A walk on the wild side

Mrs Walsh's stuffed baked flounder. Photos supplied.
Mrs Walsh's stuffed baked flounder. Photos supplied.
Tony Smith.
Tony Smith.
The Book.
The Book.

When Tony Smith was growing up in Alexandra he grew to love rivers.

Now back from two years working as a chef in India, his book A River Rules My Kitchen (HarperCollins) has just been published.

It features recipes for wild food, from tahr in the mountains to whitebait and estuary fish, as well as things such as watercress, wild blackberries, gooseberries and elderflowers.

He wanted the book to be useful for people who didn't hunt and shoot.

''When I was a kid someone would pass Mum a piece of beautiful salmon over the back fence.

"A lot of people get given something like a rabbit or a hare and don't have too much idea what to do with it so it probably ... gets disposed of in the annual freezer clean-out,'' he said.

The young Tony spent holidays at his grandparents' crib at Karitane and loved fishing. He used to cook whatever he caught, he said.

''I'd put it in a pan with a squeeze of lemon on top. I never knew how to bone them out so I cooked them whole and learned to eat around the bones,'' he said.

The former executive chef of the Crowne Plaza in Christchurch, Smith accepted a job offer in New Delhi after the earthquakes.

''It was a wonderful couple of years, an incredible learning experience and humbling ... I was fascinated by the breads in India, the complexity of it all. The food is much more complex than I ever imagined, between provinces and regions, not to mention the vegetarian aspect.''

He has a tandoor oven on its way from India and says when friends come round, instead of a barbecue he will cook in the tandoor.

When he started writing the book several years ago, he decided to mention river pollution and didymo but not in depth.

However, he thinks it is probably now worse than before he left.

''It's an absolute disaster. I've been to a lot of favourite spots even before I went away and I've been devastated by what I've seen in places I didn't think would be affected by it. I'm not sure it's been helped by the way we look after our rivers.''

 


Mrs Walsh's stuffed baked flounder with potatoes
Serves 4

I was given an old fundraiser book by [well-known Canterbury cooking personality] Gwen Kerr after she saw me demonstrate an Anzac Day dish on Canterbury Television a few years back. It is a book of homestyle recipes compiled by the Victoria League Girls Club in Auckland. The book was priced at one shilling and printed in 1916. It is not a grand book but is very special to me. I have adapted the recipe and wording a little and I trust the contributor, Mrs Walsh of Parnell, won't have minded. This recipe turns the flounder into a two-course meal.

Ingredients

2 slices bread
80g butter
2 rashers bacon, diced
1 small onion, diced
a good handful of fresh parsley, chopped, plus extra for garnish
1 tsp picked thyme, chopped
salt and freshly ground blackpepper
4 flounder
8 small potatoes
1 small red onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
2 tbsp olive oil
sea salt and fresh black pepper
1 lemon, quartered

 

Method

Process the bread into breadcrumbs in a food processor. Melt 20g butter, cook the bacon and onion a little and add the breadcrumbs, parsley and thyme. Mix well to make a stuffing, and season with salt and pepper. Cut through the skin along the back of each flounder. Carefully slide the knife against the bones and lift the fillets a little, leaving a pocket. Place the stuffing into the fish.

Preheat the oven to 180degC (fan-forced).

Peel and boil the potatoes in salted water (if they are new season's you can choose not to peel them). Place the onion and garlic in a roasting dish along with half of the remaining butter and olive oil (you may need two roasting dishes if the flounder are a good size). Put the flounder on top and add the rest of the butter and olive oil. Bake for 10 minutes then turn on the grill to crisp them up a little. If you are using two roasting pans just switch them around halfway through cooking.

While the flounder and potatoes are cooking chop the parsley and keep aside.

When the flounder are cooked place them on four plates. Serve with a lemon quarter, and eat as the first course.

Drain the potatoes and pour the cooking juices from the flounder over them. After eating the flounder, remove the bone frames from your plates, retaining any juices that are left. Spoon the potatoes on to the plate and with the back of your fork mash or squash them a little along with the plate juices then sprinkle over the parsley and eat these as your second course. The buttery cooking juices make the potatoes a great dish on their own.

 


The book

• Reproduced with permission from A River Rules My Kitchen, by Tony Smith. Published by HarperCollins.


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