This fish dish is both comforting on a cold winter’s night (with stored spuds if new potatoes aren’t in season) and light enough for the summer. Chermoula is a North African marinade made of a mixture of herbs, oil, lemon juice, preserved lemons, garlic, cumin, and salt. If you don’t have a preserved lemon, serve the finished dish with wedges of fresh lemon to squeeze over the top instead.
Ingredients
Main
- 600g sustainably caught pollack fillet, pinboned (larger middle bones removed) and cut into 8 pieces
- 600g new potatoes, halved or quartered if large
- 250g cherry tomatoes, 125g halved, the rest left whole
- 20 pitted black olives
- ½ a preserved lemon, flesh removed, peel rinsed and finely chopped
- 100ml hot veg stock
for the chermoula
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 tsp coarse salt
- 2 tsp cumin seeds, crushed or ground
- 1-2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- small bunch of coriander, chopped
Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C/Gas 4
- Pound the garlic and salt in a pestle and mortar. Stir in the cumin, chilli, lemon, oil and coriander. Or you can blitz everything in a processor.
- Toss the fish with half the mixture and leave in the fridge.
- Mix the potatoes, tomatoes, olives and preserved lemon in an ovenproof tagine or lidded casserole. Add the stock. Season, cover and cook in the oven for 40 minutes.
- Add the fish and cook for another 15 minutes. Drizzle over the rest of the chermoula to serve.