While wandering around Reigate with my friend, she guided me to the local Oxfam shop. I’m not usually one to venture through charity shops, although I will be the first to admit that you can find some great stuff in them (especially when looking to furnish your home on the cheap). However, this Oxfam was solely for books, so of course I was happy to look around.

My friend and I are both very much into cooking and cookbooks (as you may have gathered from the previous post about drop scones). Her cookbooks are in a bookshelf, beautifully arranged by colour. It looks great. My bookshelves, for once, are completely unorganised. They sit in a couple of shelves in my spare room, and are divided mainly by purpose or author: Jamie, healthy-eating, baking and desserts… You get the idea. I don’t have many, despite my love of cooking and books. Well, let me rephrase. I don’t have many compared to my parents or my friend who I was staying with.

Something that we both have is a fondness for Jamie Oliver, his down-to-earth, cheeky-chappy, but easy-to-cook food makes his cookbooks accessible to everyone.

It just so happens that while in the aforementioned Oxfam bookshop, we headed straight to the cookbook section to see what they had on offer. And there, right in the middle, was Jamie’s Everyday Super Food, a book I don’t yet own. The real kicker? It was £3.50! I mean, it would have been rude not to buy it. So, of course I did.

I’d been looking through it at my friend’s house prior to us going out for the wander around Reigate High Street, and figured I’d just take photos of the recipes that interested me. It seemed much better to have the whole book with me to enjoy at my own leisure. And so I bought it. With no regrets.

We’d also decided that dinner that night would be an adaptation of a recipe from Everyday Super Food, because we had beetroot from the allotment, along with thyme from the garden and horseradish in the freezer. We paired this with a bunch of leftover veggies that we’d turned into slaw, salads and stir-fried greens (beetroot stalks and chard).

It might seem strange, to coat the fish with oats, but it adds an excellent texture and crunch to the dish.

In Jamie’s original recipe, he uses unsmoked mackerel, and rainbow beets. As we couldn’t find unsmoked mackerel, we used trout instead. The truth is, any oily fish will do (mackerel, trout, salmon, sardines, kippers, herring, etc). You could try it with tuna, but I’m not sure if the roasting process might dry it out a bit much.

Anyway, here’s the adapted recipe. For the original recipe, go to page 174 in Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food.

Ingredients

300 grams raw beetroots
150 grams pearl barley
1/2 red onion
olive oil
4 x 75 grams trout fillets, scaled and pin-boned
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
white wine vinegar
2 tablespoon porridge oats
1/2 a bunch of fresh thyme
2 teaspoons grated horserdish
2 tablespoons natural yoghurt

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash and trim the beetroot and cook in boiling water over medium heat for 30 minutes, or until tender. Drain, then leave until cool enough to handle. Keep the beetroot stalks and leaves to stir-fry later.
2. Meanwhile cook the pearl barley according to the instructions, then drain.
3. Lay a sheet of wet grease-proof paper in a baking tray, and rub it lightly with olive oil. Spread the pearl barley over the tray.
4. Place the trout fillets randomly on top, skin side up.
5. In a small bowl, mix the mustard with a splash of vinegar to loosen it up. Then brush the mustard over the skin of the fish. Sprinkle the oats over the mustard-covered fish.
6. Peel and roughly chop the red onion, then place around the fish.
7. Remove the skin from the beetroot, then slice thinly or with a mandolin.
8. Arrange the beetroot around and under the fish fillets.
9. In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of vinegar with 1 teaspoon of olive oil, and a pinch of salt and pepper to make a dressing. Using the thyme like a brush, dab the olive oil dressing over the beets. Then strip the thyme leaves and sprinkle over the fish and beetroots.
10. Place in the oven to cook for 15 – 20 minutes, or until the fish is lightly golden and cooked through.
11. Stir the horseradish through the yoghurt, and spoon over the fish before serving.