic, orange and lemon zest, and cook for a minute or so until the mackerel's done (i.e. until it’s white all the way through). You can add a little squeeze of lemon or orange juice if you like. Eat.

Sussex credentials: Non-existent. Oranges and lemons are seasonal, coming from the Mediterranean at this time of year. Mackerel will be back in season down here in the Spring.

The first mackerel of spring

The swallows have been back for almost a month now. They arrived only a few days after the wind started blowing from the south. They’ve been busy renovating their nest in the garage and I love the way they make clicks as part of their call. They are like airborne dolphins swooping around the house, gobbling insects on the wing.

I’ve had to wait a little longer for the arrival of another spring migrant – the mackerel. They tend to arrive in the Channel in mid-April but it was only last week that they showed up on the slab at Terry's, the fishmongers in Lewes.



Two Sussex mackerel

Mackerel

Several cookery writers (Nigel Slater, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall..) say mackerel is one of their favourite fish, and I used to be slightly ashamed that I didn’t feel the same way. Grilled mackerel, with nothing added, just doesn’t do it for me. However, now I’ve been experimenting with the fish a little I can see why it is so well loved: it works really well with strong flavours.

I cooked these two using the recipe in Slater's The Kitchen Diaries for mackerel with cumin and lemon. The contrast between the earthy cumin, the sour lemon and the oily mackerel made for a very tasty supper. Another simple way to cook a whole mackerel is to slash it, smear it with harissa, and grill it for a few minutes on each side.



One cooked Sussex mackerel

Did you read about mackerel being taken off the list of sustainable fish? Apparently, they’ve been over-fishing them off Iceland. The Marine Conservation Society, a charity which monitors this sort of thing, says you should make sure your mackerel is caught locally using traditional fishing methods.

Sussex credentials: Very good. These mackerel were caught off the Sussex coast.

Availability: You can buy locally-caught mackerel from Terry's in Lewes.

Scallops from Rye Bay

There’s not much in season at the moment - the odd sprig of purple-sprouting broccoli, some curly kale - so thank goodness for scallops which are best harvested at this time of year. Rye, in East Sussex, runs a Scallop Week in February and although I didn’t make it for the festival, I went over there last week to taste the moveable mollusc myself (this is their excellent video of a scallop swimming)...

I don’t know if you saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s programme about scallop dredging a few weeks ago? His main message was that we should only buy diver-caught scallops. Rye’s scallops are dredged, but there are sensible restrictions in place to protect other sealife. If anyone knows where you can buy diver-caught scallops in Sussex, please let me know.



Rye Bay scallops ready to be eaten

Rye Bay scallops

I bought these scallops from Market Fisheries on the bridge heading out of Rye towards Camber, and I fried them with some garlic for a few minutes on each side. They were so white, tender and otherworldly that if you’d told me they were unicorn testicles I might have believed you. Top notch Sussex seafood.

Sussex credentials: Very good. They are harvested in Rye Bay.

Availability: Rye fish shops including Market Fisheries and Botterells.