This is a recipe from Nigel Slater’s Real Cooking book. I had been looking forward to cooking it for some time and so I bought red mullet (not snapper) fillets and (baby) spinach. But, partly due to the recipe and partly due to my rather thin home made langoustine stock, it was rather bland. This was in spite of my adding deseeded green chilli and a lot more garlic than was called for. To be fair though, I didn’t taste it right before serving – I’m always forgetting to do this – which would have given me a chance to rectify the situation somewhat.

I found some mistakes in the recipe: 1) the title says grilled fish but in fact it fried then poached while sitting in top of the soup, 2) the recipe calls for skinned fillets but the photograph shows the skin plainly left on the red mullet. And while we’re on the subject, the marinade was far too strong for mullet.

If I make this again I will use more robust fish such as salmon and big up the salt, hot and sour flavours. I’ll also use a more concentrated and so more tasty stock.