A load of Pollocks.

It’s been a while since I actually cooked anything on here, I know.
Basically it’s because last Monday I picked up a Nintendo Wii from Virgin Megastore (or whatever they’re called now.. zazzi, vazzi, something like that) and I’ve spent the best part of the last week pulling muscles getting overly enthusiastic at Wii Sports Boxing, shooting angry villagers in Resident Evil 4, and saving lives of fictional characters in Trauma Center: Second Opinion. I’ve never been much of a gamer, but the motion detection, angle detection, wirelessness..etc of it all appeals to me. Plus it’s a lot cheaper than an xbox360/ps3, and really tiny. About the size of a dvd/cd writer in a standard pc. Or for you non-geeks out there – imagine three standard-sized dvd cases on top of each other.

A friend came over Sunday night to have a go with one for the first time, and he’s a guy very much into his gaming. He seems to have had every console created at some point of another (and still has most of them littered around).
But put him in front of a Wii and he’s just as confused as the rest of the world.
You’ll be playing baseball and he asks questions like “which button do you press to throw the ball?”. Answer: none – just throw the remote as if it were a ball (but don’t let go of it).
Having spent years getting my ass kicked at every game he had, its interesting to see him confused at what I think is a much easier system than trying to remember combinations of buttons. It’s also amusing to hear him complain about how a kind of wireless mouse pointer should really be a D-pad. Whatever a D-pad is.

Anyway, back to food.

As mentioned – I’ve planned nothing in the past week, so tonight would have been another pie and chips. However, I stopped off for some toilet roll in Tescos on my way home on Monday, and grabbed some food products at the same time. Biscuits, croissants, some frozen oven chips, and I was trying to think what to have for tea, when I happened upon the frozen chicken/beef/fish aisle.

I’ve never been sure I like fish. For years I definitely didn’t like fish. The look, the fact that its about the only meat sold with the eyes still in it, the smell – there was something about it I just didn’t like.
Even as far as fish-fingers – I didn’t really like them. I ate them as a very young child apparently, but somewhen in between primary school and 18 years old, I had decided I didn’t like fish of any type.
I used to eat a lot of fish cakes at my parents’ house. But fish-cakes being fish-cakes, there’s not a lot of anything in them. Certainly not much fish – they’re mostly potato and batter/breadcrumbs. That said, I don’t really like mashed potato on its own either.

I have distant memories from when I was very young, of my gran on my mum’s side cooking some sort of fish that smelt absolutely revolting. Something a weird yellowy colour that may have put me off for years to come.

Anyway, at some point between leaving college and now, I discovered these Birds Eye cod fillet things – essentially pieces of cod in batter. Like a kind of adult-version of fish fingers. Having decided I quite like them again after all, I started about having things with them. The obvious choice is chips. Then I added baked beans.
I later switched from chips to new potatoes, then tried to find some sort of sauce to go with it. Brown sauce didn’t work, nor barbeque. Gravy just seems like it would be wrong.
I looked around Tescos some weeks ago to try and find something to go with it. There is a big collection of Schwartz sauces that go with fish. However, they’re all in non-resealable packets and serve 4-6. Unless I starve myself for a couple of days first, that seems a bit of a waste to me.

So Monday night I picked up something in Tescos that already has sauce with it. How’s that for a stroke of genius.
So product for dinner tonight is: Young’s Mediterranean Fish Bake.

It is described on the box as “wild Alaskan pollock fillets in a tangy mediterranean sauce made with red peppers and creme fraiche, topped with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese”. It’s also got tomatoes in it.
I’ve never heard of a fish called a “pollock” before, and on the back it says “Alaskan Pollock is from the same family of fish as cod. It’s white flesh has a firm, smooth texture and a delicate, slightly sweet flavour.”
I’ve never thought of fish as having families before – just referred to them all as “fish”. I guess that particular family is cashing in on the life insurance payout now anyway.

It doesn’t say how many it serves. My sister pointed out to me recently that you can work this out, because on it somewhere it will say “a quarter of a pack contains” or “half a pack contains” however much salt, fat, etc, and this is frequently used to show one person’s share.
I don’t watch these markers on food products a lot, but it is slightly worrying that half a pack contains 21.7% of my daily salt intake. Although I suppose if the marjority of an evening meal is only 21.7%, then that’s not so bad as long as I’m not eating 6 meals a day.

So on with the cooking.
The first negative point has to be the overall cooking time. 55mins in the oven. It’s a slow one. I was originally going to have this for dinner last night but I was playing Resident Evil 4 til gone 9, and with Charlie Brooker’s screenwipe on the tv at 10pm, I had to cook something in less time. And finish eating it too – so I don’t spray it across the screen laughing.
While this might be down to my bad planning last night, I’m normally home around 6pm. By the time you’ve got the oven hot and cooked the thing, it’s still nearly 7.30 allowing for nobody else in my shared house using the kitchen (which I was unusually lucky with, tonight), and me actually starting cooking dinner the second I walk through the door. Because of this, I doubt it’ll be a common meal. I’m rarely that well organised.

As far as cooking goes – it seems very odd. It comes in a container plastic, with a plastic “film” lid, much like a microwavable product might. However, it’s done in the oven. Some housemates who know my cooking ability isn’t amazing, mentioned I should remove this film lid, but according to the instructions from Young’s – it stays on for the first 35mins of cooking. It is then removed.
I followed it all to the letter, and as I had an hour, the one upside is I had plenty of time to wash and boil some new potatoes to go with it.

I was slightly concerned when I checked on the progress of the thing. While I was waiting for my dinner to cook, I was busy trying to stop the possessed monks in the castle getting to Ashley (Resident Evil), and I paused to go and check about 10-15mins before it should have been ready. It had gone a bit burnt down one side, but I didn’t want to remove it then in case the exterior looked like a sunbed addict, while the interior was as white as – well..me.
I gave it 5-8mins (give or take a few) and removed it.

Plated with potatoes, and time for the tasting.
It’s surprisingly very sweet. I wasn’t really expecting that but it was quite a nice surprise.
I’d say I can taste the tomatoes and the cheese. I can’t get over how sweet it is though, for something with no sugar, or e-numbers or anything.
I tried some of the fish alone, and I wouldn’t say it tasted exactly like cod, but the similarity is there. Quite bland, which I guess is why you need the very strong sweet sauce with it.
It’s quite nice.
It’s probably the nicest thing that I’ve cooked with a the film lid still on it.
It’s not something I’d eat every day even if it cooked in 20minutes, but was an interesting experience.

I ignored my half-pack-being-one-person theory and ate about three quarters of it, plus some potatoes. The last step of the instructions on the box says “portion as required” anyway. Clearly its hard to cut it in half before cooking, and you can’t refreeze it so they say – so it would have gone to waste otherwise.

As normal, I’m not selling myself out and saying I’ll eat it every week – or even that I like it enough to eat it every six months. If I commit myself, I’d likely get bored of it like most other things. My interest in the Oriental stir-fry has been fading lately due to overuse. I wish I could say the same about the other oriental things I saw chatting by Trenchard Street car park this afternoon. I don’t think my interest in them will ever subside.