Chocolate with salt

Not only am I late this week once again, it's also beetroot again, but in my defence, it's that time of the year and I still had some left in the fridge. Beside, I just love beetroot.
I had to promise my husband though, I wouldn't dish up beetroot for a while, especially after I presented him a fresh squeezed beetroot-apple juice the next morning and I must admit, I kind of overdid it. A bit.

I also promise, I will get better with my writing. It's not like I'm not cooking or baking, I just can't find the time to actually sit down and write. I vow to improve.

I have to share this dish with you, as it was a superb combination with the hake and I can imagine it to be the perfect partner for many fish species.

I found the recipe here, in one of my favourite German recipe databases and followed the recipe almost as is.   And as much as I like to adjust recipes to my liking or just take them as an inspiration, much the same I'm happy to find a recipe I can go with.

To freshen it all up, I served the Hake on a beetroot purée with some leafy greens in a tasty vinaigrette.

I must admit, we're not eating fish as often as we should. I can't even figure out why, because we really like eating fish and most dishes are quickly done.
Anyway, we finally had fish after three weeks or so and I found that very appealing recipe (in German language), but somehow I failed to execute it. As you can already see on the picture, the whole crumbling story didn't work out for me. The recipe stated explicit not to use egg and flour to crumble the fish, just season and press the couscous firmly onto the fish. The reason was, not to overpower the taste of the fish. Well, that worked out for me until I started frying the Kingklip and by trying to turn it, the crust just crumbled away.
I'm not sure, what the cause was. Either I didn't press the couscous enough into the fish, or maybe it doesn't work with frozen fish or I shouldn't have put lemon juice on it. Maybe it was just my old pan, either way, I sprinkled the couscous over the fish, because I didn't want to leave it out. It gave the dish a nice crunchy texture and I would have loved the crumbling to work out. So good luck to you and let me know, if you figured out, where my mistake was.
It's always very frustrating for me, when a recipe doesn't work out, the way it's described. Especially, when it sounds easy and the pictures look nice and tempting. I think I was angry the whole day, even though it was still a very tasty dish. But that's just me.
I also want to mention, that I used a store bought chutney. Normally I try to avoid using any store bought ingredients, I could do myself. And chutney is one thing, I could easily do myself. Though I didn't have any mangoes, but chutney in the fridge, I cheated a bit. Besides, my chutney was made from apricots and peaches and not mango.
A day later I found a mango-chili-marmalade in my fridge I didn't even know off and I could imagine, that could have been a nice substitute too. Anyway, guilty as charged, next time I definitely do the chutney myself...

We haven't had fish for quite a long time, beside the tuna wrap lately. It's funny however, that I didn't categorise it as a fish dish right away. Anyway, let say it like that, we haven't had a proper fish dish for a long time and last time we were shopping I got hold of kingklip again. I really like the fish, as it has a white flesh with firm texture and a slightly sweet taste. It's native to South Africa (and Australia and New Zealand,  but is also found on the costs of Argentina and Chile). It's a member of cusk eel family and is also known under that name in Europe and southern America ( source: Seafoodsource.com ).

The idea for the dish came up, because I had cabbage left and I thought, there was once a dish with fish and cabbage I used to make back in Germany. And then I remembered, that it wasn't cabbage after all but creamed sauerkraut. The recipe for the creamed sauerkraut I used here is from the famous German chef Johann Lafer and I found it here (in German language).

I was actually planning to make that dish with bacon. Unfortunately I realised too late, that we don't have bacon in the fridge. But if you have some at home, I would highly recommend to fry your kingklip wrapped in bacon, as it's not only complements with the creamed sauerkraut but also with the fish. If you try it out with bacon, please feel free to leave a comment of what you thought about it.

As you can see, I was raised catholic, at least the first 10 years of my life or maybe even longer. That was mostly the time when I lived in Poland. Poland is very convinced catholically and you didn't have much of a choice back then, in great part because my grandparents were devout. I remember my grandparents house with all the crucifixes and pictures of the pope and saints. It was very impressing. The time we moved to Germany, my parents felt more liberated and turned their back on the church. But some habits die hard and so here we are, we had fish for lunch. 

I'm always looking for nice fish recipes, preferable quick and easy to make, as I usually need them for lunch. I rarely get hold of fresh fish, if so, it's mostly salmon, which is ridiculously expensive in Namibia. The most popular fish species you can buy in the supermarket is hake, kingklip, smoked haddock, salmon and salmon trout, less often and then rather fresh, is kabeljou and sole, but to be honest you can get hold of it almost exclusively at the cost. So every time we are at the cost, we obviously buy our fish at a fish deli, enjoy it fresh there and can't resist to bring some back home, of course frozen. 

But today I was up to something simple and quick. I had hake in my deep freezer anyway, so the choice was obvious.