Steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion/Qing zheng lu yu 清蒸鱸魚

One of the simplest Chinese recipes but a perfect one for the Chinese new year according to cookery writer Fuchsia Dunlop, author of the brllliant Every Grain of Rice

Fuchsia writes: This is one of the easiest dishes to prepare and yet is greeted with more delight at the dinner table than almost any other. The cooking method is typically Cantonese, which is to say that it relies on superbly fresh produce and minimal intervention: the seasonings are there just to enhance the flavour of the fish. The only thing you need to be careful with is the timing, making sure the fish is not overcooked.

Don’t worry too much about quantities, just use those I’ve given as a guide. This recipe will make a farmed sea bass taste splendid, a wild one sublime. You need to steam the fish in a dish that fits into your steamer or wok, with a little room around the edges for steam to circulate. If you can’t quite fit the fish, lying flat, in your steamer, you can curl it around, or, in a worst-case scenario, cut it neatly in half then reassemble on the serving plate.

In China, the fish is presented whole. At more informal meals, guests will pluck pieces of fish with their chopsticks, dip them into the soy sauce, and then eat. In more formal settings, a waitress may lift the top fillet from the fish and lay it on the dish, then remove the backbone with attached head and tail. If you do this, don’t forget to offer the fish cheeks to your most honoured guest before you remove the head!

5 spring onions

50g piece of ginger

1 sea bass, about 700g, scaled and cleaned, but with head and tail intact

Salt

1 tbsp Shaoxing wine

3 tbsp light soy sauce or tamari

4 tbsp cooking oil

Trim the spring onions and cut three of them into 6cm lengths, then into fine slivers. Wash and peel the ginger, keeping the thick peel and any knobbly bits for the marinade. Cut the peeled part into long, thin slivers.

Rinse the fish in cold water and pat it dry. Starting at the head, make three or four parallel, diagonal cuts on each side of the fish, cuttinginto the thickest part of the flesh near the backbone. Rub it inside and out with a little salt and the Shaoxing wine. Smack the ginger remnants and one of the remaining spring onions with the side of a cleaver or a rolling pin to release their fragrances and place them in the belly cavity of the fish. Leave to marinate for 10–15 minutes.

Pour off any liquid that has emerged from the fish and pat it dry. Tear the last spring onion into two or three pieces and lay it in the centre of the steaming plate. Lay the fish over the spring onion (the onion will raise the fish slightly so steam can move around it).

Steam the fish over high heat for 10–12 minutes, until just cooked. Test it by poking a chopstick into the thickest part of the flesh, just behind the head; the flesh should flake away easily from the backbone. When the fish is nearly done, dilute the soy sauce with 2 tbsp hot water.

Remove the fish from the steamer and transfer carefully to a serving dish. Remove and discard the ginger and spring onion from its belly and the cooking juices. Scatter the fish with the slivered ginger and spring onion.

Heat the oil in a wok or small pan over a high flame. When it starts to smoke slightly, drizzle it over the ginger and spring onion slivers, which should sizzle dramatically (make sure the oil is hot enough by dripping over a tiny amount and listening for the sizzle before you pour the rest over the fish). Pour the diluted soy sauce all around the fish and serve immediately.

Variation

Steamed fish fillets with ginger and spring onion
Fillets of fish can be cooked in exactly the same way, adjusting cooking times and quantities accordingly.

What to drink:
It really depends how many additional dishes you serve at the same time as the fish. Served on its own with a simple stir fry of green vegetables you could serve a crisp white like a Sancerre, Pouilly Fumé or a dry German riesling. With other dishes you might want a white with a touch more body - an Alsace riesling or Austrian riesling or Grüner Veltliner for example. Fuchsia suggests red braised pork and twice cooked chard, both from the book, as possible accompaniments.

This recipe comes from Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop published by Bloomsbury at £25. Photograph - not of the dish in the recipe but a similar one by Lili.Q at shutterstock.com

Chipotle-spiced black bean soup

Pulse-based soups like this black bean soup are super-comforting and warming in chilly weather. I rustled it up to use a batch of black beans my neighbour Jenny Chandler had given me and wouldn’t claim for a moment it's authentic but it is good!

(Jenny has written an excellent book on pulses called, appropriately enough, Pulse and is known to us locally as the 'bean queen'!)

Serves 4

3 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil

2 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, crushed

1 chipotle pepper en adobo, chopped or 2 tsp chipotle paste

1 tsp sweet pimenton

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tin chopped tomatoes

2 x 400g cans black beans, drained and rinsed or, better still, 450-500g cooked black beans

750ml vegetable stock

For the topping

corn tortilla strips or chips

1-2 avocados

A small bunch of coriander

A small carton of sour cream

1-2 limes, quartered

Heat the oil in a casserole or heavy-bottomed saucepan and fry the onions, for 10 minutes. Add the crushed garlic, cook for a minute then stir in the chopped chipotle or chipotle paste, pimenton and cumin, Stir and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the tinned tomatoes, beans and 500ml stock bring up to boiling point and simmer for about 20 mins.

Remove half the beans and whizz in a blender (or use a hand-held blender to blitz the remaining soup in the pan - the idea being to retain some texture in the soup). Return the purée to the pan, heat through and adjust the seasoning.

Assemble the topping ingredients. Pour a shallow layer of vegetable oil into a frying pan and fry the tortilla strips for a minute or so until puffed up and crisp. Chop the avocado into chunks. Chop the coriander. Serve the soup with some crisp tortilla strips, sour cream, avocado a squeeze of lime and scatter some chopped coriander on top.

What to drink: I’d probably go for a beer - either a lager or a negro modelo with this but a robust red like a malbec or even a young rioja would work well too.

For other pairings with bean-based dishes see The Best Wine Pairings with Beans

Cullen skink (smoked haddock and leek chowder)

If you can't face the thought of haggis on Burns' Night how about a warming bowl of deliciously creamy cullen skink - the Scots' answer to chowder?

serves 4

225g (8oz) smoked haddock, preferably undyed

300ml (1/2 pint) whole milk

1 medium to large potato (about 225g/8oz), peeled and diced

40g/1 1/2 oz butter

1 large or 2 small to medium leeks (about 225g/8oz sliced weight), cleaned and finely sliced

A good handful of chopped parsley

White pepper and a little salt (for boiling the potatoes)

Place the fish, skin side up in a single layer in a medium-sized saucepan and cover with milk. Bring gradually to the boil, simmer for a minute then take off the heat. Meanwhile put the diced potato in another pan, cover with water, bring to the boil, salt and simmer until tender. Scoop out half the potato chunks and set aside. Crush the remaining potato roughly in he remaining water. Melt the butter in a third pan* and cook the leeks over a low heat until just soft. Skin and flake the cooked fish, taking care to remove any bones. Put the crushed potato, cubed potato, fish and milk in the pan of leeks, adding enough water to get the consistency you’re looking for (surprisingly if you add water it'll still taste creamy. Heat through and adjust the seasoning (it should be salty enough but might benefit from some white pepper). Add a good handful of chopped parsley, heat through again and serve.

* you don’t need to use all these pans, obviously. You can cook the fish, then the potato in the same pan - it’ll just take longer.

What to drink: If you want to drink whisky I'd go for a light malt like Dalwhinnie or grain whisky although see Ewan Lacey's other suggestions here. Alternative you could have a glass of smooth dry white like a Chablis, Gavi or a chenin blanc

Parsnip, Miso, Oat and Shallot Boulangère

A gorgeously hearty, warming vegetable-based dish from Gizzi Erskine's inspiring book Restore which is full of and advice on how to eat ethically and seasonally.

This recipe is from the Autumn to Winter section and combines one of my favourite winter vegetables, parsnips with miso and, intriguingly, with oats.

Gizzi writes: Boulangère is a gratin of potatoes made by cooking potatoes in the juice (stock) and fat of lamb - the unsung hero of the potato dauphinois. Playing around with root vegetables in a gratin is a great way to really understand them. I've replaced the lamb stock and fat with a chicken or vegetable stock pumped up with miso and oat cream, that you can buy or make yourself. The flavour of the oat is what I want here, not the creaminess, and oat and parsnip are dreamy together.

This dish is a good way to show how we often overlook the flavours of the modern plant-based movement. This gratin is superb as a main dish for a supper or served as a side dish, and if you make it with vegetable stock, your vegan friends will thank you."

SERVES 4 as a side dish

Preparation lime 15 minutes

Cooking lime 45 minutes

2 tbsp oil

4 shallots, very thinly sliced

500g parsnips, cut into very fine rounds (ideally using a mandolin e or a food processor with a thin slicing attachment)

500ml fresh vegetable stock (or chicken stock if you're not making it for vegetarians or vegans)

1 tbsp white miso paste

½ tsp salt

250ml oat cream

few sprigs of thyme

freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 240°C/220°C fan/gas mark 9.

Start by sweating the shallots. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium-low heat, add the shallots and cook gently for about 20 minutes, stirring regularly, until beautifully soft and caramelised.

Add the sliced parsnips (I don't think they need peeling - the peel adds a nice texture) to a separate saucepan, along with the stock, miso paste and salt. Bring to the boil then take off the heat immediately. Drain the parsnips, reserving the stock. Return the stock to the pan and cook over a high heat until the volume has reduced to about 150ml and the stock has a thick, syrupy consistency.

While the stock is reducing, you can start constructing the dish. Once the parsnips are cool enough to handle, take a gratin dish (about 2 litre capacity) and make a layer of parsnips on the bottom, two or three parsnip slices thick. Spoon over a thin layer of the shallots, season with pepper and the leaves from the sprigs of thyme. Repeat this process until you have used everything up.

To finish the sauce, add the oat cream to the stock and allow to reduce further for a couple of minutes until thickened slightly. Pour this over the parsnips and put the dish in the oven to bake for 20 minutes, until the top is crisp and golden. Remove from the oven and leave to sit for a couple of minutes before serving.

What to drink: I'd go for a rich white with this, maybe with a lick of oak. I'm thinking white Rhône or Roussillon (anything from grenache blanc or gris), oaked white rioja or a Douro white

Extracted from Restore: a modern guide to sustainable eating by Gizzi Erskine is published by HQ at £25

Photography credit – c. Issy Croker.