Swordfish in tomatoes with olives and capers

I got my inspiration for this from a regular newsletter I get from eatingwell.com  And they say they were inspired by Mediterranean cooking in Sicily and Calabria. Ah Magna Graecia! I didn’t follow their recipe exactly and amongst other changes substituted their green olives with my favourite mammoth black ones. I served it one evening with roast vegetables and another with gnocchi whereas the original recipe had polenta as a core element. Mine tasted like I was in Athens. 🇬🇷

Ingredients

Olive oil

2 stalks celery including leaves

3 cloves garlic crushed

1 can (400 gr) diced tomatoes

8 mammoth black olives

3-4 tbs chopped fresh basil

1 tbs capers

400 gr swordfish

Mode

Heat the oil in a pan large enough to simmer all the ingredients

Chop the celery

Crush the garlic

Lightly fry the garlic and celery

Add the tomatoes and olives and stir occasionally

Chop basil and add it and capers

Turn down heat and simmer for about 5 minutes

Add the swordfish steaks and stir to cover the fish

Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes

Swordfish pie

Well, dear friends of Sunday night pizza from of old (and anyone else who is reading), there is no pizza tonight! Instead last night I cooked a #godoggies pizza which was lovely to eat but with unsatisfactory outcomes for the team I was barracking for on behalf of my mother who lived a long drought supporting them.  

Tonight instead became a swordfish pie night. It ended up being a simple combination of swordfish, rocket pesto, red capsicum and spring onions in puff pastry, but the simple is delicious especially teamed with lemon roasted vegetables as it was. With those flavours I could have been in Greece, though who knows when that may be possible or advisable for any of us?

Ingredients 

250 gr fresh swordfish fillet

2 sheets frozen puff pastry

1 tbs rocket pesto

2 spring onions

1/2 red capsicum

Poppyseeds 

Mode

Preheat oven to 350c

Remove pastry to thaw

Peel and chop spring onions

Roughly chop capsicum

Once pastry thawed place one sheet on bottom of baking dish

Place swordfish on pastry

Spread pesto on fish

Sprinkle spring onion over

Add red capsicum

Place second sheet of pastry over ingredients

Cut off excess and form edges of pie

Add pastry decorative features if desired

Sprinkle with poppyseeds

Cook in 360c oven fir 45 minutes

Swordfish pie

Yum swordfish! I hadn’t had any for ages so when I went shopping and saw some I grabbed it. I wasn’t sure what I would cook with it but tonight I remembered the coriander pesto I had awaiting my ideas for it. Then it was a matter of seeing what I had in the way of vegetables and deciding whether to use phyllo or puff pastry. Then voilà! 

Ingredients

2 sheets puff pastry

140 gr swordfish fillet

Small carrot

1/2 red pepper

2 spring onions

2 heaped tsp coriander pesto

3 tsp crushed ginger root

Poppyseed

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c

If using frozen puff pastry remove sheets from freezer to thaw

Julienne the carrot

Clean and chop spring onions

Roughly cut the red pepper

Crush ginger

Place one sheet of pastry in base of baking dish

Place the swordfish fillet on pastry

Spread pesto over

Add spring onion and crushed ginger

Top with carrot pieces and red pepper

Place second sheet of pastry on top

Trim and seal pastry and decorate as desired

Sprinkle with poppyseed

Bake in oven at 180c for 45 minutes