Roasted fish and potatoes with Café de Paris butter
- Prepare
- less than 30 mins
- Cook
- 30 mins to 1 hour
- Serve
- Serves 2
I love roasting fish over a tray of seasonal veg, it’s such a simple, flexible midweek dinner and can easily be doubled if you are cooking for more people. Café de Paris butter is a spiced butter flavoured with curry powder, garlic, mustard, anchovies and tarragon. It's traditionally paired with steak, but I love it with fish too, and it finishes off this simple traybake beautifully.
Ingredients
For the Café de Paris butter
- 80g/3oz butter
- ½ banana shallot, very finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, grated
- 1 anchovy
- 1 tsp curry powder
- ½ tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp capers, rinsed
- 15g/½oz freshly chopped tarragon
- lemon juice, to finish
For the fish bake
- 200g/7oz courgette
- 300g/10½oz new potatoes
- 1 unwaxed lemon
- 4 garlic cloves, left whole but lightly crushed to loosen the skins
- 2 portions of white fish (or even one larger piece), sea bass, hake, even fish on the bone is great
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- salt
Method
First make the butter. Add 30g/1oz of butter to a small pan with the shallot and a pinch of salt. Cook very gently, you don’t want any colour here, until the shallot is sweet and tender. Add the anchovy and grated garlic. Cook for a few minutes further.
Add the 50g/1¾oz butter with the curry powder, mustard and capers. Heat gently for a minute stirring to combine, so the curry powder infuses. Then turn off the heat and add the tarragon and a little squeeze of lemon juice. Have a taste, it should be absolutely delicious! Adjust the seasoning if necessary with more lemon, curry powder, or any adjustments needed, then set the pan to one side.
Preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7.
Cut slice the courgettes and potatoes into chunks or slices of fairly even size. Cut off a generous third of the lemon, place cut-side down on a board, cut in half and then slice thinly to make small triangles.
Add the courgettes, potatoes, lemon and garlic to a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and mix together. Arrange the vegetables in a small baking tray in an even layer. Make sure the garlic is hidden under the other vegetables to stop it burning in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, take the fish from the fridge and pat completely dry using kitchen paper. Season with salt and drizzle with olive oil.
By now the veg should be sizzling and beginning to caramelise, place the fish on top (skin-side up if you're not using skinned fillets). If your fish has skin, it's best finished under a hot grill for 10 minutes (a thicker piece may need longer). If using skinless fish fillets, continue to bake until the fish is cooked through and the potatoes are tender.
Remove from the oven. Warm up the butter and serve spooned generously over the fish with a wedge of lemon alongside.
Recipe tips
Typically you might blend up a big batch of the butter, which I often do as it’s a nice thing to have in the fridge. But here I’ve made it in a pan where you have much more control of the final flavour and aren’t making such a vast amount.
If you need this recipe to be gluten free, check the label on the mustard. Most Dijon mustard is gluten free but some aren't.
