Quick and Fishy

I have a really bad food shopping habit of snapping up ingredients that I love whenever I see them at knock-down prices, regardless of a) whether or not I've already got plenty in stock at home and b) if the size of the jar or packet is ridiculously large for a household consisting of one person.  I did this again last Thursday when I went to the legendary Winners Bargain Centre in Bicester, which is the sort of place where you go in to buy batteries and come out with catering-sized boxes of tea bags, cling film and enough washing powder to keep a small launderette going for several months.  Amongst the "bargains" I came home with was a stupidly large jar of capers for 99p (and yes, it was still within date, although with Winners you can never be too sure).  I then had to find something to do with them other than put then on top of pizzas with black olives and anchovies (YUM). 

I then found this recipe, which is from "Cooking Outside the Box: the Abel and Cole Cookbook" by Keith Abel.  Abel and Cole are a fantastic, user-friendly organic fruit and vegetable box company, who now also sell storecupboard essentials, bread, meat, vegetarian foods, wine, chocolate and all sorts of other lovely goodies and I recommend them highly.  The measurements may look a bit odd (a glug of this and half a mugful of that) but one of the things I like about this book is that Keith doesn't assume that you have loads of fancy kitchen gadgets or cooking experience (so a good book for beginners as well as people who want to eat food at its seasonal best).  I switched lemon sole for plaice (I live about as far from the sea as it's possible to be and sadly there is no fishmonger's, so it's Tesco or nothing) and it was absolutely delicious.  A good one for when you need to rustle up a really tasty supper and don't have the time or the inclination to spend ages doing so.

Lemon Sole (or Plaice) with Wine, Toasted Almonds and Capers (serves 4)

1/3 mug of flaked almonds
4 lemon sole fillets (I used plaice instead and it was delicious but any white fish would do)
Flour, for dusting the fish
Salt and freshly ground pepper
A glug of olive oil
1/2 mug of dry white wine
1 1/2 tablespoons of capers, chopped
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Grated zest of a whole lemon
A large knob of butter
A handful of chopped parsley, to serve

1. Start by toasting your almonds in a dry frying pan over a medium heat for about 2-3 minutes, tossing regularly until golden, then remove from the pan.
2. Dust the fish fillets with flour.  Then heat up a good glug of olive oil in a big frying pan for about 2 minutes on each side (SMELLY KITCHEN ALERT - the smell of frying fish really lingers so open all your windows).  Season with salt and pepper, remove the fish from the pan and keep in a warm place.  Unless you have a gargantuan pan, you will probably need to cook the fish in a few batches - not a problem at all.
3. Once the last fish has left the pan, put the wine in the pan and crank up the heat.  Let the wine reduce by half, then add the capers, lemon juice, lemon zest, butter and almonds and give this a good stir until the butter has melted.  Now plate up your fish and spoon over the sauce, sprinkle with parsley (as you can see from the photo, I was so keen to dig in, I forgot all about the parsley) and serve.