This quick prawn balti could also be made with cooked prawns

30 minute quick prawn balti

This is a fresh tasting curry that I really love. It’s been cooked in a BIR (British Indian Restaurant) style though most restaurant chefs would use a pre-prepared curry sauce base – often referred to as a curry gravy. This is done to help cook the curries quickly so that they can be served to the customers in a timely manner.

Assuming you aren’t planning on opening an Indian restaurant any time soon, I’ve decided to show you how this prawn balti recipe would be made if the chef made it at home.

Just like most British Indian restaurant style base sauces, this recipe starts with an onion tarka. This forms the base for the sauce. Other ingredients are then added to complete the curry.

Balti curries are usually quite dry making them easier to scoop up with pieces of fresh naan or chapatti. You could add more tomatoes if you prefer more sauce.

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Serve with fresh naans or chapattis.

Tandoori masala fish marinated in yogurt, garlic, ginger, tandoori masala and lime juice

Tandoori masala fish

Now this was a nice one. I started cooking this evening and just couldn’t stop. Let’s see… there was a prawn curry, a chicken garlic curry, keema naans and this masala fish as a starter. Tandoori masala fish is really simple but the flavours are quite complex.

Haddock is such a great fish to cook this way. It’s quite meaty and stays together in the pan even when shallow fried. You only need to marinate the fish for about 15 minutes and the shallow fryng can be done in five!

We had this as a starter but there’s really no reason why it couldn’t be served as a main course with a salad and a heated French loaf. Yum.

You could use a good quality store bought tandoori masala. I have and it worked well. Today, however I used my garam masala recipe and added a pinch of citric acid powder just before sprinkling it over the fish. The mixture beat shop bought tandoori masala powder hands down.

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Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course

These pan seared scallops really hit the spot!

Pan seared scallops with Cherries Glamour

What do you do when fresh wild scallops and cherries from Cherries Glamour arrive on your doorstep on the same day? That was a difficult one for me but a situation I quite enjoyed being in.

I decided it was time to experiment.

These pan seared scallops were the result. My wife and I had them at lunchtime and I will definitely be making this one again. Cherries Glamour are the most expensive cherries in the world. They’re sweet and complement the sweetness of the scallops nicely.

I added a bit of spice with red chili powder and some tart lime juice with a splash of Cabernet Sauvignon which really brought it all together nicely.

Next time we entertain I’ll be serving it as a starter course.

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I would like to thank Delish Fish for supplying me with the scallops for this recipe and Cherries Glamour for the amazing cherries!

You’ll never know this fish curry is the low fat option!

A low fat treat!

Over the past month or so I’ve been going through all of my British Indian restaurant (BIR) style curry recipes and rewriting them without all the lovely ghee and cream. The thing is, those artery clogging ingredients may taste good but they aren’t the be all and end all. So much of the flavour in curry doesn’t come from the fats but from the nicely roasted spices and fresh ingredients.

This recipe is a play on a prawn jalfrezi curry I’ve posted in the past. It’s not a jalfrezi nor is it made with prawns. The prawn curry recipe just inspired me to write this recipe for some reason.

You could of course use prawns instead of the cod I used. For that matter, you could make this curry with the fish of your choice or even a mix of seafood.

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This Bangladeshi bhaja mackerel is a lovely, quick and easy lunch dish

Bangladeshi Bhaja Mackerel – The perfect snack

Here is another amazing recipe from my friend Mo – the head chef of Table Talk in Middleton St George. The recipe he sent me calls for sardines instead of mackerel but I had some nice smoked mackerel on hand and decided to use it. I’m sure he won’t mind.

This recipe is so good. I served it to my family this evening as a small snack and it was gobbled up.

Mackerel – like sardines – is really good for you. In fact, it is recommended that we all eat at least one helping of oily fish such as mackerel, salmon and tuna every week. You might like to read more about the goodness in seafood by following the Fish Is The Dish Happy Healthy Hearts campaign.

Bhaja mackerel is a great way of getting your helping of oily fish in. It’s a tasty and a fun way to serve the fish for dinner parties or just family nights in.

I served this bhaja mackerel piping hot with bora which went really well together. You can see Mo’s recipe for bora here. Alternatively, you could just serve bhaja mackerel on it’s own or as a nice filling for samosas.

These seared scallops are so quick and easy to make

Seared Scallops with avocado and coriander raita

This is a quick and easy meal that is packed with awesome flavours and also happens to be quite good for you. I was recently contacted by Heather at Fish Is The Dish to participate in a their new Healthy Happy Hearts campaign. You can read about it here but in a nutshell, it’s all about getting people to eat more fish and increase the omega levels in their blood which is supposedly a pretty good thing!

Personally, I don’t care how good it is for you! Seafood when cooked correctly is some of the best food on the planet. The fact that it happens to be good for you too is a big bonus. I mean how often does that happen? If only a team of doctors could discover that lager should be considered one of our five a day I’d be a very happy man.

Anyway, I’ve agreed to do a blood test which will check the omega levels in my blood. I’ll then have six weeks of eating fish at least two times per week when I’ll be tested again. As I am a big seafood fan I’ll be eating a lot more than that and I’ll be sharing my recipes with you here too.

Eating seafood has lots of great health benefits. These include a better heart, brain development, muscle repair and good skin and hair just to name a few. It’s recommended that you eat at least two portions of fish each week of which one helping should be an oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and tuna.

So why not give it a go? I’ll make sure you have plenty of nice recipes right here on my blog to use.

You would never know this cod recipe is low calorie!

This is a really unique cod recipe

I promise all you seafood fans out there that you are going to love this one! It is so low in calories yet full of awesome flavours. The citric acid powder* really makes the dish! That and the cod of course. It’s tart like lemons and limes but quite a lot stronger.

This cod recipe uses very little oil. Just a bit of good cholesterol rapeseed oil so that the fish doesn’t stick to the baking try.

I like serving this dish with homemade pickles such as coriander and mint chutney, chilled red onion chutney and chickpea, carrot and garlic pickle. The chickpea, carrot and garlic pickle recipe asks for citric acid powder too. It takes 24 hours to make so you might like to do that before making this dish.

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*Citric acid powder can be purchase at Asian food shops, some supermarkets and at chemists.

The amazing filleted fresh cod was supplied by Delish Fish. Delish Fish delivers and I highly recommend their service.

Marinated Halibut Never tasted so good!

An easy and delicious way to cook halibut

If you haven’t tried Himalayan salt block cooking yet, I highly recommend it. You may have seen some of the other meat and fish I have cooked on my salt blocks. The food tastes fantastic as it picks up just a little bit of the salt which is equally distributed over the meat of vegetables.

This marinated halibut could of course be pan fried on the hob but I like serving it this way. The hot salt bricks are brought to the table along with the marinated fish. Everyone at the table cooks their own. It’s a fun way to entertain.

Salt bricks can now be found online almost everywhere. They aren’t expensive and last a lifetime! You can also pick them up at horse shops. They’re called salt licks.

Note:  The bricks do cool down after about ten minutes so if serving more than a few people, you will need more bricks. I usually give each guest their own brick though this in not necessary.

Raw fresh oysters take some getting used to but when you do…

I am happy to have been able to convert so many people into fresh oyster fans over the years. I’m sure they make a scary site to those who have never indulged but I promise you they are so good.

It usually takes about three to get hooked. The first oyster is just plain weird. It swirls and swims around in your mouth and the experience never seems to end. Don’t give up! Try another one and then another. You will love raw fresh oysters especially if they are served with a simple spicy sauce like I have here for you.

This sauce only takes about two minutes to make. What a great way to start a dinner party. I’ve been to oyster festivals many times. I’ve had these babies smoked, pan fried, dipped in batter and made into pakora and like this. Personally I prefer eating them fresh from the sea – either on their own or with a nice zesty sauce.

Shucking the oysters is a little bit of work. If you have a good fishmonger, ask them to do this for you. You could of course shuck them yourself. It does get easier with experience.

I hope you like this recipe. Please be sure to let me know what you think.

I think you’re going to love this prawn and pineapple curry!

One of my current favourites!

This prawn and pineapple curry was a real eye-opener for me. You see, I’m not all that crazy about pineapple so I usually don’t order or make curries that include pineapple. This recipe, however was sent to me by Mo – the chef at Table Talk – my favourite local Indian restaurant. I decided I had to give it a go.

It was sweet, savoury, tangy and spicy: everything I’ve always loved in a curry. I’ll be making this prawn and pineapple curry many more times.

The pineapple is blended and used in the curry and also as a pineapple chutney side. I did change the recipe slightly to use up what I had on hand but I think it’s quite close to what Mo had in mind.

The roasted garlic tastes so nice with the blended pineapple. If you don’t have a gas flame to roast the garlic, you could just place a head of garlic in a low oven, topped with butter for about an hour. I prefer the roasted version though.

Roasting garlic!

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