Red Gurnard with Langoustines Seafood Casserole

Gourmet Fish and Shellfish in Rich Deep Sherry Sauce Casserole

Mar 23, 2009 Susan Morris

Cooks willing to prepare red gurnard, increasing in popularity as a conservationist's white fish, may like to cook up a seafood casserole using red gurnard with prawns.

Red gurnard, Aspitrigla cuculus, of the Triglidae family is a bony-cheeked white fish with a Marine Conservation Society rating of 2. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) published the Good Fish Guide (2006) to encourage home cooks and professional chefs in pubs and restaurants to buy, cook and eat red gurnard to conserve fish stocks of other popular white fish.

With its distinctive coral skin, red gurnard white fish flesh will hold together well in a seafood casserole. Fishmongers will be able to prepare red gurnard without its head, guts, spines, barbs and bones ready for customers to cook. Serious cooks trained in knife skills for seafood cookery may like to buy red gurnard as whole fish and prepare at home with the langoustines and other ingredients for the seafood casserole.

Red Gurnard with Langoustines Seafood Casserole Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 500g to 600g red gurnard fish flesh
  • 80g prawns, langoustines, ready for cooking
  • 1 onion
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 4 vine-ripened tomatoes
  • 1 carrot
  • 100g mushrooms
  • 3/4 pint vegetable stock
  • 2 tablespoons sherry
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 teaspoon tarragon
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 60g butter or margarine
  • 50g plain flour
  • Freshly cracked black pepper
  • Olive oil for frying

Directions:

  1. Slice finely the garlic cloves and the onion, peeled.
  2. Add the onion and garlic to the vegetable stock in a saucepan and bring to the boil.
  3. Chop the carrot into slices of around 1cm thickness.
  4. Add the sliced carrot with the bay leaf, cayenne pepper, some freshly cracked black pepper and the herb tarragon to the same saucepan.
  5. Simmer the contents, the seafood casserole base, for 10 minutes on a moderate heat.
  6. Then add the red gurnard flesh in large pieces and cook for 15 minutes on a low heat.
  7. Take the red gurnard pieces out of the stock and place in a casserole dish with the vine-ripened tomatoes, whole.
  8. Chop the mushrooms into halves and gently fry in olive oil for 2 minutes. Melt the butter and margarine into the frying pan with the mushrooms and season.
  9. Added the buttered mushroom halves into the casserole dish with the red gurnard and uncooked vipe-ripened tomatoes.
  10. Add the flour to the stock and gently stir in until the liquid has a sauce-like consistency.
  11. Remove from the heat and add the sherry.
  12. Pour the rich vegetable and sherry sauce over the red gurnard and tomatoes and casserole in an oven for 30 minutes. Add the prawns or langoustines to the casserole in the last 10 minutes of cooking if using cooked langoustines. If the langoustines are uncooked, add to red gurnard when cooking earlier.

This red gurnard with langoustines seafood casserole can be prepared for more than 3 to 4 servings by scaling up the seafood, vegetables and vegetable stock ingredients. It can be prepared in advance (if the prawns or langoustines food safety instructions allow), chilled in a refrigerator and then reheated gently for 30 to 40 minutes before serving.

The copyright of the article Red Gurnard with Langoustines Seafood Casserole in Seasonal Cooking is owned by Susan Morris. Permission to republish Red Gurnard with Langoustines Seafood Casserole in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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