Rockfish is passionate about helping people enjoy delicious, sustainable seafood both in their restaurants and at home. The Rockfish Online Seafood Market allows customers to have the freshest seafood shipped from its unique position on Brixham Quay direct to their kitchens. Rockfish chef patron Mitch Tonks opened his first fishmongers in 1996, and today operates a zero-waste supply chain, meaning customers can enjoy fresh fish today while being part of the solution to help protect fish stocks for the future. The Rockfish stable of restaurants are all based on, or near, the coast in Devon and Dorset with menus that read like veritable ocean feasts. Mitch Tonks shares some of his simple seafood recipes to enjoy at home.
Crab Hummus
Make your own hummus so you can flavour it to your taste. You want it nice and smooth with a good balance of lemon and tahini and not too much garlic. Buy the best white crabmeat you can. Handpicked is best.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
200g drained chickpeas, rinsed (the Spanish ones in jars are good, but canned are fine too)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 garlic clove, peeled
A pinch of salt
1 teaspoon tahini
4 tablespoons olive oil
75g fresh brown crabmeat
150g fresh hand-picked white crabmeat
1 teaspoon finely chopped dill
1 tomato, cored and finely chopped
½ avocado, peeled and finely chopped
2 spring onions, green part finely sliced
Method
Put the chickpeas in a food processor with half of the lemon juice, the garlic clove, salt and tahini. Blitz, then add the olive oil and blitz again until smooth. Fold in the brown crabmeat.
Toss the white crabmeat with the dill, tomato, avocado and remaining lemon juice. To serve, spread the brown crab tahini mix in a bowl and top with the white crabmeat mix and the sliced spring onions.
Fish Cakes with Romesco Sauce
Fish cakes are a good way of using up offcuts of fish, but it is also worth buying fish just to make them.
Cheaper cuts work well, or you can use our Rockfish tinned tuna or sardines for a simple seafood supper.
MAKES 4 CAKES
Ingredients:
400g skinless fish fillets, any remaining small bones removed
300g mashed potato
1 tablespoon capers, roughly chopped
A squeeze of lemon
A small handful of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, for coating
2 eggs, beaten
2 good handfuls of fine dry breadcrumbs (panko ideally)
Vegetable oil for shallow frying
Rockfish romesco sauce (available to order from therockfish.co.uk)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C Fan/220°C/Gas Mark 7. Place the fish on a roasting tray and roast for 8 minutes, then allow to cool.
When cool enough to handle, flake the fish into a bowl. Mix in the mashed potato and chopped capers together with a squeeze of lemon and the parsley. Season. Divide the mixture into 4 balls, then flatten into rounds. Chill for 30 minutes before coating.
Have 3 shallow bowls/plates in front of you, one with the flour, one with the beaten eggs and one with the breadcrumbs. Dip each fishcake first in flour, then egg and last of all breadcrumbs, making sure that you have an even coating all round.
Shallow fry the fish cakes in a little vegetable oil over a low to medium heat for 5–6 minutes on each side or until golden. Serve hot with the romesco sauce.
Monkfish and Rosemary Skewers with Salsa Verde
Monkfish is such a meaty fish, so it works wonderfully in this simple recipe. I use rosemary sticks as skewers to add extra flavour, roast them in a hot oven (or pizza oven) and serve with a lovely chunky salsa verde. It’s just one of those lovely, relaxed dishes made for sharing outdoors in the sunshine.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1 Rockfish whole monkfish tail
2 x rosemary branches
4 x spring onions
1 x green pepper
1 x lemon
A handful of fresh mint leaves
A handful of fresh parsley
A handful of fresh basil
Sweet vinegar
Olive oil
Sea salt
Method
To make the Salsa Verde:
Chop up the spring onions, including the green parts. Scrunch up the basil, mint and parsley in your hand and then roughly chop it up. Dice half a green pepper. Combine in a bowl. Add a glug of sweet vinegar and olive oil, a sprinkling of salt, then mix it all together.
To make the Monkfish Kebabs:
Take the monkfish off the bone so you are left with two strips, and then cut it into one inch chunks.
Strip the sprigs off the bottom ¾ of two rosemary branches and then thread the monkfish on to create two kebabs.
Sprinkle some of the stripped rosemary sprigs onto an oven tray, then place the monkfish skewers on top. Drizzle with olive oil and a little salt, then pop into a really hot oven (or pizza oven) until it begins to char around the edges.
While it’s resting for a couple of minutes, drizzle with a little bit more olive oil, squeeze over some lemon juice, then serve topped with the salsa verde.
