Croatia - Brodet (fish stew)

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Preparation: 25 mins

Cook time: 4ish hours (including marination time)

Serves: 4-6 adults

Serve with: polenta

Olivier's: ★★★

Me: ★★★
After the previous beigeness of Sweden's meat and carrot stew, it has taken me a while to summon the motivation to try something new. Plus, we moved house and it was terrible. 

Anyway, this Croatian stew looked interesting, a kind of fish version of Poland's Bigos, which contains whatever meat you happen to have hunted, or, in this case, fished.  Most recipes for brodet called for monk fish, scorpion fish, trout, eel, sea bass. I now live in a fairly rural area, which on one hand, has a salmon farm, but on the other, doesn't have a fish shop, so I am limited to whatever offering the local supermarket has. I was pleased as I'd managed to order some sea bass with this weeks shopping, but to my dismay, they didn't have any, so I had to drive in- like an animal - and only managed to get some blue grenadier fillets. Not quite what I was after, but, they are a white fish.

I looked at three recipes, and it took me three viewings to realise that two of the recipes were exactly the same.  The main recipe that I followed was this one and I suspect this is the more original source of the second one.

The first recipe calls for 20 - not a typo - cloves of garlic. TWENTY. This seemed excessive, and the other ones called for 6, so I settled on 8.  I also had a one onion vs 3 onion conundrum, so went with two onions. I also added emergency tomato paste, as my tomato was pale and the while thing had a pink hue at the end. There were some exciting times around here this afternoon.

 Also, start this a bit after lunch as the fish has to marinate, or, as I like to think of it, stew.

Anyway, here is the recipe before I break into some made up prose about how I ate this in a villa off the coast of Dalmatia at sunset while baby turtles nibbled my nostril hairs. 
 I decided to go all 70's cookbook style with this photo.
   

 Ingredients: 
  • 4 fillets of blue grenadier
  • 8 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 100ml olive oil
  • juice from half a lemon
  • half a bunch of parsley
  • 2 onions
  • 1 large tomato
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 1 tablespoon of tomato paste 
  • salt and pepper 
  • 100ml white wine
  • 500ml fish stock 
  • 300g prawns (could not get scampi)
  • mussels, probably 12 
Method
  1. Cut fish into cutlets, marinate in the lemon, oil, garlic and parsley for a few hours
  2. Gently saute onions in a casserole type pot until softened and starting to colour, then add tomato and tomato paste and simmer for another minute. 
  3. Add the wine, and simmer slowly for 20 minutes. Start cooking the polenta here-ish
  4. Sprinkle salt and pepper on each of the the fish cutlets, then add to the pot. Cover the whole lot with fish stock, and then simmer for 15 minutes. Don't stir it or the fish will break, just give the casserole a bit of a shake now and then. 
  5.  At 15 minutes, add your mussels and prawns or whatever you managed to find. Simmer for a further 5 minutes.

Notes: I accidentally stirred it when I added the mussels and prawns and the fish broke. It still tasted OK. However, not a recipe I'll revisit. 


Next stop: Brazil





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