SJ Cuthbertson

I’ve been left at home alone this week, so have been approaching cooking a bit differently to normal: more advance planning; simpler, quicker recipes; slightly more pizza and takeaway than I would normally wish. It being Good Friday night, I took the opportunity to cook something that is rarely possible due to my housemates’ taste preferences: a nice bit of fish.

One think I love about where I live is the proximity to a big supermarket with a decent-sized discount refrigerator section! Off I nipped, and just my luck – there was a perfect piece of monkfish, just right for one, going for about £2. (Monkfish is never a cheap fish – this was reduced from about £5 – but you definitely get what you pay for.)

I got the basic idea from here, but used what I had anyway. This meant lime instead of lemon, and sweet pointed red peppers, raw, instead of roasted bell peppers – these worked really, really well and I’d recommend that variation. I didn’t have any thyme, but there was some fresh basil (one of my fave herbs) from the discount shelves as well: I put that between the pepper and the fish, as well as some between the pepper and the pan. It all ended up in the sauce, as I’d had to slice the peppers longways to get the seeds out and fish in. Turns out that monkfish expands and curls up when cooked, so this pushed the peppers open and everything went everywhere. This was not a problem tastewise!

The recipe is essentially steaming the fish in wine, instead of in water vapour – I’d recommend the general approach for monkfish again, as it came out very tender, moist and melty. Boiling would have removed the taste, grilling or baking would have dried it out too much. I’ve only ever had monkfish fried before, but prefer this. I would advise sticking closely to the measure of wine – I just did “a glug” which turned out to be rather more sauce than I needed. The monkfish loses some juices in cooking, so you really only need a small amount of wine for one serving, if you add some double cream to the sauce. Do pick a decent white – it’ll go really well alongside the meal!

For reasons of time and hunger, I just did oven chips and a pre-packaged salad along with the fish and peppers. The sauce went really well on the chips, and – surprisingly – was also really great to moisten the salad leaves. I ended up mopping up sauce with spinach and chard – mmmm.

Lastly, you might need to give the fish longer than 12 minutes – mine was still only lukewarm in the centre after that time. Possibly I ended up overcooking it, but it didn’t feel/taste bad for that, and I wanted to play it safe with a piece that was on its use-by date!