Today the fishmonger in town had a huge hake all ready for cutting into slices or steaks, perfect for cooking on top of a rich stew of tomatoes, chickpeas and chorizo. And way beyond our frugal budget. But for considerably less, half the price in fact, was something labeled merluchon. They looked remarkably like small hake, worryingly they are probably immature, but were very similar to the size of fish I used to get in Devon. We resisted the treat of big juicy hake steaks and bought two of the merluchon.
For the first time ever, the magnificent Alan Davidson in North Atlantic Seafood let me down, with no reference to Merluchon, or indeed to Colinot which was also on the label in the fish shop. Why give one name when two will do? Fortunately the internet came up with the answers, abeit all in French (it is good practice) and confirmed that these beauties were indeed just small hake.
We are still eating Florence fennel in abundance from the garden, almost always my go to vegetable with fish, and I decided to stick to the Spanish influence with cooking the hake. A small onion, a large clove of garlic and a little spicy chorizo were softened in butter then shoved in the cavity of the fish, which was then baked lovingly surrounded by fennel fronds, until the flesh had just lost its opaqueness. Cook too long and it goes very dry.
Then fennel bulbs are starting to suffer a bit with the frosts, going hard with an unpleasant outer skin. They would need time to cook, Thinly sliced, they benefited from a long slow stew in saucepan with a tight fitting lid, and just enough butter and white wine to keep them from burning.
The fish was beautiful, big flaky flesh and a flavour complimented by the chorizo and fennel. And the cats fought over the tiny bit of roe.
And once again we vowed to stop buying prepacked rubbish from the supermarket and support our local poissonnier
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