Fish can be a tricky one. There are a lot of ways to get it wrong and you’re worried that it’s not that manly a thing to be cooking in the first place.

I’m not really an expert (but then I’m not really an expert in any areas of cooking except roast potatoes), but I’m going to do my best to guide you through this minefield with some solid ideas for dishes and some tips to avoid the worst pitfalls.

Basic fish-cooking tips

• Seasoning – many cuts of many fish can be bland – especially if you are frying a fish with skin, make sure you season it properly (and don’t forget lemons and limes – they’re cliched with fish because they’re good!)
• Really really hot pan – this is true for almost all frying of meat and fish, but again – especially when you are frying a fish with skin, make sure you get your pan hot enough
• Don’t overcook – especially with fish like tuna that can be overcooked easily, make sure that you keep it succulent. I like griddling tuna: when cooking for myself, I like it to barely touch the smoking hot pan on each side. For those who request it more well-done, I still don’t like nuking it so for flat steaks I tend to griddle on one side until it is cooked halfway up the side and then flip and cook until you can no longer see any pink on the side
• Oven-cook for low maintenance – if you want something easy to cook that doesn’t need much of your time watching it, I like cooking fish in a foil parcel in the oven with some bits and pieces of veg, olive oil, lemon juice and maybe a bit of garlic. Easy – and low on washing up!

Step outside the box

• Spicy – fish curry, seasoning with paprika, spicy garnishes (e.g. spicy salsa) – all these things can make it more exciting, add some great flavours and make it a bit more manly. What’s not to like?
• Sushi – eating fish raw is one way to get around both the difficulties of cooking it well and the “isn’t fish a bit girly?” problem…
• Fisherman’s pie – not really a tip so much as a dish, but it qualifies for its own line simply because it is the kind of dish that many people worry they can’t cook, but you should make the effort because it’s a great dish. in the spirit of “No More Recipes”, the ‘recipe’ is: quickly fry some white fish, make some stock, add something creamy to the stock (I like soft goats’ cheese), fry some leeks and other veg you fancy in there, mash some potatoes and then stick ‘em on top of the stew in a casserole / baking dish and bake for a bit…! Gumbo and other stews are fun to experiment with too.

Shellfish

Cooking shellfish is generally easier than regular fish, in my experience – mainly because it’s so tasty that as long as you get good stuff, all you need to do is avoid screwing it up. This is especially true of grilled scallops – seriously – all you have to do is use a hot pan for a short time.

Needing a bit more cooking, but still in the easy and tasty category are rice and fish dishes such as prawn risotto, paella etc.

Photo courtesy of tuija

So I have this theory. In most walks of life there are some people who are dramatically better than others – the genius, the pro sportsman, the taxidermist (wait, what?).

In the world of cooking, however, the pro chef is just like you and I, it’s just that he’s learnt a few tricks along the way and he’s spent time working out how to make food look good.

What? I didn’t say it’s a good theory.

If it’s true, though, then the average pro chef’s career hangs in the balance of a bit of deciding where to place the lettuce and a bunch of tricks. Think he’s gonna share those tricks? Not on your nelly.

But I am

Here are the best tricks I have found from years of reading cookery books and scavenging for the bits and pieces of inside information that the pros drop accidentally:

1. Get into your garlic like a pro: courtesy of Jamie Oliver, the best way to peel a clove of garlic is to place it on your chopping board and give it a smack or two with the flat side of your big knife (give it a try to work out how hard to hit – you’re aiming for somewhere between ineffectual caress and obliterated mess – what the hell, garlic is cheap). You’ll find that you can just chop the end off and the skin will fall away from the clove. Amazing.
2. Poached eggs can be par-poached in advance: par-poached. I think I may have just made up a word. Still, you get the idea – can’t remember where I got this one from – you slightly-under-poach the egg (telling when an egg is poached is a topic for another day) and then dunk it straight from the pan into some iced water. It’ll keep there in the fridge till you need it – assuming it’s, you know, sometime soon – when you simply stick it back in gently boiling water till warm
3. Take the edge off something you made too spicy: if you added a bit too much ginger or chilli, add a squeeze of lemon juice to tone down the spiciness. Saved my arse at a dinner party once. The spicy tiger prawn soup woulda pretty much killed people without the last minute save.
4. Seasoning, seasoning, seasoning: this one actually is shared quite a bit, but if you want your food to taste pro, season it properly. The biggest single difference (apart from presentation) between restaurant food and home-cooked food is the amount of salt, pepper, spices, herbs (yes, and butter!) that is added during cooking. For those special occasions particularly, break out the seasoning.
5. Don’t be afraid of hot: pro kitchens are hot places – hot ovens, hot stoves. Especially when you are frying, you probably aren’t getting the pan hot enough.
6. Wet your hands to make fat easy to clean off: if you are going to be getting fat / oil on your hands (e.g. when working with minced meat by hand) wet your hands first and you’ll find your hands loads easier to clean. This is technically a chemistry tip rather than a cooking tip – if you didn’t know that oil and water don’t mix, remember not to throw water on an oil / fat fire!
7. Didn’t I already tell you to get a proper knife?: get one already

So that isn’t really enough to get either me or you cooking like a pro – I want to learn some more tricks so please do share in the comments…

For some more day-to-day cooking tricks, I quite liked some of the answers over in this Yahoo! Answers thread and the writing style in the intro to this post.

I managed to burn my toast this morning. That’s how good a cook I actually am.

I have now started this cooking blog and yet I still screw up things like toast. All I wanted to do was stick the toaster back on for 30 seconds or so to get it nice and “toasty” but of course I forgot about it and it was only the smell of burnt toast that got me running over to turn it off.

If you, like me, burn things when you’re cooking them, you might be interested in my list of foods it’s OK to burn. You’ll notice that I have interpreted the challenge in a number of ways in order to have an interesting list. Bite me. Can you think of any more?

1. Creme Brulée. My first cheat is a food that has “burnt” in its name (albeit in a foreign language)
2. Bones. When you’re making dark stock, one method is to start by throwing the bones into a pan over a reasonably high heat with no oil / butter etc. Shake ‘em around and get them to start caramelising before adding water, seasoning etc.
3. Steak. We all know that there is only one true way of cooking steak, but interesting variations (to get it even rarer) involve blow-torching the outside before cooking. Technically, of course, you don’t want to burn the steak, but anything with a blow-torch has to count, right?
4. Chestnuts. OK, it’s only really the outside that get burnt. But still.
5. Blackened fish. There are loads of recipes called “blackened” when it comes to fish (e.g. blackened tuna). Technically, you are burning the cajun seasoning, but again, I’m going to take it… There’s also a recipe from Jamie Oliver that involves wrapping a fish in newspaper where the newspaper gets burnt
6. Flambé. Brandy, pastis, Christmas puddings, lamb steaks. There are many fun ways of setting your food on fire…
7. BBQ / flame-grill. Think flame-grill, think burgers and steaks, but normal BBQ can involve bits of charcoal too – think the shells on prawns
8. Caramelised onions. I think “caramelised” is really just a euphemism for “burnt” so I’m gonna count it. I have a fun dish that involves basically burning onions and garlic and then frying chicken in the oil. Sounds crazy, and it’s hard to get right, but it’s nice when you get the sweetness just right.

Picture credit: fiskfisk on Flickr

Of course there are times when I don’t much feel like cooking. It can be a chore, but I have found there are a few things that get my creative juices flowing (so to speak) and make it feel fun again:

• Chopping is one of those menial tasks that are delegated in ‘proper kitchens’, but can be one of the most fun parts, but only if you get a proper knife and a proper chopping board. It only sank in properly how important this is when I had to use a shit serrated knife on holiday and realised how much I missed my knife (does that make me sound like a psycho?)
• Learn how to sharpen your knife. Not only does it make everything more fun (see above) but the actual sharpening makes you feel like a real cook
• Use quality cookware. It can be expensive stuff, but it’s brilliant. You might want to get married and put it on your wedding gift list
• Use quality ingredients – if you know the butcher you bought the meat from and you know the quality of the stuff you’re using, you’re far more likely to take care with the cooking of it
• Have seasoning to hand – having proper salt on hand to pinch, a big black pepper mill and so forth make the finishing touches fun – which means you’ll do them – which means your food will taste better. Everyone’s a winner

Picture credit: noii on Flickr