From My Kitchen

A recipe that largely comes out of the store cupboard you say? YES PLEASE. If you happen to have some fish in the freezer, then you might even be able to whip this up without much ado at all. Serves 4.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

10g butter

1 stick celery, halved & sliced

2 small shallots, diced

2 sliced garlic cloves

2 sprigs rosemary

25g parsley, leaves and stalks separated

75ml white wine

400g tin chopped tomatoes

1/2 jar roasted red peppers, diced

2 tins beans (butter, flageolet, cannellini)

100ml veg stock

1 lemon

500g chunky white fish

Salt & pepper

Method

1. Heat the oil and butter in a large frying pan and add in the celery, shallots, sliced garlic, rosemary and chopped parsley stalks along with a good pinch of salt. Fry gently for 10 mins or so until the shallots and celery are really tender (but don’t let them colour).
2. Add the wine, mix well and leave to cook for another couple of minutes.
3. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, peppers, beans and stock, bring to the boil then simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Season the fish on both sides and nestle into the stew, cover the pan and cook for a further 10 minutes until the fish is opaque and cooked through (it should flake easily if you nudge it with a spatula).
5. While the fish cooks make the gremolata by zesting the lemon and finely chopping the parsley leaves and mixing the two together. In theory you should add in a finely grated garlic clove, but that’s RAW GARLIC which I find utterly indigestible, so I don’t do that!
6. Check the stew for seasoning and remove the rosemary sprigs if you can find them, or warn everyone that they’re still in there if you can’t.
7. Serve with some crusty bread for mopping, the lemon cut into wedges, and the gremolata artfully sprinkled on top.