Fisherman's pie

They tell me it's brain food. I remain unconvinced - I am absolutely no better at doing sums than I was before I cooked this, but I am deliciously full and thinking hard about marine biology.

This is a lovely take on fisherman's pie, a thousand miles away from any variant you may have eaten in the school dining hall. Some of the fish is fresh, some smoked, and this gives it a deep, warm background without overdoing the smoky flavour. Sweet peas and prawns are balanced by a hit of lemon juice and nutmeg, and creamy mash makes a golden lid for the whole thing.

Although this is a fish dish, you'll find it keeps well overnight in the fridge. This amount made two filling suppers for two greedy people with a sharply dressed green salad. I used frozen haddock fillets here, but you can use any firm, flaky white fish, frozen or fresh.

To serve four, you'll need:

500g haddock fillets
200g smoked haddock
100g smoked salmon
100g peeled prawns, raw if possible
150g butter
50g plain flour
570ml milk
50g frozen peas
2 eggs
2 teaspoons capers in white wine vinegar
Juice of ½ lemon
A few gratings of nutmeg
1kg potatoes (choose a floury variety like King Edward)
3 tablespoons double cream
Cheddar cheese to sprinkle

Preheat the oven to 200° C (400° F).

Lay the haddock (defrosted if frozen) and smoked haddock in the baking dish you plan to make the pie in - it should have a capacity of between 1.5 and 2 litres. Pour over half the milk and dot with 25g of butter. Season with plenty of pepper and bake for 20 minutes. Pour the liquid from the baking dish into a measuring jug, top up with the remaining milk and reserve. Remove any skin or bones from the cooked fish and flake it into large pieces in the baking dish.

Hard-boil the eggs, and quarter them. Combine them in the baking dish with the flaked fish, drained capers, the frozen peas, the prawns (raw or cooked, but defrosted if frozen) and the smoked salmon. (I used Waitrose's flakes of hot-smoked salmon - if you can't find hot-smoked salmon use the regular variety and use scissors to cut it into bite-sized pieces.)

Peel the potatoes and set them to boil as usual for the mashed potato topping. While the potatoes are boiling, melt 75g of the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour and cook over a medium-low flame, stirring, for four minutes. Add the milk and fish cooking liquid a little at a time, stirring well after every addition until the sauce thickens. Continue until all the milk mixture is incorporated, and bring to a low simmer until the sauce thickens again. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and stir in the lemon juice and a grating of nutmeg. Pour the sauce over the ingredients in the baking dish.

Mash the potatoes well with the cream, 50g of the butter, another generous grating of nutmeg and plenty of salt and pepper. Spread or pipe the potatoes over the ingredients in the baking dish, and sprinkle with Cheddar cheese.

Bake for 40 minutes, until the cheesy top is a golden brown.

Sticky Thai garlic-chilli prawns

One of the things the area I live in really lacks is a good fishmonger. As a result, raw prawns with the shells still on are very hard to find, so whenever I spot them in the supermarket I grab about six bags and freeze them.

Why do I want to keep the shells on, you ask? It's perfectly simple; cooked like this, the shells not only add rich flavour to the flesh of the prawns, but become delicious in their own right. They're a little crunchy, a little chewy, and extremely tasty, so don't bother peeling your prawn - eat it shell and all. I wish my prawns has also had heads (ask any Chinese person; the head is the best bit), but head-on raw prawns are increasingly hard to find these days.

I was planning on barbecuing these little guys, but the summer of torrential rain shows no signs of abating, and I've barely been able to use the barbecue at all this year. If the weather's this bad where you are, put the prawns under the conventional grill. Lucky readers living where there's sunshine and enough warmth to eat outdoors should drag out the barbecue for this one.

To cook enough prawns for a very substantial meal for two (or a sensibly sized meal for three) you'll need:

500g raw, defrosted prawns with the shells on (raw frozen prawns will be blue-grey, not pink)
4 tablespoons light soya sauce
2 tablespoons sweet dark soya sauce (kejap manis)
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 bird's eye chilli
1 head garlic
1 large handful coriander, chopped

Use a sharp knife to butterfly the prawns - make a slit between the prawn's legs from the base of the tail to the place where the head was, slicing through the flesh, but not through the shell on the prawn's back. Flatten the prawns out with your hand. Cutting the prawns like this will maximise the surface area, helping them to take up the flavour of the marinade.

Mince all the cloves from the head of garlic with a large, sharp knife. (This is very easy - just lay the cloves on a chopping board and, holding the knife at the tip and the hilt and using a rocking motion, 'walk' the blade up and down the board for about five minutes. You'll find the garlic is chopped finely and evenly. It's probably not best to eat this immediately before going on a date.) Chop the chilli finely and mix it and the garlic with all the liquid ingredients. Stir the marinade mixture well to blend everything, then tip the prawns in, stirring to make sure they're well covered. Refrigerate for 40 minutes. This is quite a penetrating marinade, so don't leave the prawns for more than an hour or they will taste too strong.

When you are ready to cook the prawns, reserve the marinade and place them on a barbecue or under a very hot grill for three or four minutes per side, until they turn pink and the skins start to caramelise a little. Meanwhile, bring the marinade to a strong boil for about thirty seconds. Drizzle a little of the wonderfully garlicky cooked marinade over the prawns to serve, and dress with plenty of fresh coriander...and remember to eat those delicious shells!

Salt and pepper prawns

This Chinese appetiser is one of my favourites, and it's surprisingly easy to make at home. Szechuan peppercorns are toasted in a dry pan until they release their amazing fragrance, then combined with flours and some other seasonings to make a feathery crisp and light coating for the prawns. Garlic and aromatic spring onions (scallions for American readers) are dusted in the flour coating and fried, making a crisp and delicious garnish for the prawns.

Those American readers are probably also wondering what these prawn things I'm on about are. Sometimes these linguistic differences become downright annoying. The United Nations (not somewhere I usually visit for culinary advice, but surprisingly helpful in this instance) informs me that:

...in Great Britain the term "shrimp" is the more general of the two, and is the only term used for Crangonidae and most smaller species. "Prawn" is the more special of the two names, being used solely for Palaemondiae and larger forms, never for the very small ones.

In North America the name "prawn" is practically obsolete and is almost entirely replaced by the word "shrimp" (used for even the largest species, which may be called "jumbo shrimp"). If the word "prawn" is used at all in America it is attached to small species.

So there you have it. Every time I say 'prawn', please substitute 'large shrimp about the size of your thumb, once the head has been removed', and get frying. For salt and pepper shrimp for two, you'll need:

500g raw, shelled prawns
2 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons rice flour (rice flour will give your coating an amazing crispness)
3 tablespoons cornflour
2 tablespoons fleur de sel, Maldon salt or any salt with a flaky, crystalline form
4 spring onions (scallions)
6 cloves garlic
Flavourless oil to shallow fry

Begin by toasting the Szechuan peppercorns over a medium flame in a dry frying pan until they start to release their fragrance (about 4 minutes). Combine the toasted whole peppercorns in a large bowl with the black pepper, rice flour, cornflour and salt. This sounds like a great deal of salt, but this dish requires a lot, and you may actually find that you want to sprinkle a little more over at the end, so be generous.

Chop the garlic very roughly, and slice the spring onions into little discs.

De-vein (actually de-intestine) the prawns if you want - if I am confident with the source of my shellfish, I don't usually bother. Dredge them in the seasoned flour. Heat up a 2cm depth of oil in a thick-bottomed pan, and fry the prawns in small batches when the heat is searingly hot, turning until the coating is golden and crisp. Transfer to a kitchen paper-covered plate in a warm oven to drain and keep warm as the other prawns are cooking.

When all the prawns are ready, dredge the garlic and spring onions in the seasoned flour, using a slotted spoon to remove them from the flour bowl. Saute them in the oil you cooked the prawns in until their coating is also turning golden. Remove from the oil with the rinsed and dried slotted spoon and place on kitchen paper to remove any excess oil.

Arrange the prawns on plates, sprinkle over the onion and garlic mixture, and serve immediately.

Cha gio (nems) - Vietnamese crispy spring rolls

When Mr Weasel and I were living in Paris, we spent a lot of our time in one of the city's Chinatowns, along the Avenue d'Ivry. It's more a Cambodia-town or a Vietnam-town than London's Chinatown, which is full of Chinese people and food; France is home to many more Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian people than the UK is, and this is reflected in the food.

One of my favourite Vietnamese dishes is these spring rolls, which are very hard to find in restaurants in the UK. Many cultures cook things wrapped in other things - there is the burrito, the Malaysian po pia, the fajita, the crèpe and . . . I suppose the closest English equivalent is the Cornish pasty. The cha gio stands head and shoulders above all of these - it' s got texture and flavour to beat them all to a pulp in any contest of wrapped-up-things you may choose to imagine.

Cha gio get their texture, both crisp and chewy all at once, from the rice paper skins they are wrapped in. You can find these in good oriental supermarkets, and although they're a little fragile when dry, they're very easy to handle and wrap with. The finished rolls are wrapped in lettuce and herbs, making them taste fresh and light.

To make about sixty cha gio, you'll need:

Rolls
225g cellophane (bean thread) noodles
4 carrots, grated
8 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked
8 water chestnuts
1 dressed crab
12 raw tiger prawns, peeled and deveined
350g minced pork
1 onion
5 spring onions
4 cloves garlic
6 shallots
4 tablespoons fish sauce (nuoc mam)
3 eggs
15 x 25cm discs of rice paper (available in oriental supermarkets)

Sugar and water for soaking
Oil for deep-frying
Lettuce and mint leaves for wrapping

Sauce
4 cloves minced garlic
½ cup nuoc mam
¼ cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon chili oil
1 diced red chili

Soak the noodles in boiling water and set aside, draining and rinsing in cold water after 15 minutes. Put the mushrooms, water chestnuts, crab, pork, prawns, onions, garlic and shallots in the food processor and pulse until chopped finely. Use your hands to stir in the fish sauce, the eggs, the carrots and the noodles.

Fill a mixing bowl half-full with warm water, and dissolve about six tablespoons of caster sugar in it - the sugar will help the rolls brown and help the sweetness of the carrots come through. Soak a rice-paper disc in this until it's soft and pliable. Cut it with scissors into quarters. Place a dessert spoonful of the filling on the curved edge, fold over the adjacent corners and roll up, as in these photographs.


Deep fry the little rolls (I use a wok, which helps save on oil) until they are golden brown.

To serve, wrap each one in a leaf of lettuce with some mint leaves. Dip in the spicy sauce and do your very best to nibble delicately. Delicious.

Those visiting Paris should run, not walk to Kim Anh (51 Av Emile Zola, 15e, 01 45 79 96), where the nems are . . . pretty much as good as these, only you don't have to do all the work. (I lie. They're even better, and they're served alongside the very best Vietnamese food I've ever eaten.)