Pacific Palate – Recipes from Sicily

On a special Wednesday morning edition of Pacific Palate, I shared two recipes from my recent visit to Sicily…fennel and orange salad, and fish cuscus.

This salad that I had in Catania, Sicily, was made with blood oranges.  It’s past the season for those oranges now in Canada, but you can use sweet, seedless navel oranges instead.

Fennel and Blood Orange Salad
Blood oranges have a very sweet, dark flavour and are almost purply inside. Use regular, seedless navel oranges if you can’t find them.

Ingredients:
2 large bulbs fennel
2 blood oranges
2 stalks of celery, leaves included
1/2 cup small black Italian or French olives
extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Cut the stalks and any bad spots off the fennel bulb and reserve a few of the fronds.  Slice the fennel crosswise into the thinnest slices you can make.  (I use a Japanese mandolin for this)  Layer the fennel onto a wide plate or shallow casserole.  Slice the skin off the blood oranges and then cut crosswise into narrow slices.  Place the blood orange slices over top of the fennel.  Chop the celery stocks and leaves together and sprinkle over the orange.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and drizzle all over with olive oil.  Top with the olives and garnish with a few of the fennel fronds.  Serve cold or at room temperature.  Serves 4.

Today’s second recipe is for fish cuscus.  I tried two different recipes.  The top photo is from a restaurant in Trapani, which was a very simple presentation of the bowl of couscous, and then you had a separate tureen of broth and soup you ladled over the couscous.  It was good, but not quite what I expected.  Then, on the other side of the island, in Catania, we tried it again.  This fish cuscus was much more elaborate, with artichokes, carrots, zucchini, shrimp and parsley adding to the mix with a much stronger fish broth soaking into the couscous.  I think the recipe I came up with kind of blends the two presentations together.  If you don’t want to make your own fish stock, use clam juice, or purchase a quality frozen stock from a place like The Stock Market at Granville Island.

Fish Cuscus  Serves 4

For the stock:
2 pounds fish trim
1/2 pound large shrimp or prawns, shell on
1 large carrot cut into 2 or 3 pieces
1/2 an onion, peeled
4 whole cloves
a few stalks of parsley

Peel the shrimp and reserve them for the final poaching.  Put the shells, along with the fish trim, carrot, onion, cloves and parsley into a large pot and add cold water to cover.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.  Remove from heat and strain out the solids. 

For the cuscus:
1 cup hot fish stock
1 cup of instant couscous

Put the couscous in a large bowl and pour the hot stock over top.  The couscous will swell and absorb the stock, and be ready to eat in about 5 minutes.  Set aside for the final preparation.

2 tbsp. olive oil
1 carrot, sliced on the diagonal
1 stalk of celery, sliced on the diagonal
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 an onion, sliced
1/2 cup tomato juice or tomato passata (a thick puree of tomato available at Italian grocery stores)
1 cup fish stock
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
salt and pepper
1/2 pound fish fillets, such as red snapper or ling cod, cut into large chunks

In a large pot, heat the olive oil on medium-high heat.  Add in the carrot, celery, onion and garlic.  Stir and fry until the vegetables have started to soften.  Stir in the tomato juice or passata, the fish stock and the spices.  Then add the chunks of fish and the reserved shrimp or prawns.  Simmer until the seafood is just cooked.

To serve, put a ladleful of couscous in each serving bowl.  Then ladle some fish, prawns and liquid on top.  (You can increase the number of servings by adding more fish, more stock and more tomato juice as you make up the final liquid base.)