Our pal Stew came to visit recently and with the fishing season newly started, and our wee boat in the water nice and early, Stew and I hit the waves to catch dinner. Gluten free food wifie was in the blocks for a backup dash to the fishmonger.
But (amazingly), our luck was in and we boated several pollack, one large enough to feed a family of six. So home he came with us for dinner.
Stew had just returned from visiting friends in Goa (oh, he does get about). The Goans know a little bit about fish, and the classic way of cooking it over there is to smear over some curry paste then deep fry it, so we decided to have a go.
We keep a fantastic gluten free thai curry paste in the fridge so we added a little oil to make it spread, cut the pollack into steaks, and marinaded it for a couple of hours.
Then the fish was seasoned, tossed in polenta and dropped into about half a centimetre of hot oil. The steaks were about 2cm thick, and so we cooked it for about 3 minutes per side.
The finished item was beautiful – spicy, crunchy and full of flavour. It seems that coating fish in polenta is a great way to get that elusive deep-fried fish effect in a gluten free style.