BUTTERY BAKED HAKE... AND WHY YOU SHOULDN'T FEAR COOKING FISH AT A DINNER PARTY

Butter Baked Hake with Fennel and Tomatoes and a mega side of roasted fingerling potatoes with crispy olives and aioli

People can be funny about cooking fish. Nervous about the consequences of over cooking it or under cooking it. Chicken is often what people lean towards when entertaining. But if you think about it, the consequences of overcooking or undercooking fish are no greater than they are for chicken. You certainly wouldn’t want to serve someone slightly undercooked chicken. And yet so often fish is shunned off the menu when entertaining as too tricky, risky, or fiddly.

I love cooking fish when people come over. It feels slightly elevated and special and, because so many of us don’t cook it that regularly it really is special. Another reason to cook fish when entertaining is that it usually takes a lot less time to cook than meat, meaning that if someone’s late or the cocktails and conversation have run on, you don’t have to wait an hour to eat.

Hake is one of my favourite fishes to cook. It is a firm white flakey fish similar in many ways to cod but the stocks of it are high at the moment so it’s a more sustainable choice and I find most people prefer it. It has a slightly meatier texture and a less fishy flavour.

This recipe is split into two parts (three if you count melting the butter but this demands very little focus and can be done during the few minutes it takes people to sit down ). The tomatoes and fennel get a head start in the oven. I often do this bit before people arrive and stall adding the fish until I know we are about 25 minutes away from sitting down. The fish gets added to the same tray with butter and lemon and in less than half an hour it’s ready.

I’ve suggested a potato dish with this… because I roasted giant olives for the first time recently and OH MY GOD it was good but some simple boiled rice is also good with this. You could even add some chopped parsley, fresh lemon zest and toasted flaked almonds to give it a bit of zaz. The glossy tomatoey buttery sauce that collects in the pan as the fish cooks is DELIGHTFUL with rice.

Butter Baked Hake with Fennel and Tomatoes

Serves 4

• 600g cherry vine tomatoes

• 1 large fennel bulb

• Olive oil

• Sea salt

• 800g piece of hake

• 1 lemon

• 40g butter

For the herby butter

• 70g butter

• Bunch of dill, fronds finely chopped

• Bunch or parsley, leaves finely chopped

• Zest of 1 lemon

• Pinch of sea salt

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees fan setting.

Slice the fennel into roughly 0.5mm slices. Place into a large roasting day with the tomatoes (large enough to fit in the tomatoes, fennel and hake), drizzle with olive oil and a good pinch of salt. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. The tomatoes should be part cooked and have released some of their juices.

Remove the tray from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 190 degrees. Make some room for the fish in the centre and place in the hake skin side down. Season the fish well first with sea salt then with the zest of the lemon. Layer over slices of butter and finish with sliced lemon. Bake for a further 20-25 minutes or until the fish is cooked through.

While your fish is cooking make the herby butter. Melt the butter in a sauce pan over a low heat. Take it off the heat and add the chopped dill and parsley, lemon zest and a good pinch of salt.

Serve hot with the herbed butter spooned generously over the fish, tomatoes and fennel.

Roasted fingerling potatoes with crispy olives with Aioli

serves 4

A good potato is a memorable thing. I’ve spent hours cooking meals for friends only to be congratulated over and over about the potatoes. As an ingredient, they need little intervention to taste good. Boiled, mashed, chipped and fried, it’s usually a case of one or two ingredients (namely fat in the form of butter or oil and of course salt) but recently I have been pairing them with roasted olives. I like the big fat kind. The kind that you find in a deli and that usually feel a bit extravagant and a bit extra! My favourite are Gordal or Nocellara and I prefer to buy them pitted and to crush them…the jagged edges go even crispier. But if you can’t find pitted olives don’t worry, just cut them into odd shapes (unless you have a pitter). Smaller olives will work too but the bigger the better for this. I’ve used fingerling potatoes here which are the QUEENS of the potato world (in my opinion) but new potatoes work well too.

Also, you don’t have to make the aioli but again if the idea of homemade mayonnaise is something that until now has seemed daunting DO NOT LET IT. It really is as simple and it really is worth it.

• 800g fingerling potatoes, new potatoes will work too

• 150g pitted Gordal olives, I like these