Fish cooking without smells: One of the reasons people don't like to cook fish at home is that lingering smells can be a problem. To minimise this, try cooking fish en papillotte.
Enclose single portions – fillets or whole fish – with a few fresh herbs, some seasoning and a drizzle of white wine, lemon juice or olive oil, in secure parcels made with tin foil or parchment paper. Bung them in the oven to cook, and unwrap at the table. Best of all, there’s no washing up, just throw the wrappers in the bin (outside).
Another way to keep smells to a minimum is to steam fish on a plate in a bamboo steamer, which you can pick up at Asian supermarkets for a few euro. Grated ginger, chopped spring onions, a few drops of light soy sauce and a dusting of five-spice will transform any white fish cooked this way, and a covering of cling film over the top will contain the cooking smells.
Take a bow, takeaway
A takeaway on the edge of a busy dual-carriageway isn’t perhaps the first place you’d think to go to for super-fresh Irish fish cooked to order in any one of eight Asian-fusion styles, but Juhu Masala isn’t any old takeaway. The chefs at Juhu Masala, beside the Silver Tassie pub at Cherrywood, Co Dublin, are from Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka and have between them chalked up experience at the Burj Al-Arab, Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Highfield Manor hotels.
The business is owned by Rahul Rana and his wife Belinda, who also runs baked.ie, an organic cupcake company that also runs baking camps for children.
Juhu Masala is unusual among Irish takeaways in that it uses only organic chicken breast, Irish fillet beef, and has twice weekly deliveries of monkfish from Colin O’Shea of Seatrade in Dunmore East. “On Tuesdays and Fridays the fish that is landed that morning is delivered to us in the afternoon,” Rahul says.
The idea is that you decide whether you want to eat fish – and that monkfish comes highly recommended – or beef, pork, chicken, duck, prawns or vegetables, and then chose one of eight ways to have it cooked to order. Prices are incredibly reasonable, considering the quality of the ingredients, with monkfish, fillet beef and duck the most expensive at €13, including a side of basmati rice cooked one of four ways. Juhu Masala delivers in south Co Dublin and Wicklow, from Cornelscourt out to Enniskerry, and you can also order by telephone (01-2825688) and pick it up yourself. See juhu.ie.
Select salmon
Kenmare Select Irish organic smoked salmon with seaweed, made by Frenchman Rémy Benoit in Co Kerry, is a finalist in the prestigious Prix d’Elite for best new seafood product at the European Seafood Exposition in Brussels next month. The salmon, which comes from the west coast, is dry cured by hand with a mixture of sea salt, organic cane sugar and flakes of seven edible seaweeds from Donegal, before being cold smoked over oak and kelp flakes. It’s a delicate and subtle smoking style, which Benoit – who came to Ireland in 1981 and previously ran a restaurant, Rémy’s House, in Kenmare – has developed along with his smoker Séan Jones. Kenmare Select sells its salmon “sashimi trimmed”, which means the brown flesh and the skin is removed. Cyprien Benoit, Rémy’s son, who is based in Paris and looks after business development for the company, recommends slicing the fish in thin perpendicular slices, so each slice has had a mixture of exposure to the cure and smoking process. A full side, weighing just under a kilo, costs €63.55 from kenmare-select.com.
Book of the week
Martin's Fishy Fishy Cook Book by Martin Shanahan (Estragon Press €20).His mantra is "No skin, no bones, no fear," and Martin Shanahan of Kinsale restaurant Fishy Fishy is on a mission to get us eating more fish by simplifying its preparation and cooking. "Fish is nature's fast food," he says. Sally McKenna edited the book: "Martin speaks in recipes. I take them home and they all work perfectly. They are also incredibly simple. If you learn the basic techniques, steaming and roasting and getting a very solid pan blazing hot before pan-frying, you can cook any fish." Shanahan's second TV series is on RTÉ on Thursday nights at 8.30pm
Muscle in on the Connemara Mussel Festival, which takes place from April 29th to May 2nd on the Renvyle Peninsula. See connemaramusselfestival.com for details
