How do you translate 'vispannetje' properly? 'Little pan of fish'?

I bought nearly 3 kg of fish filets for my birthday party. Problem was the organisation of cooking for over 30 people in our small kitchen, so we changed plans. The fish, however, was already in our freezer and we now have these fish-dish-nights to eat our stock. 

You have to be creative for doing this: my dad loves fried fish, my mum doesn't like fried fish, my sister usually hates fish and I love to eat fish in all sorts of ways as long as there is enough variation. A little too many different tastes to please all. But we try to do as good as we can, don't we? ;)

Tonight it's a Belgian classic: vispannetje. It can be literally translated as little fish pan, but that sounds a bit ridiculous. Just keep in mind it contains fish and sea fruit, is prepared in the oven and tastes lovely.

As I thought my brother-in-law Jasper was coming over for dinner, I substituted the mushrooms by leek (as he doesn't like mushrooms at all), but it turned out he only came to visit and was gone before we ate. Anyway, it'll be vispannetje without mushrooms ... Leeks taste really nice in this dish, so don't think it's only second choice!

Ingredients for 4:
- 3 or 4 small leeks  OR 250 grams of mushrooms (cut in rings or slices and fried (optionally) fried in some butter*)
- 1 carrot
- 500 grams fish filet
- 200 grams mixed sea fruit (mussels, squid, shrimps, ...)
- 3/4 cube of fish stock
- spoonful of butter
- 400 ml of milk 
- salt and pepper to taste
- 100 grams grated Emmental cheese
- handful of breadcrumbs
- dill

How to:
Grease a large ovenproof dish and scatter the leeks/mushrooms, the sea fruit and the fish in it. Scatter the chopped dill over all of this.
Now cover the dish with the cheese and the bread crumbs.
Make a light béchamel sauce with the butter, a little flour, milk, and the fish stock. Make it not too thick. It should be much more liquid than solid.
Pour the sauce over the rest of the ingredients. 

Put the dish in a 250°C oven and let it all bake for 30-45 minutes.

* You don't really need to prefry the leeks or mushrooms, but for some people the strong taste of leeks is better baked off. The only thing you need to make sure is that they are covered by the sauce while baking in the oven. They'll get tender there too.

Serve this with mashed potato or a carrot-potato mash. 

Smakelijk!

Pretending you're in Zanzibar with pilau!

Summer's heat is melting everything and everyone that dares to come out. Temperatures will rise even higher this weekend, and it made me think of a wonderful destination: Zanzibar.

We've lived in Tanzania (Arusha) for three years for my dad's work. I was 12 when we moved there, and that was the exact age I became a regular cook at home. I experimented a lot, with some of the most disastrous cakes you can ever imagine and 'accidents' such as a full deep frier falling down which flooded the whole of our kitchen with oil ...
Luckily I also made some good to excellent things. Otherwise my parents would never allow me to continue.

Each year - around my birthday - we had our little holiday on the island Zanzibar. There we enjoyed the arabic tinted kitchen and especially lots of fish. 

I very much liked the fish pilau at Dolphin Restaurant in Stone Town. It was a very old building with loads of cracks and an African grey parrot that could talk to the customers and broke down the ceiling. I have such good memories of those holidays!

When we left for Belgium, I missed the spicy dishes a lot. It took me a long time for finding out where to get the right ingredients, let alone to find the correct recipes.
After endless searches on the internet, I found something that sounded about right to me. It's this recipe I took as base for my own Zanzibar pilau.

I meant to make it for the four of us, but after serving it seemed as if I had still enough for at least one or two more people. So keep in mind, when you decide to prepare this for 4 people, that you reduce the amounts :)

Ingredients for 5-6:
- teaspoon of cumin seeds
- teaspoon of black pepper corns
- teaspoon of ground ginger
- half a teaspoon of salt
- cinnamon stick
- ground cinnamon
- 5 cloves
- 10 cardemom pods
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 300 grams rice
- 250 grams tomatoes, chopped
- 1 apple or handful of raisins
- 900 ml of fish stock (1 and a half cube in the water)
- 400 grams (or more if you like) of white fish, diced
- olive oil
- 1 onion
- for serving: a little parsley and slices of lemon

How to:
Heat the stock with all of the spices. Once it all cooks, keep aside. Heat a pan and fry the onion, chopped garlic in it with a little olive oil.

Add the fish and turn them around quickly. 

Now take all onions, garlic and fish out.
Put the rice in the same pan and stir so that all the rice can get covered in the olive oil.
Pour in two thirds of the stock-spice mixture. Spice things up with salt and some extra pepper (if you like it hot). Let all of it now simmer  with the lid on. 
Add the apple and/or the raisins and the tomatoes to the rice. After a few minutes, you can add the fish, onion and garlic too.

Check with a fork from time to time so that you can add more of the stock-spice mixture when the rest is soaked up. 
When the rice is done, put the pan with the lid in a preheated oven at 200°C. 
It's ready when the rice is dried up.

Chakula tamu!

Fish on the BBQ

Barbecue today, according to me just the way a hot Summer's day should end. 

My parents are meat lovers, so they had a good steak and pork ribs. I looked in the freezer for some inspiration and found fish fillets. Now the problem was what to do with them. Plain is nice, but then you don't have BBQ every night, right?

In our house there are always oranges around. For my glass of fresh orange juice, my daily morning shot of vitamin C to start off ;) That was ingredient one. 

Second were fennel seeds. As I' was the only fish eater today, I didn't have to care about the others that don't like the taste of them.

A little olive oil, salt and red pepper finished my marinade.

Ingredients for 1:

- 1 white fish fillet

- juice of 1/4 orange

- red pepper to taste

- salt to taste

- dash of fennel seeds

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

How to:

Take a piece of tin foil large enough to wrap the fish later on.

Put the fillet on it and cover it with all the other ingredients.
Close the foil to make a package, fish en papillote. A quarter of an hour on the roster and ready to serve. 

Why make something difficult when you can do it easy? At least you have the rest of the time off to relax. Never waste a good Summer's day!

The fish and the marinade is very light. So it's a good recipe for people that don't feel like dining heavily. Of course that depends also on the side dishes ... ;)