another great mackerel dish thanks to yotam + sami

the other night over a cold beer with a couple of monahan’s fishmongers, amy and vasili, i learned of a recipe that vasili has been sharing with lots of our customers lately. we were talking about one of our favorite fish, mackerel, and vasili mentioned a fantastic mackerel dish from world famous, london based chef, yotam ottolenghi.

andrew with a monster spanish mackerel!

yotam is an israeli who after completing a master’s degree in comparative literature, headed to london to work on a ph.d. but ended up studying at le cordon blue. he has since become a celebrity chef with several restaurants, delis, cookbooks, t.v. shows and a weekly food column in the guardian. his cuisine is mediterranean based, vibrant, lively, creative and all about freshness and seasonality. many of his recipes are vegetarian, in fact his guardian column is titled the new vegetarian and that lead to his great vegetarian book taste. yotam himself is not a vegetarian. the variety, colors and freshness of his middle eastern vegetable and legume creations shine in his fish and meat dishes as well.

the mackerel recipe that vasili raved about came from yotam and his business partner, sami tamimi’s book, ottolenghi: the cookbook. this recipe calls for 8 small mackerel fillets to be broiled for 5 min. we used the larger spanish mackerel and because of its thickness we baked the fillets skin side up at 375º for 7 min., then broiled for another 2-3 min. the sauce explodes with a little sweet, salty, savory crunch that goes perfectly with the moist, flavorful mackerel. we’ve been seeing some lovely spanish mackerel from maryland. if you prefer the more full flavored atlantic mackerel we’ll have those too, just adjust the cooking time.