Morrocan style mackerel!

Smoked mackerel is one of the food delicacies in holland. Often, on "fish days" at our cantine (wednesday) I treat myself with a Mackerel broodje*... The last time I was at the market, I realised that I had never tried cooking fresh mackerel. I decided to give it a try. I chose a couple of small mackerels that I could easily accomodate for lunch. The next day, I improvised my first mackerel for a quick lunch: morrocan style, in a papillotte. Not bad at all for a first, the seasoning did marvels to the mackerel and reminded me some of my favourite fish tajines back in morrocco, but next time I will skip the papillotte and just put in an open ovendish. The recipe is for one as my dutchie was not there for lunch, but you can easily adapt it for more.

*broodje: small bread roll

Morrocan style mackerel papillote. 
(papillote de maquereau a la marocaine)

1 pers. prep: 5 min, cooking: 15 min

Ingredients:
1 mackerel (~180g)
1 small grape tomato
a small handful flat parsley
a splash of lemon
1 pinch of paprika
1 small pinch of cumin
cayenne pepper to taste
sea salt, pepper
olive oil
aluminium peper

Pre-heat your oven at 200C. Clean your mackerel and put it in a big sheet of aluminum paper. Roughly chop your tomato and your parsley. Dispose them inside and ove rthe fish. Season with the spices, sea and salt (both inside and outside). If you happen to have a mortar and some cumin seeds, grind the seeds with some sea salt flakes and the rest of the spices, it will taste even better. Finally, add a splash of lemon and olive oil. Close your papillote so that no air can escape and put in the oven for 10 to 15 min.   

Bon appetit!

Comments

[Delphine]

Congrats for the Blog, it is very nice!
About the recipe, it looks very appetizing, even though I don't like mackerel... but I guess the recipe may be done with other kinds of fish. I did this kind of recipe several times with cod-fish, but I never combined cumin-paprika-cayenne peper. I'll give it a try!