It’s obvious that I love cooking (and eating). When I’m not cooking, I’m probably watching a cooking show, talking about food, arguing about food, reading a cookbook or planning my next meal. Taking a wild guess, I think I might be a foodie…☺️ But as food obsessed as I am, even I don’t have the energy or time to spend hours in the kitchen for midweek meals. And while I have a keen interest in cooking, I am actually fundamentally lazy at heart ….oops, I meant to say that I like to be efficient! So a vast proportion of my recipe creation thoughts are devoted to coming up with fast meal ideas. Made from scratch. Always made from scratch! I was brought up believing that canned soup and packet mixes are evil and I just can’t shake that habit! My mother did a great job brain washing me. “You can make this with frozen fish if you want but I really recommend using fresh fish if you can. For flash fried fish, it is always better to use fresh.” So this is a classic fast meal in my rotation. Fish Piccata is so simple, but so tasty. The sauce is made by deglazing the pan with wine (yes, you need to sacrifice a wee bit of your evening wine for this meal) so the brown bits stuck on the pan from the fish mix in with it and creates the “stock” for the sauce. The flour that the fish is coated in thickens the sauce, then you finish it off with a hit of lemon and some butter (not too much!). I’ve seen a lot of Fish Piccata recipes around and I often can’t resist taking a peek even though I haven’t strayed from this recipe in years. I find many of them too lemony and sour for my taste, so mine is a lot more mild. (Recently I’ve posted a chicken version that is similarly restrained with the piquancy.) If you like a strong lemon flavour, then by all means, increase the lemon juice in this! “The sauce of this is not overly lemony and sour. This is the problem I find with many piccata recipes – far too much lemon.” For pan fried fish dishes, I really recommend using fresh fish fillets rather than frozen if you can, especially for white fish fillets (though I do find that salmon and trout freeze fairly well). But you can use frozen fish fillets if you want, and I have certainly done so. I find that frozen fish nowadays is great quality. This fish is accompanied with crispy smashed potatoes, made super fast by cooking them in the microwave, smashing them (this is such a satisfying step!) then pan frying them with the fish to make it fabulously crispy. Then I braise the beans while deglazing the pan – another shortcut tip! You could also steam the asparagus separately but I like the extra flavour infused into the asparagus by braising it in the sauce. Love to hear if you give this a go! And if you have any questions, just leave it in the comments section below and I’ll be sure to respond. Happy cooking! – Nagi SaveSave
