Recipe: South-Western Seafood

What you’ll need

2 tbsp olive oil | 1 large onion, chopped | 4 garlic cloves, chopped | 1 yellow, orange and red pepper, chopped | 450g/1lb tomatoes, peeled and chopped | 2 large green chillies, chopped | 1 lime | 2 tbsp. chopped, fresh coriander | 1 bay leaf | 450ml vegetable stock | 450g frozen prawns | 225g frozen squid | 450g other type of fish (I’ll get to that later) | salt & pepper | slow cooker

Method

Here we go guys, now I’ve kept to my ‘experiment with food more’ resolution quite well so far and this is a recipe I’ve wanted to try for ages because of all the amazing, colourful and flavourful veggies in it. I did things a little differently to the book so I’m going to go ahead and tell you how I made this. I prepped the vegetables and the sauce the night before and left it in the slow cooker over night so I could simply just whack it on in the morning.

1. So… To start preparing the veggies and the sauce, heat the oil in a saucepan and add the chopped onion and garlic and cook over a low heat for 5 minutes whilst occasionally stirring.

2. Then add the chopped peppers, tomatoes (to peel these, cut an X on the top of each tomato and stick them in a bowl of boiling water from the kettle for 10 minutes – the skin should then peel right off!) and chillies and again, cook on a low heat for 5 minutes whilst stirring.

3. Using a cheese grater, grate the rind of the lime into the mix then cut the lime in half and squeeze the juice into the pan, too. Add in the coriander and the bay leaf and lastly, pour in the vegetable stock and turning the heat up slightly, bring to the boil and stir.

4. Transfer the mixture to the slow cooker and turn on when you’re ready to start cooking. You need to leave the mix for around 7 – 7.5 hours and cook on low.

5. Now here’s where things changed a bit from the actual recipe. The recipe I followed told us to get 450g of red mullet fillets. I’ve never had these before but we couldn’t find them anywhere so instead, we opted for a slightly easier option but just as tasty. We bought 3 bags of Tesco’s Seafood Cocktail – which is a frozen mix of prawns, squid and mussels. The amount in 3 bags added up to the amount of fish needed so after the sauce was cooked, I poured the fish into the slow cooker and stirred and left for just over 30 minutes. You could get a bit creative here and use some different types of fish, too!

I served it with Singapore noodles but there’s tons of other stuff it can be served with. I absolutely loved this dish and fortunately everyone else did too! The vegetable mix was fantastic – sweet with a ton of flavour and a little bit of spice. I was so happy with how this turned out and it was a lot of fun to make, too.

Have you ever tried anything like this? Are you a seafood lover or hater? Or share some of your fishy recipes with me!