Smoked Scottish Mackerel and Nectarine Summer Salad

Home smoked Scottish mackerel and nectarine salad

Mackerel is a delicious and extremely nutritious fish, readily available to catch in Scottish inshore waters in the summer months. It is unfortunately scorned by a great many pleasure anglers, often seen as being nothing more than a fresh bait opportunity for catching other species. If you do catch some mackerel or have access to some which have been some freshly caught, there are a great many easy ways in which you can cook it up and serve it on a plate to delight your taste buds and those of your family. It may not seem obvious but a great accompaniment to particularly smoked mackerel is sweet fresh fruit such as peaches or nectarines. This simple salad has deliberately very few ingredients to allow the flavour of the smoked mackerel to shine through.

Freshly smoked mackerel

Ingredients (Serves 1)

1 freshly smoked whole mackerel
1 nectarine
4 or 5 lettuce leaves
Salt and pepper
Bread and butter to serve (optional)

Mackerel are ready to come out of the smoker

Directions

I should point out here that home smoked mackerel is very different from the smoked mackerel purchased in vacuum packs in supermarkets. The commercial product is very often artificially dyed that bright orange colour and does not have nearly the same flavour levels as the fresh option. If the pack mackerel is all you have access to, this recipe idea will still work but it really is more than worth the effort to get hold of some of the fresh stuff or try smoking mackerel at home yourself.

Slicing flesh from a nectarine

Wash the lettuce leaves and pat them dry with kitchen paper. Roll them together like a fat cigar and shred. Add to a large mixing bowl. Wash and dry the nectarine and slice the flesh off the stone. Roughly chop and add to the bowl with the lettuce.

Peeling skin from a smoked mackerel

The skin on mackerel is so thin that it is nigh on impossible to remove it when the fish is fresh and raw. Following the hot smoking process, however, the skin toughens up and can fairly easily be peeled free when the mackerel is cool.

Plucking skin from a smoked mackerel

Pluck the flesh from the cooled, skinned mackerel is small bite-sized chunks, being careful to remove any bones. It should come away from the skeleton very easily, with most of the bones other than at the head end staying attached to the main body.

Combining smoked mackerel and nectarine salad ingredients

Add the mackerel chunks to the bowl with the other salad ingredients. Season with just a little salt (the mackerel will have been preseasoned prior to being smoked) and some black pepper. Carefully stir fold to combine with a large spoon before arranging in a deep serving plate and serving with some bread and butter.

Plated smoked mackerel and nectarine salad

Sausage, Fried Potatoes and Spicy Beans

Sliced sausage on hot and spicy beans with fried potatoes and yellow tomatoes

Sausages, chips and beans is a very popular combination throughout the United Kingdom and is probably a popular stereotype among foreigners of typically unimaginative and boring British food. The one principal difference in Scotland compared to the rest of the country is simply that the sausages will usually be of the sliced or Lorne variety as opposed to the more widely popular bangers. It is, however, incredibly easy to vary this age old dish so as to make it almost unrecognisable without any extra effort or even that many extra ingredients. This is just one example of the ways in which this is possible and this creation takes account above all of the modern day love of spices and spicy food in this country.

Ingredients (Serves 1)

1 medium sized baking potato
1 sliced (Lorne) sausage
2 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil
Salt and pepper
8 ounce (small) can baked beans in tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 small green chilli
3 small yellow (or red) tomatoes on the vine
 

Sausage and potato slices are put on to fry

Directions

Pour the vegetable oil in to a non-stick frying pan and bring it up to a medium heat. Wash (but don't peel) and dry the potato. Trim off and discard each end and slice to a thickness of just less than a quarter of an inch (1/2 a centimetre). Season the potato slices on both sides with salt and pepper. Lay the sliced sausage in the centre of the pan and arrange the potato slices around it. Turn the potato slices every three to four minutes and fry the sausage for five minutes each side.

Spices are added to beans before they are gently heated

Pour the beans in to a small saucepan. Add the turmeric, a generous pinch of black pepper and the finely sliced green chilli. Put the saucepan on to a low to medium heat just before the sausage is ready and stir every minute or so with a wooden spoon.

Yellow tomatoes are added to pan with part fried potatoes

When the sausage is ready, the potato slices will still need a further few minutes. Lift the sausage from the pan to a heated plate and cover with tinfoil to keep it warm. Gently sit the tomatoes (still on the vine) in the space in the pan vacated by the sausage, give the potatoes a final turn and cook for three to four final minutes.

Fried potatoes are plated around spicy beans

Arrange the potato slices in a circle around the edge of a deep serving plate and spoon the beans in to the centre.

Fried sausage is plated on top of spicy beans

Lift the sausage on to the beans and sit the tomatoes on top to serve.