Baked Mackerel with Cheese, Garlic and Herbs

Name: Baked Mackerel with Cheese, Garlic and Herbs Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: Italian cuisine
Ingredients: Mackerel 1; Parmesan 50 g; Garlic 2-3 cloves; Parsley 4-5 sprigs; Basil 3-4 sprigs; Lemon 1 (1 tsp of juice for the marinade, the rest for serving); Olive oil 2 tbsp (1 for the sauce, 1 to brush the fillets); Salt, ground black pepper to taste

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60 mins

Mackerel with cheese, a few thoughts… When we say we are going to cook something by baking it under cheese, we almost always add “French-style”. Why, I do not know. Probably “French-style” is an honorary title, nothing else.

There are lots of recipes for meat, fish, vegetables, chicken and mushrooms baked in the oven “French-style”, and all of them are “French-style”. I have never seen such recipes in French cookbooks. Of course, cheeses are widely used in cooking, considering that France has more than 400 kinds of cheese, but melting cheese does not seem to be much of a custom there. Gratin is another matter.

In any case, baking dishes under grated cheese is a very common technique that improves the flavor and gives a dish some piquancy and originality. And if you want to bake fish without cheese, try baked mackerel, stuffed with fried onion.

In the Italian region of Liguria, in the city of Genoa (Genova), a port in the north of Italy, there is a very popular dish, “sardines Genoese-style”. It is a very old dish, and surely it was eaten by Genoa’s famous citizens: Paolo Villaggio, the Italian actor known to us as Fantozzi; Christopher Columbus, the navigator and discoverer of America; and Niccolo Paganini, the Italian violin and guitar virtuoso and composer.

The idea of this dish is that sardines are covered with the famous pesto, an excellent and perhaps the most famous sauce of Italy. The sauce is made from Parmesan, garlic, basil and pine nuts. Then the sardines are rolled up, fried and sprinkled with lemon juice.

Today we will cook mackerel using an almost identical recipe, but we will not make rolls, we will simply bake it. Mackerel with cheese, or rather under a cheese sauce similar to pesto.

Ingredients

2 servings

Mackerel 1
Parmesan 50 g
Garlic 2-3 cloves
Parsley 4-5 sprigs
Basil 3-4 sprigs
Lemon 1 (1 tsp of juice for the marinade, the rest for serving)
Olive oil 2 tbsp (1 for the sauce, 1 to brush the fillets)
Salt, ground black pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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Preparing the fish

Fillet the mackerel. Mackerel does not live in our Dnieper, only in the shop, fresh-frozen, so it has to be thawed. Cut off the head and tail, gut the fish and cut off the fillets. Carefully remove all the bones, especially the rib bones.

Marinate the fillets: salt and pepper them lightly and squeeze 1 tsp of lemon juice over them. Leave for 10-15 mins.

Cheese sauce

While the fish marinates, make the cheese sauce. Grate the Parmesan. Peel the garlic. Pick the leaves off the parsley and basil and chop them finely.
Put the cheese, garlic and herbs in a blender, add 1 tbsp of olive oil and a pinch of black pepper. Blend it all and transfer to a small bowl.
By and large, fresh basil can be replaced with dried, but at least take fresh parsley, so that you get a nice color.

Frying and baking

Fry the fillets. Pat the marinated mackerel fillets dry with a napkin and brush with a little olive oil. Put the fillets on a preheated grill rack. At home the rack is easily replaced by a grill pan, a great and practical thing to have in the kitchen.
Fry the fillets over medium heat for 4-5 mins on each side until browned, preferably pressing them against the rack with a spatula from time to time.

Put the mackerel in a baking dish.
Sprinkle with the cheese sauce, trying to get as little cheese as possible on the bottom of the dish.
Put the dish with the fish in an oven preheated to 200°C and bake for 10 mins. During this time the cheese will melt and start to form a crust. How far to bake it is up to you. Mackerel with cheese is especially tasty when the cheese is baked into a crust.

Serving

Put the finished mackerel with cheese on a plate. Add a few herbs and a slice of lemon. Before eating, I recommend squeezing lemon juice over it. And a glass of wine would not hurt either.

Calories and macros

475 kcal

Serving ≈ 150 g

Protein31 g27% of kcal
Fat36 g69% of kcal
Carbs5 g4% of kcal

100 g316 kcalProtein 20.8 gFat 24.1 gCarbs 3.1 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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