Our cooking times are just a guide. Your fish may vary in thickness, it may be warmer or cooler when it hits the pan, your oven or hob may behave differntly to ours. Use our instructions as a guide, but deploy your senses too; look, prod, listen and smell while you cook. After all, cookery should provide us pleasure as well as nourishment.
Battered & Fried
In a bowl, combine flour, cornflour, sea salt, baking powder
, fennel seeds and cider, whisking until you form a smooth batter. Set aside. Fill a medium, heavy-based saucepan two-thirds full with sunflower oil. Heat until a cube of bread browns in 20 seconds.
Cut the hake into chunky strips, about 3cm wide. Season with salt and pepper, then lightly dust with flour. Dip the pieces of hake into the cider batter then lower them carefully into the hot oil. Fry in batches (4-5 pieces at a time) for 5 minutes, until crisp and golden brown. Lift out and drain briefly on kitchen paper. See the full recipe here for Battered Hake with Tartar Sauce
Grill
Preheat your grill, rub your fish with a little olive oil and salt and put skin side up on a piece of parchment paper onto a grill pan. As a guide a fillet portion will need 8-10 minutes, a flatfish for 10-12 minutes. You don’t need to turn flat fish as the heat of the grill will cook it through.
Roasted
220C/Gas Mark 7
Place the fish into a roasting tin, lightly oil and season. Roast in a preheated oven for 15 minutes.
