Food and Cooking

White fish and bacon parcels – RECIPE

Here’s a meal of oven-baked fish wrapped in bacon! Customise it with an optional olive and anchovy paste for those who like stronger flavours. Use frozen fish to cut the cost.

Ingredients
For the tapenade (optional)
1 small bunch flatleaf parsley, roughly chopped
3-4 sun-dried tomatoes, to taste
15g/½oz black or green pitted olives, roughly chopped
1 tbsp capers, roughly chopped
1-2 anchovies (optional)
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

For the fish
500g/1lb 2oz frozen white fish (cod, pollock and monkfish work best), defrosted
200g/7oz unsmoked bacon medallions
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
To serve
steamed broccoli

Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6.

For the tapenade, mash the parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, capers and anchovies in a bowl until just broken up. Add the olive oil and continue mashing until it becomes a thick, spreadable paste. Season with pepper then set aside while you prepare the fish.

Cut the fish into thick fingers about 2cm/¾in wide and 8cm/3in long if possible. Cut the bacon medallions in half lengthways then, using the back of the knife, flatten the bacon out lengthways, stretching it as you go. This will make it thin and long enough to wrap around the fish.

If you have made the tapenade, brush the fish with the tapenade all over, then wrap with the bacon. If not using the tapenade, simply wrap a strip of bacon around the fish to cover as much of the middle as possible

Put the fish, join side down on an oven tray and bake for 10-15 minutes until the bacon is crispy and the fish has cooked through. Serve with the steamed broccoli.

Source: BBC FOODS