Seafood Chowder

I got back from Boston with a craving for MORE CHOWDER. I really should have a go at making a cob loaf to serve this in, but homemade breadmaker sourdough will have to suffice until the weather is cool enough to switch the oven on. This is also not as heart-attack-inducing as a proper Boston seafood chowder and can be eaten as lunch or dinner without pre-charging the defibrillator. If you want to up the ante, double the flour, reduce the stock to the absolute minimum that covers the vegetables, and top up with double the listed amount of the thickest cream you can find, just before serving. I can never make just enough for two so this (with bread) will do for four people.

Ingredients:

• 1 onion or leek
• 100g lardons OR smoked fish
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 stick celery
• 3 potatoes
• a bay leaf
• 1 tbsp flour
• 750ml litre chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 corn cobs, or a tin of sweet corn
• 500g marinara mix (a mix of white fish, salmon, squid, peeled prawns, and mussels)
• 200ml thickened or double cream
• Salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• a bunch of fresh parsley

Method:
Peel or clean and finely chop the onion or leek. Fry in a deep pan in a little butter or olive oil until translucent and soft. If using the lardons, add at the same time as the onions, so they cook and turn golden. (Don't add smoked fish at this stage!) Meanwhile, dice the carrot, celery and potatoes (no need to peel them). Add the vegetables and the bay leaf to the cooked onions, stir in the flour, then pour over the stock; bring up to a simmer and then allow the vegetables to cook to just past al dente -- about 10-12 minutes. If you like your potato to be falling apart, cook a little longer. Slice the corn off the cob (or drain the tin) and add, along with the marinara mix, and the smoked fish if using. Bring back up to temperature and allow to cook through, a matter of minutes for the fish and the corn. (Be particularly careful not to boil any squid in the marinara mix for more than 30 seconds, or it will go tough!) Once the fish is cooked through, stir in the cream and bring back up to temperature, but do not allow the chowder to boil. Serve in a cob or in bowls, scattered over with finely chopped parsley.

Fried Spicy Fish

Lazy meal for one tonight: a lovely fillet of bronzy shark from the fishmonger's, dipped in a mix of crushed dried chillis, coriander, turmeric and salt, then fried for a minute or two either side, and served on a bed of stir-fried Chinese greens. Minutes to make, heaven to eat. (Days of guilt over eating shark . :-/ )

Almond-Crusted Salmon

Once again left alone for the weekend! This time I'm a sailing-widow. Makes me less worried about leaving him for the Murchison when I go up for telescope-commissioning for a week and a half! Unfortunately we have a house inspection on Monday so the house needs to be spotless before then. So after the man returns from sailing we need to do a huge amount of cleaning - no way am I doing it all myself!

So we'd need something fast, but also filling after a day sailing and cleaning... when I popped to the supermarket to get new milk, I dropped into the fishmonger and picked up some very nice salmon fillets, oddly the cheapest fish in there despite its Tasmanian origins. I really wanted to cook them with almonds, but not just the usual flaked almonds one pairs with trout. A quick google revealed this recipe, which I was a little skeptical about, but with a small modification, worked perfectly. The salmon was moist and tender, the almonds crispy and nutty, and the meal was complete with a dollop of smooth, creme fraiche-enriched mashed potato, and a generous bunch of wilted spinach sprinkled with sea salt and lemon juice. Fantastic!

Ingredients:

• a couple of plump salmon fillets
• a couple of handfuls of whole almonds
• 2-3 tbsp parsley leaves
• one egg (well, half an egg is enough, but where will you get half an egg??)
• plain flour

Season the salmon fillets with salt and pepper. Blitz the almonds and parsley together in a blender, pulsing until the almonds are a coarse kibble, but not a powder. Beat the egg with a fork on a plate. Dredge the seasoned fillets in flour, shaking off any excess. Dip the skinless side into the egg and then into the topping, pressing half of it into each fillet. Fry, topping-side down in a medium-heat plan in a glug of olive oil. (Amazingly, the topping will stick on to the salmon!) After a couple of minutes, flip to the skin-side and fry for a few more minutes, until the salmon is tender and the skin is crispy. Serve with potatoes, greens, and lemon wedges.

Stir-fried Snapper with Sesame and Ginger

The other half is away orienteering (or 'rogaining' as they call it here) this weekend. For me a supper for one is a chance to experiment and buy an expensive ingredient :) I pick up a gorgeous snapper fillet from the fishmonget, bouncy to the touch with just the tiniest scent of the ocean. As this is a stir-fry it's important to prepare everything before you start, even if it feels slow. Everything happens at once at the end! For once, quantities are for one.

Ingredients:

• four tbsp sesame seeds
• a stalk and leaves of a large broccoli, or the florets if you prefer
• a good-sized snapper fillet
• a 75g bundle of udon
• an inch-long piece of ginger
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• juice of half a lemon
• 2-3 tbsp light soy sauce

Start by dry-frying the sesame seeds over a moderate heat, turning occasionally until they are golden brown and smelling gorgeous. Remove from the heat. Wash the broccoli, remove and reserve the leaves, and peel the hard skin from the stalk. Julienne the soft inside into strips. Peel and grate or finely dice the ginger. Rest the udon in some hot water to separate the noodles, or if dried, cook according to the packet instructions.

Cut the snapper fillet into bite-size pieces, and dredge in flour, shaking off the excess. Heat some vegetable oil in a shallow pan and fry the pieces of snapper for a minute or two each side, until golden brown. Meanwhile, stir-fry the broccoli with the ginger for a minute or so, until the leaves are beginning to wilt. Add the udon and the rest of the ingredients and bubble for a further minute. Stir through half of the sesame seeds, then serve, topped with the snapper and the remaining seeds, with more soy sauce to drizzle and the other half lemon to squeeze over.

Laksa Lemak

This is a slightly vegetable-fortified version of a very seafood-heavy Singaporean soup from my humungous Asian cooking compendium. The whole house now smells of prawns but it was worth it :)

Ingredients:

• 10 raw prawns (or more if you're hungry)
• a large handful of rice vermicelli
• 1 tsp dried shrimp paste (don't inhale, lol)
• 1 large onion, peeled and cut into big pieces
• 1 tsp galangal powder
• 6 candlenuts
• 1 stem lemongrass
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• a 200g chunk of pumpkin, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 200ml of coconut milk (or thereabouts)
• a large handful of frozen peas
• one lime
• fried tofu, cooked crab or fish cakes (add if you're very hungry)
• a quarter of a cucumber
• a small bag of beansprouts

Peel and devein the prawns; reserve the flesh in the fridge and put the heads and shells in a stockpot. Cover with at least 300ml of boiling water and boil for 30 minutes, to produce a rich prawn stock. Drain and discard the heads and shells. Soak the rice vermicelli in hot water for 10 minutes, then drain.

In a food processor, blend the shrimp paste, onion, galangal powder, candlenuts and lemongrass, then fry for 7-8 minutes, turning frequently, until the mixture has darkened and reduced a little. Add the prawn stock and simmer for twenty minutes, then add the pumpkin and cook for a further five -- or until the pumpkin is almost done. Stir in the coconut milk, frozen peas, cooked vermicelli and add the raw prawns. Bring up to a simmer and cook for a few minutes; turn off the heat as soon as the prawns are cooked. Juice in half of the lime, and cut the other half into wedges.

Slice the cucumber thinly and add to the bean sprouts in a separate bowl; add the lime wedges to decorate. Serve the soup in deep bowls, topped with the extra protein if you're very hungry. Take handfuls of salad and top the soup, add a splash of lime juice and soy sauce and eat the salad with the soup. Yum!

Dark 'n' Stormy Salmon

Feeling considerably better today, and trying to stay with it by DOING ALL THE THINGS. This includes inventing new meals in between walking in the Perth hills and playing board games with new friends. I was going to dress this salmon fillet simply with soy sauce and lime zest when the ginger in the fridge caught my eye. I thought it would go well with the lime zest. Then I remembered we had a bottle of rum somewhere - and that goes well with both lime and ginger. And what tops all of that off is a dash of brown sugar - all the ingredients you need for a dark n stormy cocktail! So I figured out a method and put it all together, and served it with some simply stir-fried pak choi and plain white rice. Lovely.

Everything is under control.

Ingredients:

• a couple of plump salmon fillets
• a generous thumb of ginger
• one fat juicy lime, preferably unwaxed
• 1 heaped dessert spoon of brown sugar
• 50ml rum
• matches

Check over your fillets for any bones. BBQ or pan-fry, skin-side down, until the skin is crispy and golden. Turn and sear the other side until golden. Remove immediately.

I should get massively jet-lagged more often.

Meanwhile, peel and finely chop the ginger. Zest the lime, and finely chop the zest. Put the ginger, lime zest and sugar in a very small heavy reduction pan and cook until the sugar begins to melt. Turn off the heat. Measure out the rum, and light a match. Pour the rum into the hot pan with one hand, then bring in the match with the other. The alcohol vapour should catch and you should end up with a merry little flame in your pan for a minute or so.

When the flame goes out, juice in half of the lime. Pour over the salmon and serve with the remaining lime half cut into wedges.

Snapper Fillet and Pumpkin Mash

Been having a crazy busy couple of weeks so falling back on a lot of previously-tested recipes, like this one for a robust marinade for some yummy snapper. This time the carbs are helpfully provided by a couple of potatoes, augmented by a few chunks of pumpkin five minutes before being boiled to tenderness, then fluffed into a coarse mash with a swirl of creme fraiche.

BBQ Snapper with Basil, Lime and Chilli

Back to the old butcher today - and they had a couple of huge snapper fillets for sale! Bit of a treat, so we picked them up along with the rest of our purchases, and I marinaded them before popping them on the barbie. We also had Sophie's pots, and the still-cheap-and-awesome-corn-on-the-cob.

Ingredients:

• one lime
• half a chilli
• a small bunch of basil
• a spring onion
• two large snapper fillets
• olive oil

Using a sharp knife, peeler, or zester, remove the zest from the lime and finely chop, along with the chilli, basil and spring onion. Coat the fillets with the mixture and drizzle over a little olive oil, and squeeze over the juice from half of the lime. Leave for at least half an hour, up to three hours (chill if the room is warm). BBQ for 4-5 minutes per side, until seared golden, and cooked all the way through.

Sweet and Sour Fish Tempura

This morning I went via the supermarket to stock up on supplies for my gliding trip tomorrow. On the way out I popped into the fishmonger and got some lovely little white fish fillets. (I wish I could remember what they were, but it was one of these Southern Hemisphere fish and I haven't memorised them all yet!) They were small anyway, and sweet and fresh. I was daydreaming about how to prepare them and had a strong craving for my sweet and sour sauce. So I figured we could follow the same recipe, but tempura the fish instead of stir-frying it, as it was so delicate and fragile.

Super-husband made all the sauce, set the deep-fryer up, egg-fried the rice and stir-fried the vegetables while I was out Zumba-ing, then I came home and whisked up this batter in a couple of minutes, dunked the fish, and they took just minutes in the fryer. On removal, the batter was crisp and light, and the fish tender and steaming hot, cooked to perfection. Some of the bottom ones did stick to the mesh, I need to work on that... but it did give us an excuse to eat some of the broken ones fresh out of the fryer, tossing them from hand to hand to cool them fast enough to eat. I tried out a new batter today, with a few more additions compared to my usual super-simple version. It was excellent - maybe a tad lighter and crisper!

Ingredients

• one egg white
• 1/4 cup of plain white flour
• 1/4 cup of white rice flour
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 cup of ice-cold water
• 300g fish fillets, descaled, deboned

Fill your deep fryer and set it to 180 C. If your fillets are thicker than 1cm, slice them widthwise into thinner pieces. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg white by hand until somewhere between frothy and just beginning to go white and form peaks. Put the flours and sugar in a large bowl, and pour in all of the water and the egg white. Stir everything together for maximum one minute, stopping as soon as you see no more visible powdery flour. Lumps are fine.

Lower the basket in the fryer into the oil. Dip each piece of fish into the batter, lift out, let drip of excess and then drop gently into the hot oil, using tongs if necessary. Close the lid and deep-fry for 4 minutes; lift the basket and check. The tempura should just be going a tiny bit gold, and the fish will be cooked through. Pop onto a plate with some paper towel; if you are making many batches, try to serve out as quickly as possible.

Giant Red Snapper with Mandarin

Another hot day, another great evening to bring out the barbie and some Great Australian Seafood! The local fishmonger was selling an absolutely enormous red snapper, which we figured would be enough for six hungry people. I'd bought some great juicy mandarins in the market and thought a citrus-y tang might be appropriate. So we cut it into thin slices and laid them on and in the fish, then put it on the barbecue for a good half an hour - twenty minutes in we were ready to eat, but the fish was just so huge that it still wasn't done :)

It doesn't even fit on my largest serving platter!

The mandarin pieces went lovely and golden, and were edible even down to the peel, if a little awkward. Maybe this dish could be iterated a bit, but it was delicious with the lemon-mustard-seed rice and yet more pepper-and-pomegranate salad.

Shark with Spiced Rice and Orange and Avocado Salsa

Terrible person alert: I saw shark at a fishmonger and bought it. Then ate it. Argh. But it was such a delicious apex predator! I can only hope I'm so delicious when our insect overlords finally arrive. I don't know how to cook shark, so I had a look round on the internet, then invented my own recipe. It was pretty awesome.

Ingredients:

• For the shark:
• 300g of shark fillets
• half a cup of orange juice
• 1 red chilli, finely chopped
• For the rice:
• a handful of cashew nuts
• 200g basmati rice
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• two bay leaves
• two lime leaves
• a handful of frozen peas
• 1 tsp black mustard seeds
• butter
• For the salsa:
• 1 ripe avocado
• 1 ripe orange
• juice of half a lime
• a handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped
• a little finely chopped red onion (optional)

Marinade the shark for 1-24 hours in the orange juice and chilli.

Halve, peel and cut the avocado into chunky pieces. Peel the orange with a sharp knife and cut segments out, leaving all the pith behind. Squeeze the juice from the remaining core and combine with the orange segments, avocado pieces, chopped coriander, lime juice and onion, if using. Stand for 30min-2 hours before serving.

Toast the cashew nuts, either in a non-stick pan on the hob or in a 200C oven for five minutes. Put the rice, turmeric, cinnamon, coriander, bay and lime leaves in a small saucepan and add hot water at a 2:1 ratio. Simmer gently for 10 minutes, until the rice is cooked but still has form. Fry the mustard seeds in butter for thirty seconds then stir through with the peas. Chop the cashews and just before you serve.

Brush a cast-iron ridged griddle pan with vegetable oil and heat until it is just beginning to smoke. Fry the shark fillets for 90 seconds each side, until charred with grill marks and cooked through. Serve on top of the rice, with a dollop of salsa on top and more in a bowl to serve.

Barramundi and Pepper Curry

This is roughly based on a taste.com.au recipe, but with red pepper (capsicum, as they call it here) substituted for the chick peas. Personally I would cut them a lot smaller than the SO did, but he was cooking while I was out exercising, so I can't complain :)

Ingredients:

• a fresh long red chilli, deseeded, coarsely chopped
• a stem lemon grass, white part only, finely chopped
• 1small white onion, peeled, chopped
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 thumb fresh ginger
• 2 tsp chopped fresh coriander root
• 1 red pepper (capsicum), deseeded and cut into small pieces
• 1 tin of coconut milk
• 125ml chicken stock
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 300g barramundi fillets, cut into large pieces
• a handful of frozen peas

Blend the chilli, lemongrass, onion, garlic, ginger and coriander roots in a blender until minced. Fry paste in a wok over medium heat for 1 minute, then add the diced red pepper and fry, stirring, for another 2-3 minutes. Add the stock, fish sauce and sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, for another couple of minutes. Add fish and cook for 2-3 minutes or until flesh flakes easily when tested with a fork. Add chickpeas and frozen peas and heat through; serve with plain rice.

BBQ'd Lemon and Herb Snapper

Just a quick meal on a Sunday evening- a few snapper fillets marinaded in lemon juice and a finely chopped mix of mint, coriander and parsley for a couple of hours. Whacked them on the barbie with a couple of sweetcorn - so we were able to test our shiny new corn-on-the-cob holders! Rounded off with yummy barbcue-side rice.

Pan-fried Emperor Fillets with Honey and Basil

The seafood here is very nice, although there don't seem to be many independent fishmongers around my area, and a lot of what you get in the supermarkets has been frozen. One thing that really threw us is that salmon is an expensive delicacy here, as opposed to being a cheap 'default' fish like it is in the UK. On the other hand there are lots of fish we would consider exotic readily available from any fish counter. One such is the emperor; I tried finding out exactly what species it is but haven't figured it out so far. The fillets are about 10cm long and less than 1cm thick, so pan-fry beautifully.

I first cooked this with my new heavy-based frying pan about a week after we had arrived, and was so excited, I forgot to take a photo before demolishing the plate! So this time I've recorded the results. We served these simply with mashed royal purple potatoes (a lovely variety you can get here, but any will do) and some steamed vegetables.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 emperor fillets per person
• a few tbsp of flour
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• 2 tbsp honey
• a generous handful of basil

Check over the fillets for any spare bones etc. Season the flour and thoroughly coat the fillets, then shake off any excess. Heat a few tbsp of oil in a heavy-based non-stick frying pan until moderately hot and beginning to shimmer, but not smoke. Err on the side of less oil rather than more. Carefully add the fish fillets and fry until golden, turning once. Remove the fillets from the pan, turn off the heat, then add the honey and basil. Mix together with any remaining oil, warming the honey and basil mixture, until it just begins to pop and simmer. Remove from the heat and drizzle over the fish, serving with your poatotes and vegetables.

Smoked Mackerel Salad

This was a quick meal thrown together after a nice walk in the sunshine. Tasty and easy to leave until the end of the week, as the vacuum-packed smoked mackerel fillets keep very well in the refrigerator.

Ingredients:

• One pack of mackerel fillets (usually 2-4 large pieces)
• 8-10 baby new potatoes
• lettuce or other salad leaves
• handful of parsley
• a handful of cherry tomatoes
• 1 tbsp capers
• 2 tbsp crème fraîche
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar

Scrub and simmer the potatoes until just tender, about 15 minutes. Skin and tear the mackerel fillets into smaller pieces. Finely chop the parsley, quarter the cherry tomatoes, wash and roughly chop the lettuce leaves, and add to a salad bowl with the mackerel and cooked potatoes. Shake the rest of the ingredients in a jam jar and pour over, then toss to combine.

Chinese Steamed Sea Bass and Egg-Fried Rice

After a long but quite fun drive up to Edinburgh, we had a cup of tea, a stroll and then made this light and delicious meal for four - my sisters had yet to arrive. Originally there was an official recipe in an official book, but  that has disappeared into the mists of time, and now this is an improvisational recipe doable with whatever springs to hand. I've done this with red mullet, flavoured with spring onions, shavings of root ginger and coriander stems. Tonight we go for something a little deeper-flavoured, as the weather up here is about 15 C cooler than the Southern heatwave!

Ingredients:
For the fish:

• 4 fresh sea bass or bream
• a few tbsp of fermented black beans
• 3 balls of stem ginger in syrup

For the rice:

• 300g white (basmati) rice
• 3 spring onions
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• a cup of frozen peas
• soy sauce

For the vegetables:

• any good stir-friable vegetables, like baby sweetcorn, sugarsnap peas, red or yellow peppers, chinese leaf, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, mushrooms, etc
• 150 ml chicken stock
• 50 ml cold water
• 2 tbsp cornflour

Gut, scale and clean the fish, and slash two or three times across the fattest part of the meat. Finely dice the ginger and stuff the fish with it and the black beans. Wrap in foil and bake at 180C for 30 minutes, or put in a steamer and steam for 20 minutes.

If you like, clean the rice with a few rinses of cold water -- I don't, but my dad does! Simmer in twice as much water until cooked through, and drain if necessary. Leave aside to cool a little. Heat a deep frying pan with peanut or refined sesame oil, and once shimmering, add the rice and toss about to fry. Roughly chop the spring onions, move the rice aside and add them to the pan, with a little more oil if necessary. Once they are cooked, move them aside and pour in the eggs, again with a little more oil if needed. Allow to cook through on the bottom, then flip over and fry the other side. When it is nearly cooked through, break it up with a spatula. Add the cup of peas and combine all the ingredients together. Splash over a little soy sauce and serve immediately.

For the vegetables, stir fry them in order of decreasing cooking time, cooking things like carrots and peppers at the beginning, and soft things like beanspouts and greens just at the end. Each time, add your vegetable selection, toss about at a high heat, then add a few tbsp of chicken stock and cover to steam-cook. Mix the cornflour into the cold water, and when you run out of stock and vegetables, add this, bring up to a simmer and allow to reduce to a light sauce. Taste and season with fish and soy sauce if needed.

Trout with Honeyed Almonds

The SO is finally back from the US, so I took the day off to catch up - we missed our 9th anniversary together by two days so this was lovely recompense. We wandered into town on an amazingly warm spring day, enjoying the sun in sandals and shirtsleeves. From the as-always excellent market, we picked up enough food for the next few days, including two trout from the fishmonger, a rare treat for a midweek supper. They were so fresh they looked almost alive, and when washing them it felt like they were trying to jump out of our hands!

Almonds are a classic accompaniment to trout; here I add a couple of extra ingredients which I recalled went well in the past. Don't neglect the basil; it really does add another dimension of flavour. This would work well served with pasta with a little crème fraîche, or wild rice, or even just a crusty loaf of bread. But after the sun went down, the day became a little cooler, and we decided to split a baked potato to keep ourselves warm. Any greens will do but we used the last of the chard, cooked for minutes in its own juices and pillow-soft.

Ingredients:

• Two whole trout, heads and tail-fins removed if desired
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 thin slices of butter
• plain flour
• 100g flaked almonds
• 2 tbsp honey
• juice of half a lemon
• a medium bunch of basil, stalks removed

Clean the trout thoroughly, then dip it in a tray of plain flour and shake off the excess. Heat one of the slices of butter and the tbsp of olive oil in a heavy-based non-stick frying pan, stirring to combine them as the butter melts. When the butter is just popping, lay the two trout in the pan. Fry over a gentle heat for 7 minutes per side, or until the flesh is cooked and falling off the bone.

When the trout are done, place on plates with your accompaniments. Wipe out the non-stick pan with kitchen roll, then drop in the other slice of butter. When this has melted, add the almonds and sautee until they are golden-brown. Meanwhile, combine the honey and lemon juice throughly in a bowl. Pout this mixture over the almonds and switch the heat off. Throw in the basil leaves and stir, allowing the liquid to reduce by about a third. Then pour over the trout, and serve immediately. A glass of white wine would not go amiss :)

Smoked Mackerel Chowder

Mmmmmmmm, I love chowder! It took a long time for me to pluck up the courage to try making it, as I'd had so many good versions in restaurants and it always looked like it would be complicated, with a strong potential for ruining lots of nice seafood. The best way to start making chowder is to use a strongly-flavoured and robust fish, without messing around with different shellfish and getting all the cooking times correct.

On Saturdays there is a fishmonger in Cambridge market, and he sells an excellent range of fresh and smoked fish. We love the whole smoked mackerel, which work perfectly in this recipe - or just flaked on toast, or a baked potato. If you can't locate good smoked mackerel, you can try the vacuum-sealed fillets available from supermarkets, but they'll lack the creamy tenderness of properly smoked fish.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole smoked mackerel or a packet of vacuum-sealed mackerel fillets
• 1 peeled onion or well-washed leek
• 1 large or 2 small potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 3 sticks of celery
• large handful of parsley
• a few bay leaves
• 500ml vegetable or fish stock
• 1 small tin of sweetcorn
• 100ml cream

Strip the skin and bones from the whole mackerel, and flake the flesh into large pieces, discarding bones as you go. You can make a very strongly-flavoured stock from the skin and bones, if you have time: just boil them in a saucepan for 10 minutes. Finely chop the onion or leek and fry in a deep pan at a low heat, until it begins to go translucent. Cube the potatoes and carrots, and dice the celery and parsley. Add the vegetables and a few bay leaves to the pan, and fry with the onions for a few minutes, scooping from the bottom so they don't stick.

Add the stock and season with pepper. Don't be tempted to add salt just yet, as smoked fish is often salty itself. Cook until the vegetables are just tender - about 10 minutes. Gently combine in the flaked mackerel, drained tin of sweetcorn and the cream. You can use double cream if you're feeling luxurious, single for a tasty midweek supper, or even reduced-fat creme fraiche if you're watching the calories. Cover for a minute or two, allowing the chowder to reheat, and remove from the heat just as it comes to a simmer. Taste for seasoning; it may need a little salt at this point. Serve with crusty bread to mop up the juices.