Garlic and seafood pie
Because necessity is the mother of invention, this recipe began life as Julia's wonderful Caldeirada estilo Nazaré and ended up as a very garlicky Captain's pie.
Rather than desecrate the original recipe, I have plagiarised most of it again here. I used my favourite fish, basa and sandwich prawns because they were economical. As I had no fish stock, I thought a high quality, ready-made leek and potato soup would work instead. The final deviation was to put in a good slug of sherry instead of white wine and a mix of chervil and parsley. Otherwise, everything is pretty similar to the original.
Ingredients
Printable 🖨 shopping 🛒 list & 👩🍳 method for this recipe
- 2 onions, peeled and diced
- 1 bulb garlic, peeled and crushed
- 1 red pepper, sliced or you can use an equivalent mixture of colours
- Olive oil
- 1 litre leek and potato soup
- 265 g basa fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1/2 cup of dry sherry
- 400 g tin tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon tomato purée
- 2 fresh bay leaves
- Salt and pepper
- A good pinch of saffron strands
- Parsley and chervil (celery leaves or cutting celery), chopped
- 250 g prawns
- 4 large potatoes
- 2 tablespoons of butter and a dash of milk for the mashed potato
Mise en place
- Preheat oven to 180° C (350° F - gas 4)
- Peel, quarter and boil the potatoes, drain well
Method
- Heat some olive oil and sauté the onions, garlic and peppers until they are soft.
- In the meantime, poach the fish in the soup for about 20 minutes.
- Add the sherry to the onion mixture, raise the heat and and reduce by about half.
- Add the tomatoes, tomato purée, bay leaves, seasoning and saffron and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
- Discarding the bay leaves, spread the tomato and onion mixture over the bottom of an oven proof dish.
- Add the chopped chervil and parsley to the soup/fish and mix well
- Sprinkle the prawns over the top of the tomato mix
- Pour the soup mixture over that top of the prawns
- Mash the potatoes with the butter, a little milk and season well
- Fork the mash on top of the prawns, creating 4 separate layers
- Bake for about 30 minutes at the top of the oven
Chef's note
If (like this one) the dish is quite full, lay a sheet of tin-foil under the dish to save on the oven cleaning.
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