Salmon with a miso, maple syrup and soy sauce glaze

This recipe emerged by accident when I had a beautiful salmon fillet and did not want to cook like I mostly do, with olive oil and herbs. Initially I wanted to marinate it in miso, soy sauce and honey, but we had no honey inhouse. I grabbed maple syrup instead and the other ingredients were added in the process. The result was delicious and it may well become my new favourite way to cook salmon, although next time I will let it marinate for a few hours longer.

Ingredients:
Salmon - 500gr in this case
2 teaspoons of light miso paste
4 teaspoons of lime juice
2 teaspoons of maple syrup - or more if you're into sweet, caramelly tastes
1-2 teaspoons of regular soy sauce - be careful here as the miso is quite salty
sesame and chives for garnish - supposed to serve a mere decorational puspose but proved to fit in very well tastewise
You can always adjust the marinade to you personal liking, by tasting it!

Blend all liquid ingredients and the miso together and pour half of the marinade over the salmon pieces. Leave to stand in the fridge for at least 4-5 hours. Put on the grill function in your oven and heat it up onto 200C. Place the fish onto a baking tray and cook under the grill for 7-12 minutes, depending on how thick the fillets are. Smear the fish generously with the marinade you set aside for 2-3 times.
Serve with rice or any other side.

Saltimbocca style cod

I sometimes have a hard time deciding how to cook fish fillets and most often I do it the most simple way, I panfry them with olive oil and herbs. But this time I decided to do something different and since I had a few slices of prosciutto in the fridge saltimbocca it was. Of course, the original saltimbocca is made from veal, but why not experiment a bit?



fish fillets - I had cod and next time I will use a firmer fish
enough thin prosciutto slices to cover all fillets
sage
salt, pepper
olive oil

Season the fish with salt and pepper, be careful with the salt as the prosciutto is salty. Cover each piece of fish with a suitable slice of prosciutto and put 1 sage leaf onto each piece. Secure the sage and the prosciutto with toothpicks. Heat up a pan with dome olive oil and pan fry the fish for 1-2 minutes on every side, depending on how thick the fillets are, mine were quite thin. Serve! I served the fish with some buttered rice which I mixed with sauteed baby spinach.

Salmon with garden cress sauce

Garden cress is full of vitamins but due to a very spicy taste isn’t liked by some people. It used to be called “the poor man’s pepper”. This was because it was used as a substitute for pepper by those who couldn’t afford the expensive spices that were shipped in from Asia. Today, garden cress is mainly eaten as a part of salads or in sandwiches, but sometimes it is used to cook soups and main dishes. Cress gives any dish a very distinct, peppery flavor but heating it lessens this effect and gives the final dish a very pleasant tanginess.

Garden cress, or Řeřicha in Czech, is sold in little boxes that contain shoots of the plant. What you do is cut off the green parts and use them. If you don’t throw away the box with the leftover shoots new plants may grow from them, but that doesn’t always happen. I guess it depends on the quality of the shoots or on how long they have been standing around.

Ingredients:
2 x 250gr salmon fillets
1 tablespoon of chopped tarragon
2 heaped tablespoons of garden cress
3 tablespoons of sour cream
1 small clove of garlic – thinly sliced
150 ml of white wine
Salt, pepper
Oil

Heat up a pan with some oil and fry the seasoned salmon for 2-3 minutes on every side, depending on how thick the fillets are. Remove the fish from the pan a put onto a heated plate. In the same pan sauté the garlic for a minute and add the wine. Let evaporate until there is about 1 tablespoon of liquid left. Add the sour cream, cress and tarragon. Cook until sauce thickens, season with salt and pepper. Pour sauce over the fish and serve!

Fish baked in salt

This is a great way to prepare fish. It's fast, easy, healthy and most of all tasty!

Ingredients:

Whole fish that is as fresh as possible - I had 2 seabasses about 400gr each

1kg of fine salt

300gr coarse salt

2 egg whites

lemon and herbs are optional - I used rosemary, estragon and oregano

Mix the salt with the egg whites. Spread half of the salt mixture on a baking tray. Put 1-2 slices of lemon and some herbs inside the fish. Cover with the remaining salt and form something like a sarcophag us for each fish.

Put into preheated oven and bake at 225C for 20-25 minutes. When you take your fish out the oven they will look like this.

Hit the salt layer softly with a hammer or smth else a couple of times until it breaks into several bigger pieces.

Clear off the upper layer of salt and the skin. Carefully remove the flesh and serve with a little bit of olive oil and a salad.

Gravad lax

I make my own gravad lax at home. The ones that are sold are either full of preservatives or very expensive. Marinated salmon takes 5 miutes to make and can be eaten in 24-48 hours. Why buy those prepackaged ones then??

Ingredients:

1 kg of salmon fillet - I proportionally reduce ingredients if there is less salmon

4 tablespoons of sea salt

2.5-3 tablespoons of powdered sugar

2 tablespoons of freshly ground black or white pepper

4 tablespoons of dill

Preparation:

Cut the fillets in portions if needed. Mix salt, sugar, pepper and dill. Coat the fish with this mixture on the side where there is no skin. Put the fish skin down on a plate, cover with alfoil or plastic foil and refrigirate. You should turn the fish around once if the fillet is very thick. After 24-48 (it depends on how well marinated you want the fish to be, I like it slightly "raw") take the fish out of the fridge and cut it into thin slices. Use a very sharp knife!

You can also freeze the marinated salmon and defrost it in the fridge.

This time I served the gravlax as a tartar on a crispy potatoe cake with sour cream.

Tolstolobik - Толстолобик

Tolstolobik (or flat head carp) is a forgotten and neglected fish, which is a big shame in my opinion. This fish has 3 huge priorities -

1. It's cheap

2. It's tasty

3. It has the highest content of Omega-3 fatty acids of all fresh water fish common in Europe.

I sometimes buy it when I see fillets or steaks sold, I don't buy whole fishes because they tend to be very big. Tolstolobik doesn't have this "muddy" flavour and smell that turns many people away from carp but is somewhat dryer, because it contains much less fat. Its meat is delicate and I wouldn't recommend grilling or frying it, it tends to fall apart.

I found this recipe at http://manek.bloguje.cz/, which is a great Czech resource on cooking local and imported fish. Thanx for sharing the recipe Mr. Mánek! I amended the recipe a bit because I used fillets instead of steaks and there was more fish than in the original recipe.

Ingredients:

1,2 kg of tolstolobik fillets or steaks

5 tablespoons of parsley

4 tablespoons of mustard - I used Maille dijon mustard (my faourite mustard)

2 cloves of garlic - czech garlic I mean, if you use chinese garlic you will need at least 5 cloves

5 tablespoons of breadcrumbs

some butter - about 100gr cut into very thin slices

salt, pepper

Preparation:

Season the fish with salt and minced garlic and let stand (1-3 hours). Place the parsley and breadcrumbs into a a foodprocessor and mince. Put the parsley/breadcrumbs mixture onto a wide plate and let dry fro a couple of hours as the fish marinates.

Sear the fish on a hot pan with some oil (flesh down a very hot pan and fry until a brown crust forms). Remove from pan and smear a very thin layer of mustard on it. Coat the fish in the parsley breadcrumbs , put into a baking dish, put a little butter over each piece and bake for 25-35 minutes in a preheated oven at 200C. Serve and enjoy!

Of course other fish can be prepared this way too!

New seafood store

A new seafood shop opened up in Žížkov. It's called Pescheria Adriatico and is located in Bořívojova 11. The owner, who is Italian, brings the seafood from Italy. The stuff is fairly fresh, given that you go there when there has been a delivery recently, which is on Firday I believe. The shop is very simple and the variety of seafood is not as wide as at the Seafoodshop or Makro, however the quality/price value makes up for it. There were 2 Italian families doing their shopping when I came in and that's a good sign for me. The fish they sell is NOT scaled or gutted, I guess you could ask the shop assistant to do it for you. But especially the clams and mussels are very clean, even the black mussels.
I don't know why they display ungutted fish, the only thing that comes to my mind is that this is used as evidence of freshness. Ungutted fish goes bad much faster than gutted fish and maybe they do it on purpose so they can say "See, we don't gut our fish, it's so fresh and gets sold so fast that it doesn't have the time to go bad!" But maybe I'm just thinking too much and they are too lazy to gut and scale the fish in advance. :-)

I bought 2 seambreams, 1kg of anchovies and 1 kg of vongole veraci clams. This will make 2 lovely seafood dinners!

The first dinner featured the seabream and the anchovies.

I put some marjoram, thyme, dill and lemon inside the gutted fish, sprinkled it with olive oil, salt and pepper and baked them in the oven under the grill. The fish was beautifully moist and delicious. Nothing beats a simply prepared fresh fish for me.

The anchovies were battered in flour and deep fried. Oh man, did these smell when they were being fried. I had to open all windows to increase air circulation. Anchovies and sardines are the most smelly fishes, but this doesn't make them less tasty.

The dinner involving vongole clams is described here.

Marinated pikeperch with cherry tomatoes

My father in law is a passionate fisherman and he goes on fishing trips quiet often. Several months ago he and his friends made a trip to Rio Ebro in Spain. This river is well known for its huge population of pikeperch and my dad in law caught some of them, froze them and brought about 8 fishes home. Pikeperch is considered to be the best fresh water fish, it's also the most expensive one. It's meat is very delicate and is best when prepared in a simple way. I found this recipe on this website - http://mlsnakocka.blog.cz/. Another Czech food blog I enjoy. Thanks for the recipe Pavlina! The combination of the fish, tomatoes, bacon and crusty bread is delicious!

Ingredients:

Pike perch

Marjoram

Garlic

Olive oil

5 -6 slices of bacon

Cherry tomatoes

Bread

salt

Instructions:

Filet the fish and cut into portions. Make cuts on the skin, but don't cut through, we do this to prevent the fish from twisting when heated. Chop up the garlic and the marjoram, add some olive oil, add salt and marinate the fish in this mixture. Let stand in the fridge overnight.

Heat up a pan. Don't add oil, there is already oil in the marinade. Fry the fish skin down first, then turn and add the bacon.

In the mean time heat up another, smaller pan with some oil. Make cross like cuts on the cherry tomatoes and put on the pan, sautee until soft and sweet. Put some bread in the pan along with the tomatoes.

Serve!