shredded grilled fish; roasted peppers; roasted tomato; smoked paprika
Sometimes you just cook too much food for yourself and your family to consume on the night you cooked it. This means you will have leftovers. Some people do not eat leftovers, and most of the food will end up in the bin. But this is just fundamentally wrong in my opinion and does not sit right with me. I cannot throw away perfectly good food, nor can I let it sit in the fridge and wait for it to go bad before I can throw it away.
There is a joke on the internet somewhere out there that says: "I do not throw away leftovers, I put it in the fridge, wait until it goes bad, and then throw it away."
Food wastage is seriously bad and a moral wrong. To combat this, one can make some of the best leftover recipes, which end up tasting better than the original recipe in some cases!
In this recipe, I want to show you exactly such a case. We "braai'ed" (similar to BBQ) some snoek, a local favourite fish. Previously, I have shared my recipe for how I cook this local dish. This time around, I changed the recipe a bit, or at least the 2nd recipe in the original post. We always shred the fish and add some form of mayonnaise sauce to it. This time, I added a romesco-style sauce! I roasted some peppers and tomatoes and ended up making one of the best dishes I have made in a long time.
So please follow along as I show you how I cook this dish, wich turned out really well.
Recipe
For this dish, I used relatively common ingredients, at least ones that you can easily substitute with others. For this recipe, I used:
- two medium-sized roasted peppers,
- two medium-sized roasted tomatoes,
- about 200-300 grams shredded fish,
- about 200-300 grams of prawns (optional),
- about 50 grams of almond nuts,
- a clove or two of garlic,
- a tbsp of smoked paprika, and
- a tbsp of butter.
This recipe made enough food for 4-6 people, depending on how big a portion you take per person.
Here you can see my leftover fish, with some prawns added just for diversity and to add some body to the dish:
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Process/Method
In South Africa, we usually use wood to cook food with. We make coals and then grill the food over the open flames. This time around, we braai'ed or BBQ'ed or grilled some fish. I usually cook it with a butter and lemon sauce, or lemon-butter-apricot jam. It always turns out so nice.
But in this recipe, I will not focus on the fish cooking part, as I am essentially using leftovers. So here, I will only show you the smoky-romesco-style sauce that I made with the leftover fish.
I used the leftover coals to cook and "burn/char" the peppers and tomatoes. I cooked all of the sides for about 5-10 minutes, depending on how hot the coals were. In the end, the heat was almost gone and I could not char them any longer.
I left them overnight in the fridge as they were not part of the main dish I cooked that night.
The next evening, I began by taking off the charred skins, and chopping up the pepper, and turning the tomatoes in a type of sauce. There was quite a bit of "smokey" liquid in the bowl, so I mixed the tomatoes in with this liquid.
After doing this, I added everything to a pan, and I added some oil. I slowly began cooking the sauce until it began resembling, well, a sauce!
When it began boiling a bit, I added smoked paprika powder, and when it was done, I turned the heat off and added some butter. This makes the sauce smooth and rich.
The time I cooked this dish was about 20 minutes. I feel like boiling the sauce for too long gets rid of the volatile smokey smell.
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And then I just mixed all of the shredded fish meat and the prawn meat into the sauce. The sauce's residual heat will warm up the fish as well. I also added some chopped almond nuts. If I wanted to add even more flavour, I could have used some bacon bits with the almonds, toasting everything in bacon fat.
I served it over a bed of rice, but you can use it in any way you find it to your liking. Tacos, wraps, on bread, I think there are so many different ways to use it.
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And that is all to it! In the end, you are left with the most intense and flavourful dish, with hints of smoke, subtle sweetness from the tomato and pepper, and then the fish and prawns that add to the overall complexity of the dish. As I said, I served it with some rice, but you can use your imagination. I think this might even work in a salad as well.
I really hope that you give this recipe a try. It was so nice, and I have been wanting to try it forever now. It is really that simple, even if it takes a bit of time and preparation work. But good things take some time!
This sauce is obviously based on the traditional romesco sauce, but this is only a derivative of it. I did not have all of the ingredients on hand, and I just wanted some smokey sauce with the fish. I based this sauce on my knowledge of the romesco sauce, but I am not claiming that it is in the same style or based on the traditional recipe. Maybe in the future, I will attempt the traditional sauce.
Please let me know if you have ever tried this, or if you used my recipe how it went.
For now, happy cooking, and keep well.
All of the writings in this post are my own. The recipe is also my own, albeit based on other recipes that I tried throughout the years. The photographs used in this post are my own, taken with my iPhone.