Chilled out – Fish on display at Gannet Fishmonger stall in the Galway Market on Saturday.
Most Saturdays, either my wife or I will head to the market around St. Nicholas’ Church to buy fish at the Gannet Fishmonger stall for weekend dinner. It’s a weekly reminder of how lucky we are to live by the sea, and what a great selection of locally-sourced fish is available to us in Galway. We had fillets of John Dory and monkfish tails for dinner on Saturday, and I decided to make one of my favourite comfort foods – fish pie – on Sunday. I loosely followed a recipe from Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery Course cookbook. It’s a right doorstep of a book, with hundreds of recipes and I probably use it for reference every week.
Poaching the fish, parboiling the carrots and boiling the potatoes.
While I was waiting for some of the ingredients to cook, it dawned on me that almost the entire meal was sourced from Ireland. The spuds were from Wexford, the mushrooms from Meath, the whiting was from off the west coast (via Rossaveal) and the carrots, spring onions, milk and eggs (for the glaze on the spuds) were all Irish , and the parsley was from my back garden. Admittedly, the wine that washed it down came from overseas (bonjour!) and the salt and pepper seasoning wasn’t local either (I usually use Achill Sea Salt, but for this dish, I used some Maldron salt, because the box was closer to the cooker).
Ready for the oven – potato and spring onion topping with egg yolk glaze.
Hot, bubbling loveliness – this recipe never fails.
The reason that my wife dreads my cooking – I use every pan in the house every time.