I love cooking with seafood, it's nutritious, healthy, tasty and super quick for weeknight meals. I happened to have gone to the market by closing time on Sunday and scored a whole tray of fresh mackerel for 10 dollars. Can't resist a good bargain. In this dish it's filleted, cooked in oven, torched and paired with a simple dill and caper sauce and a beetroot and feta salad. So yummy!
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
Time: 45 minutes
Serves: 2
Ingredients
Torched Mackerel
- 8 mackerel fillets
- salt
- pepper
- olive oil
Dill and Caper Sauce
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 garlic minced
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp baby capers roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp fresh dill roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp anchovies finely chopped
- juice from 1 lemon
- salt
- pepper
Beetroot and Feta Salad
- 3 medium sized beetroot sliced to about 5mm thickness*
- 120 ml red wine
- 160 ml sherry vinegar
- 80 gm brown sugar
- 2 cloves
- 1 cinnamon quill
- 4 tbsp Persian feta
- 1 tbsp dill finely chopped
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- salt
- pepper
* You can also dice it for a more rustic style salad.
Method
1. Add the beetroot, red wine, sherry vinegar, brown sugar, cloves and cinnamon quill in a pot with 125ml of water. Bring to boil and cook until softened for about 10 minutes. Let it cool down with the braising liquid.
2. Make the dill and caper sauce by adding all ingredients in a bowl and mix well tighter.
3. If you want to make a layered beetroot salad as the photo above, trim the cooked beetroot with a round cutter to the same size. Build the salad inside the round cutter starting with a slice of beetroot, a layer of feta cheese, dill, salt and pepper, then another layer of beetroot, feta cheese, dill, salt and pepper before topping it with another beetroot slice. Slice it in half if you prefer so for presentation. Alternatively, mix the cooked beetroot in a salad bowl with feta cheese, freshly chopped dill, salt, pepper and olive oil.
4. Pre-heat the grill at 190 degrees. Season the mackerel fillets well with salt, pepper and olive oil, grill it in oven for 6 minutes and finish with a blow torch to get the smokey flavour.
5. Assemble by placing a fillet on the plate, followed by the beetroot salad and dress generously with the dill and caper dressing. Enjoy!
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