Fish and Watercress Hotpot

• 8 dried shiitake mushrooms
• Some peeled daikon (recipe says ‘1 small daikon’ but I’ve never seen such a thing)
• 1 small carrot, peeled
• 3cm ginger, thinly sliced
• 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
• 80ml soy sauce
• 1 tbps sugar
• 300g firm tofu, cubed
• 1 red pepper, thick strips
• 500g white fish, cut into bite-sized chunks
• 100g watercress sprigs

(rice to serve)

  

Soak mushrooms, drain and slice, discarding stem. Cut daikon and carrot in half lengthways, and thinly slice.

  

Combine ginger, garlic, soy sauce and sugar in a large saucepan with 1.25l water. Add mushroom, daikon and carrot and bring to boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 10 minutes. Add tofu, pepper, and fish and simmer for another 10 minutes. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

  

Spoon into four warm bowls and add the watercress. Serve at once with steamed rice.

Citrus Steamed Barramundi with Potatoes

A good dish, and a simple – with the one caveat that you really, REALLY must season the potatoes very well. They absorb a terrific amount and really need it.

Original recipe says foil parcel lined with greaseproof paper – I assume this is so that the potatoes won’t stick to the foil but really we found it was fine just with the foil. First, peel, slice and boil some potatoes so that they’re reasonably tender. Then prep and grease the foil the dish will be baking in. Layer the potatoes on the bottom (seasoning very well). Then lay your barramundi fillets (or whatever white fish you have to hand) on top, and put in some lemon balm, or mint, or even basil - or a combo – knock yourself out. Top with segmented (peeled) citrus slices – orange and lemon in this case I think. Finally, add your beans (we believe these just went on raw, and cooked very nicely in there). Wrap up nicely and cook in manner of your choice – oven or barbie.  Dish out at table. You can also do these in individual portions, of course. We went for family style.

Ocean Jackets with Random Linguini

Ocean Jackets are the most extrodinary looking creatures when they've got their heads on, but they're inevitably sold without heads or insides here are are also (very pleasantly) incredibly cheap. I believe that's because they're local and available year round. They've got fantastic meat, which I would personally value far above boring bream or much more expensive stuff like that. Anyway, they work very nicely foil-wrapped on the barbie, just slashed across, seasoned and sauced in chopped dill with a dash of white wine for company. Nothing else to it.

• Get your white fish, season it and slash it as above mentioned with finely chopped dill and parcel it up with some moisture to keep it going on its 15 minutes or so on the barbie / oven.
• Get some linguini going, you can add stuff like diced tomaties and some basil and olive oil once they're cooked to liven them up a little.
• I seved these with some snow peas, but you can do exactly what you want with them.
• Enjoy.

Glazed 'monkfish' skewers with udon noodles

Well I've never seen monkfish on sale here so really any firm white fish. On special offer today at our local was hake, so we used that and may I say they were delicious. I didn't even bother to cube them, just sort of cut and trimmed the fillets into equal-thickness slabs about half a fillet wide (important to get them the same thickness when you're barbecuing or they don't cook properly), and skewered them. Saves them falling apart later. Anyway once you've laid hands on your 'firm white fish' what you've got to do is:

• Skewer the fish (as above mentioned) nicely for the barby / grill.
• Make a basting sauce of 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp tomato puree, Juice of 1 lime, 1 tbsps clear honey, 1/2 tsp (teaspoon, just in case you get carried away with the tablespoons, it's powerful stuff) nam pla, 1/2 tsp chili oil (actually I didn't have any and just dropped in a little Tabasco, works a treat), and some fresh chopped coriander - as much as you like I guess. Lather it onto the fish and grill at an appropriate time.
• For the noodles, boil/steam up your udon noodles with pak choi added appropriately (the noodles will generally cook in about 10 minutes, the pak choi in about 5). Serve the fish atop finished noodles.

n.b. There was a lot of the marinade left when we did this, so I gave it a good little sizzling in a pan and poured on top. Well worth it, lots of flavour there.

This was a good little dish, very tasty but mild and I think some interesting textures there, a little different and quite appealing to a wide palate, I'd imagine. We'll certainly be having it again!