G&T or Gin & Ginger?

I’ve heard of cooking with port, wine, sherry and beer but never have I seen gin listed under the ingredients of any recipe. I was therefore quickly drawn to a recipe of ‘Red Snapper with chilli, gin & ginger’ that I came across in the “Chilli-lover’s Cookbook”by Jenni Fleetwood.

Being more partial to meat dishes, I’ve tended to neglect fish items as part of my endeavours to cook more, but despite my conscious choice of selecting a fish dish on this occasion, I was somewhat put off by the fact that this dish involved cooking a whole fish than fillets – call me a chicken (no pun intended), it was the doleful, glassy-eyed expression of the fish staring back at me that seemed to unnerve me. Doing my best to escape its look, I set about preparing the fish stuffing (trust my luck that I’d have to stuff this creature whilst it ‘kept a close eye on me’ from beyond the grave): a medley of onions, garlic and mushrooms fried in ground coriander and parsley. Stuffing made and fish stuffed, I then sprinkled a generous layer of ginger and red chillies on the fish before adding some water and popping it in the oven to bake for 40 minutes.

Now came the interesting bit involving the gin: after mixing a small amount of gin with cornflour, I added chicken stock to make what was to be the sauce accompaniment to the dish. Despite not deviating from the cooking instructions in anyway, this was the only stage at which I stumbled a little, as the sauce turned into something of a gloopy, lumpy consistency.

The end result of the overall dish however, wasn’t bad despite the little glitch with the sauce. Served up with fried plaintain and, a tomato, cucumber and onion salad in a light vinaigrette dressing, it turned out to be a tasty, little treat that reminded us of the flavour of one of our favourite crab dishes (“ginger and spring onion crab) from our local Chinese. The salad was my own substitute concoction that replaced the recipe's suggestion of a fried lettuce garnish – I couldn’t help but not get excited about fried lettuce which sounded a bit yucky to me.

Here are two very hazy pictures of the dish (hopefully, it's just about possible to make out the whole body of the fish):