Beware of the Butterfish!

Oh my goodness, I poisoned my housemate yesterday! I cooked butterfish for lunch and he had a really bad reaction to it. I did warn him before serving it to him as I am aware that some people react badly to it but have personally never experience the reaction. Sorry, James!

Anyway – if you do plan on eating it and have never had it before be aware that you could react badly to it. You need to start with a small amount to see if you do react. I have pasted a link below with the symptoms:

http://all4women.co.za/health/daily-health-tips/nutrition-health-tips/beware-butterfish.html

I however love it but will most certainly not serve it to a guest again!

Anyhow, you can do this recipe with the fish of your choice… so let’s get back to it then.

I was having a bit of a comfort food day yesterday. The weather was balmy but distinctly autumn. I had been meaning to recreate a sauce for fish which I made while I was in Stilbaai last week, which got rave reviews. So I defrosted the butterfish steaks which I had bought from the Breco factory shop and went about putting together some appropriate side dishes.

As usual I didn’t feel like leaving the house to shop the few things I needed, but decided to make do with what I had in the house. This is a theme in my life and I have come up with some of the most amazing dishes and ideas from simply being creative with what I have.

So let’s break the meal down. Butterfish as mentioned from Breco. A lemon, garlic and herb butter for the fish. Creamy mashed potato with roasted garlic and goats cheese. Roasted onion and butternut with baby rosa tomatoes.

Butterfish – I left it completely plain, just defrosted it and grilled in the oven on searing high heat for 8 min on each side, switched the oven off and let it rest for about 5 mins then let it rest for a further 5 mins out the oven, while assembling the other dishes on the plate. The timing needs to moderated according tp the size of the pieces of fish. Mine were pretty big pieces and butterfish is both dense and oily.

Lemon and herb butter – in a sauce pan I added a handful of chopped fresh herbs from the garden (basil, chives, rosemary and mint), I also added some of the Woolies freeze dried herbs (dill and thyme), peeled and finely chopped a little ginger and garlic, lemon zest and juice, salt and butter. If you have capers (which I did not) they would also go well, as would fresh chilli. I melted that together and left it off the heat for the flavours to draw.

Creamy mash – this was a bit of a travesty in that I really went into over kill here… but the final result was really delicious but seriously rich. I cooked ¾ regular potatoes with ¼ sweet potatoe. I roasted some garlic in the oven which I added to the cooked potatoes before I mashed them. To the mash I added some butter, crème fraiche, wasabi mayo (from woollies), soft goats cheese from Fairview, a dash of milk to thin the mash, salt, pepper and chopped spring onions.

Roasted veggies – I chopped up butternut and onion with I tossed with a dash of olive oil, salt and little curry powder and put it in the oven on grill but quite low down in the oven. Once the veg had half cooked I add a handful of rosa tomatoes and tossed a little sugar over the veggies. I removed the tray once the tomatoes had just burst.

It was a rich creamy dish bursting with flavour and decadence. I had to have a little lie down afterwards! But would be great for a cold autumn weekend luncheon or dinner.