Fish
Roast Mackerel with Beetroot, Blood Orange, Horseradish and Cucumber Salad
You could make this salad with raw beetroot, grated or cut into fine matchsticks. However, cooking it slightly allows us to cut chunkier pieces and to impart flavour from the star anise. To cut batons, cut the beetroot into ½-cm slices, lay them flat and repeat to give you fat, evenly sized sticks. The dressing may seem wanting at first taste, but when paired with the acid of the orange in the salad, it all comes together at the end.
Ingredients
- 2 beetroots
- 1 star anise
- 2 blood oranges
- 2 whole mackerel, gutted and cleaned
- olive oil
- ½ a cucumber
- 2cm piece of fresh horseradish, grated
- 1 shallot, finely sliced
- 40g watercress
- small bunch of dill, chopped
Method
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Step 1
Preheat your oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Put a saucepan of well-salted water on to boil. Peel the beetroots and cut into chucky batons (see cook's note). Add to the boiling water, with the star anise. Simmer for about 10 minutes, until partly cooked but retaining a slight bite. Drain and leave to one side.
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Step 2
While the beetroot cooks, cut the skin away from 1 orange and slice it into thin discs. Finely zest and juice the other orange.
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Step 3
Make 3 diagonal slashes on both sides of each fish. Place them on a baking tray and rub with a little olive oil. Season well with salt and pepper, inside and out. Drizzle half the orange juice across the fish and pop them in the oven to roast for 15 minutes, until the flesh pulls easily away from the bone.
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Step 4
Split the cucumber lengthways and use the tip of a teaspoon to scrape out the soft, seedy core. Cut the flesh into chunky dice.
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Step 5
Make a quick dressing by whisking the horseradish with 1 tablespoon of orange juice and 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
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Step 6
Mix the beetroot, cucumber, shallot, sliced orange and watercress with the dressing. Divide the mackerel between 2 plates and sit the salad on the side. Garnish with the dill and orange zest.