Miles Collins

Red Mullet with Greek Salad….

Some of you may recall my fondness for pairing fish and meat together, well here’s fish and cheese! It’s not that radical when you consider how well a cheese sauce works with baked fish but this particular one features uncooked cheese…..

I love Greek Salad, individually the ingredients appeal to me; tangy feta, ripe olives, crunchy beans, tomatoes, fresh oregano..it’s all good. My version sees the ingredients treated seperately rather than tossed together. The flavours are all there along with a couple of ‘extras’ such as chick peas and dried chilli.
The first thing I consider is the cheese, Greek feta. It’s robust and doesn’t want to be messed about so I simply cut it into cubes and season it with olive oil, crushed coriander seeds and lemon zest. Tomatoes are slow roasted with olive oil, garlic and thyme until soft, green beans are cooked in rapidly boiling salted water until just cooked and vibrant green.

Olives next, there are two types of olive; good ones and plastic ones. Search out some nice small piquant ones preferably without too many other flavourings to mask the finished dish. Aubergines are great with this, I thinly slice two or three rounds and pan fry them in olive oil until crisp. Drained on kitchen paper they are then brushed with a mixture of olive oil, honey and thyme to give them a sweet glaze. Keep these warm if you can.

I then make a simple dressing of olive oil, dried chilli, chick peas, lemon and fresh oregano, diced tomato flesh is added and left to infuse for ten minutes. Take a pan and fry your fish of choice, I use mullet but squid, scallops or snapper would work equally well. Cook skin side down with mullet or snapper until the flesh is just cooked. Season withfresh lemon and arrange on top of the salad. Eat at once.

Greek Salad with Red Mullet