Spicy tasty stew.

Today's dinner was a spicy, Caribbean-inspired fish stew and I thought I would share it with you. Because it's delicious.

So anyway, here's most of your cast of characters-

We have, onion, garlic, carrot, sweet potato, green pepper, scotch bonnet chilli, plain old red chilli and that big knobbly root veg on the top left is a yam. Or Taro, depending on where you're from. Also there are thyme, cumin, dried chilli (which I ended up not using), coriander seed, paprika and most importantly allspice.
Of course, this is a fish stew, so it will need some fish. to fulfil that requirement I defrosted some prawns and a couple of fillets of "white fish" which turned out to be Hoki when I inspected the packet. Nice fish, good flavour, nice meaty texture. I would recommend it in place of cod / haddock given the latter's diminishing stocks.

Anyway, pop those in a bowl and throw on some water to help them defrost and put them to one side. You shan't be needing them for now.
To get started properly, in a nice large pan with a good slug of olive oil in it, add (roughly) 1 teaspoon each of thyme, cumin and coriander and 2 of allspice, along with the garlic and onion, quite roughly chopped. Get these going over a medium-high heat so that things start to sizzle a bit.

Meanwile (while of course making sure you stir occasionally so that things don't burn) deseed and finely chop your chillies and throw them in-

 and roughly dice your carrot and sweet potato and throw those in as well-

Now, one thing that really bugs me is that everyone seems to deseed a pepper in a different way, and as far as I'm concerned everyone does it wrongly. You don't need to hack the entire end off, or run the knife round it like a wheel, losing the entire bottom of it, just chop it in half from top to bottom like so-

then pull out the top and the white membrane with your fingers, like so-

and the job's a good'un. For some reason there are dozens of increasingly complicated and stupid ways of doing that floating about out there, most of which involve throwing away about 1/4 of the pepper. Which annoys me. Anyway, dice that up and throw it in as well, by this point things should be starting to smell pretty good

and once the onions and carrots have softened up a bit, throw in enough liquid to cover them and set it over a low heat to simmer for a while. Chicken or vegetable stock is good, fish stock would be even better, but if you don't have any of those to hand, just use water, it'll still turn out good.
also at this point you want to add your yam. Take care to peel it thoroughly, then rinse it under running water to get rid of any lingering bits of skin. Yes, it will feel really slimy and horrible to the touch, but trust me, this stuff is delicious. Just dice it up and bung it in the pot with everything else. One thing though- add the yam to the pot after you've added the liquid, otherwise it will turn hard and nasty rather than silky and delicious.
Now back to the fish. Once it's defrosted enough to chop up, divide it into what I would describe as "large bite" sizes, then throw on a good helping of salt (remember at this point it's not been seasoned at all so you can be pretty generous) and leave it for 5-10 minutes.

Now squeeze off any excess moisture and throw some seasoning on there. I put (onto 200g each of fish and prawns) 3tsp of allspice, 2 tsp of paprika and 2 tsp of thyme. Then it's time for the secret ingredient-

this stuff is corn meal. Note- not corn flour. Throw 2-3 tablespoons of this stuff onto the fish and toss it about to make sure everything's well coated.

While you've got the corn meal out, you may as well also make some tasty corn breads to go with the stew. Simply put 100g each of corn meal and plain flour in a bowl and add a pinch of salt and an egg

Now mix it all up, adding water until you get a thick consistency, like that of double cream-

Action shot! Anyway, set this aside while you fry the fish over a medium heat in batches

Until golden brown and tasty looking.

Once you're done with the fish add a spot more oil to your pan and toss in the excess corn meal and spices the fish was in to make a roux to thicken the stew with and throw it all into the gently simmering pot. Cover it with a lid and let that bubble away a bit longer as you prepare the final step, which is simply frying the corn breads in a little oil. Now by this point the batter should have thickened up a little, so sprinkle in a teaspoon of baking powder and mix that in, before spooning the mix into the medium-hot pan to cook-

Flip them over when golden brown and transfer them to some kitchen roll when done on both sides, just to absorb any excess oil.

Then it's just a case of serving it up and eating it. I also did some rice to go with it, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that you know how to cook rice.

I'll admit, it doesn't look incredibly appetising there, but what do you expect? It's stew. It smells and tastes delicious and warms you up on a cold day like today.