Sheffield Cooks: '˜Lazy' rice and peas dish

Presenter of the afternoon show on BBC Radio Sheffield, Paulette Edwards, cooked up one of her favourite dishes lazy rice and peas with jerk fish for the Sheffield Cookbook: Second Helpings.

The Sheffield Cookbook is available to buy from Amazon, Waterstone’s and all venues featured in the book.

Ingredients

For the rice and peas:

400g tin of red kidney beans

1 sprig of thyme, or 1 tsp dried thyme

Quarter of an onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic

Small sachet of miso soup (wet rather than powdered)

20g creamed coconut

300ml long grain rice

400ml water

For the fish:

1 whole sea bream

2tsp fish seasoning (in a packet or fish cube....I said this was lazy!)

2 tsp jerk seasoning

3 tsp olive oil

To garnish:

1 large Spanish onion

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 green pepper

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Preparation time: 10 minutes | Cooking time: 1 hour | Serves 4

Method

Pour the kidney beans into a large pan, along with the water from the tin. Fill the can up with water and add this to the pan too.

Add the thyme, onion, two of the garlic cloves (they will be removed before you serve the dish), the miso soup sachet and creamed coconut. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.

While that is simmering, preheat the oven to 180°c/gas 4.

Make sure the fish is scaled and has had guts removed. Ask the fishmonger nicely – he does it for a living! Dry the fish off with kitchen roll and coat with a thin layer of olive oil so that seasoning sticks.

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Put the fish seasoning and jerk seasoning in a small bowl. If you can’t find fish seasoning use a fish stock cube mashed up. Add three teaspoons of oil to this and mix to a paste.

Using a brush coat the fish and if using a whole fish brush the inside (where gut has been removed) and put a clove of garlic in too.

Wrap the fish in foil and bake for 35 minutes.

Give the bean mixture a stir. Wash and add long grain rice and water, turn up the heat to bring back to the boil, then reduce the heat. Simmer for a further 15 minutes.

To serve, the rice should be cooked and all water absorbed. Remove the garlic and thyme. Serve the rice and peas with the fish.

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The dish can also be served with fried plantain, coleslaw, a side salad of your choice or all greedy three.

For a garnish cut a large Spanish onion and red, yellow and green peppers into rings, lightly cook them in olive oil till slightly soft. Then place on top of the fish with a small squeeze of lemon.