Yesterday I did this vaguely Iberian fish stew. I love raw fennel in a salad with fish, but have often been disappointed when cooking fennel as the aniseed taste goes if cooked too long. A stew is a good place to combine white fish with oily fish. I had hoped to buy coley (more sustainable than cod) but did not find it at my local fish counter

Serves 4

Ingredients

200 g chorizo
mackerel fillets (about 350 g)
one cod fillet (about 150 g)
two medium onions
one fennel bulb
1 tsp fennel seed
1 large sprig thyme
2 tbsp wild garlic oil (alternatively 3 large cloves of garlic)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp paprika
500 g passata
olive oil
salt & pepper
100 ml water

Method

1. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with sufficient olive oil to just cover it and heat it
2. Finely chop the chorizo and fry gently in the pan
3. Add the fennel seed
4. Once the chorizo fat is released, chop the onions and sweat with the chorizo for 5 minutes
5. Add the passata, bay leaves, paprika, wild garlic oil, water, salt and pepper and simmer for 15 minutes
6. Chop the fennel bulb into thin slices and add to stew
7. Simmer for a further 15 minutes
8. Scale the mackerel and slice into bite size pieces, slice cod into bite size pieces and add both to stew
9. Serve after 5 minutes

The stew could be served with potatoes or couscous but we served it with boiled rice. I boiled 400 g in the rice cooker then just before serving mixed 50 ml white wine, 25 ml white wine vinegar and 1 tsp sugar and folded this through the rice.