Spicy Baked Mackerel, The Obit Of My (Middle) Namesake, And A Cure For Short Distance Sea Sickness

Return Of The Mack(rel)

As I posted earlier, me and fish have never really bonded in the kitchen – but mackerel is one fish I feel somehow comfortable with. It probably goes back to a day when I was aged 10, or around then, when I was taken on a fishing boat in Lyme Regis to catch the darned things.

All I really remember was being very sea sick – but the captain sorted that out by telling me to ‘suck on a polo mint and look at the land’.

It must have worked, because ten minutes later even my puny hands were pulling out of the choppy, grey Dorset sea half a dozen wriggling, shiny mackerel on a very basic multi-barbed line.

Turns out the packet of polos wasn’t just a device to distract the queasy stomach of a young land-lubber – the tin foil wrapper was also torn into postage stamp pieces and used as bait - because apparently mackerel are suckers for any kind of bling that they mistake for whiting or other tiny fish that they devour. I also remember that our catch was cooked simply on a barbecue on the pebbled beach later in the day – all very River Cottage in retrospect. So, me and the mackerel had some history - which meant I was brave enough to buy a couple and attempt de-heading, de-boning and stuffing with a spicy Goan filling before baking in the oven.

The Goan spice mix was about a teaspoon of ground cumin, coriander, black pepper & cloves (I used whole spices for this bit, briefly roasted in a frying pan and then ground in a coffee grinder) together with half a teaspoon of powdered fennel and a teaspoon of ground turmeric. The ground spices were then combined with a handful of chopped hot red chilli, 3 chopped garlic cloves and a 1 inch lump of peeled and chopped ginger. Traditionally it would also have tamarind water in the mix – but I substituted this for a tablespoonful of lemon juice because my last block of tamarind pulp had sat in the fridge for a year and had never been used so it was ditched about a month ago.

Finally a bit of salt and a tablespoon of white wine vinegar were added – and the whole lot then blitzed in a blender until I had a runny paste.

The gutted mackerel came out, the heads were duly lopped off and I sliced each one carefully from neck to tail along the route of the spine. Then I prised the two halves apart and pulled the spine up and snipped it off by the tail. I was then left with two ‘fillets’ - still adjoined at the tail end – and proceeded to spoon a thick layer of spice mix onto the lower fillet. I then replaced the top half and secured the ‘body’ with a few ties of string. Then it was wrapped in baking paper, then wrapped in foil, then banged into a 200 degree oven for 30 minutes. Later, served with some plain rice, it was pretty darned good – fleshy, fishy, hot and sour.


Thinking about that first (and only) fishing trip I took now reminds me of our host on that day who arranged it all – an ex-serviceman who went to be a great military historian in the 1970s and 80s. Spike Milligan once cited that one of his books, The Crucible Of War , was the best book he’d ever read – so he must have done something right. ‘He’ is a bloke called Barrie Pitt – and my middle name is Barrie, named after him by my father, who was one of Barrie's best friends.

Barrie died this year - but you can read about him here , if you’re interested.