I love Thai food. Any opportunity to try something new and I am ready to put all my cooking skills to a test and challenge myself in attempting a new dish. Lorraine Pascale’s tin foil Thai fish recipe is extremely easy to follow. Just chopping a few ingredients, wrapping them up into tin foil and letting the oven do its magic. Yet, the flavours of this dish are most definitely not for the faint hearted. Spicy chilly, fresh ginger, celery, soy sauce, deep fresh lime. All sound individually divine but combined together they transform a humble fish into something gloriously delicious, steamed to a soft perfection. Combined with the deep meaty sesame oil paprika hoodles served as a side dish, even light and flavoursome this is a serious grown up Sunday lunch dish, definitely not to be served for children. Yet, what a stunningly easy to make, delicious treat!

Ingredients

Serves 4 people

• 1 bunch spring onions
• 2cm/¾in piece of ginger
• 1 red chilli
• 1 stick of celery
• 1 carrot
• 1 garlic clove
• ½ a 28g/1oz bag fresh coriander
• 4 sustainable fish fillets like trout or cabillaud (approximately 125g/4½oz each)
• 4 tsp soy sauce
• 4 tsp sesame oil
• 2 limes

For the noodles

• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 x 150g/½oz packs straight-to-wok medium noodles
• 1 red pepper
• 2tbsp soy sauce (optional)
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

2. Trim the spring onions and then cut them in half dividing the green and the white bits. Then cut each spring onion in half lengthways and set aside. Peel and finely slice the ginger and cut into thin strips. Deseed the chilli and cut into long thin strips also. Halve the celery stick and peel the carrot and cut both into thin finger-length sticks. Peel and finely slice the garlic and cut the stalks off the coriander (keeping the leaves and stalks separate).

3. Tear off four 34cm/13in squares (approximately) of tin foil and lay them out individually. Put a piece of trout in the centre of each one. Divide all the prepared vegetables between each one, scattering them over. Only use the coriander stalks for now, reserving the leaves for serving. Drizzle the soy sauce and sesame oil over, squeeze in the juice of one of the limes and season with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper.

4. Now wrap the trout up in the tin foil. Any old way will do, just as long as the foil is well sealed, but not too taut, so air can circulate and steam the fish. Place the parcels on a baking tray and put in the oven for 12 minutes.

5. A few minutes before the fish is ready, cook the noodles. Put some sesame oil in a medium wok or sauté pan and get it nice and hot. Halve, deseed and finely slice the red pepper and then stir fry for a minute. Add the noodles and continue to stir fry for two minutes until they are piping hot. Add some soy sauce to taste if you fancy it and then season well with salt, pepper and a drizzle of sesame oil.

6. Divide the noodles between four serving plates. Remove the trout from the oven and serve in the foil parcel next to the noodles. Quarter the remaining lime and nestle a piece into each one. Serve scattered with the reserved coriander leaves.

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