Preparing Devilled Butterflied Mackerel

Mackerel is a highly pungent and oily fish. This recipe is for a butterflied mackerel served up  with a hot devilled spiced butter as a coating, a cool salad set up for fish and some herb mayonnaise.

In this recipe butterflying fish is about removing the head, trimming off the fins and cutting open the fish to remove the backbone but keeping the whole fish intact. Fish such as mackerel and sardines lend themselves very well to this approach. It’s also applied to steak fillets as well.

Devilled incidentally means to coat fish, meat even kidneys in a hot peppery or cayenne-heated sauce.

The recipe featured on the BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals (UK) in series 13 episode 1 as one of the first of Marcus Wareing‘s skills tests in that series. As a recipe it tests the chef’s skills in filleting a fish and preparing it butterflied. The other part to fish cooking here is how the fish is handled in the griddle pan. The sauce and salad exercise the use of imagination and initiative in offering complementary flavours especially in terms of layers of heat for a strong tasting fish like mackerel. In this exercise the pairing salad was of cucumber and fennel with a herb mayonnaise. It was all achieved within 20 minutes – a tall order but not for professional chefs.

Serves 2

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Equipment:

• food processors
• paring knife

Ingredients

• 2 whole mackerel fish

Cucumber & Fennel Salad

• 1/2 fennel bulb – keep the green leafy bits for garnishing.
• 1 half cucumber, peeled.
• chopped dill used in the herb mayonnaise
• tbsp of olive oil – actually just add enough to coat the leaves there is no fixed amount!

Devilled Spice Mix

• 1/2lb salted butter, cubed
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 1 tsp caster sugar

Herb Mayonnaise

• two egg yolks
• 1 tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• large bunch of dill which is chopped.
• 1 tsp chervil
• 1 tsp parsley
• juice of a 1/2 lemon

Preparation

The Devilled Spice Mix

1. Place the cubed butter in a large bowl and beat to a spread with a spatula.
2. Add a teaspoon each of the four spices and caster sugar into the softened butter and mix thoroughly. The additions are very much a matter of taste and it can be as mild or as hot as desired but it does need some heat at least. The devilled mix should look a yellow-brown colour.

Butterflied Mackerel

1. First with a sharp boning knife make a sharp diagonal cut at the side of the first fin without taking the head off.
2. Remove any innards and discard responsibly.
3. Cut from the head along the belly all the way to the tip of the tail and by the side of the back bone.  Avoid cutting the back of the fish.
4. Lay the fish skin-side up, then press firmly along the backbone – this will help detach it from the flesh.
5. Turn the fish back over and carefully run a knife under the backbone from the tail end to the head. Prise it away with as many of the bones attached as possible. The backbone and the head should come away from the body of the fish when this  gentle cutting is completed.
6. With the flesh side up it is possible to remove the flesh that would have the pin bones contained in it. This comes away as a slim sliver of flesh. 
7. Run your finger along the flesh to feel for any more large bones and pull them out with tweezers. Ideally it should not be necessary because with a mackerel the removal of the bones unnecessarily tears the flesh.  Repeat to butterfly all the fish.

The Herb Mayonnaise

1. Take a food processor with a blade and add the egg yolks, dijon mustard and white wine vinegar. Add a few teaspoons of dill, some chervil and parsley – all are optional but the dill is the main herb that works well with fish.
2. With the machine running, slowly add by dribbling in some vegetable oil – it could be olive oil but sunflower will do the trick too. If the oil is added in a rushed manner then the mayonnaise has a habit of splitting.
3. Remove from the processor and put into a bowl. The mayonnaise will have a pale orange colour.
4. Add any dill that wasn’t used in the salad coming up.

The Cucumber and Fennel Salad

1. Peel the cucumber and remove the inner seed portion as you would with a courgette.
2. Slice the cucumber as you would a mushroom.
3. Slice the fennel into sections and cut either lengthways or like an onion.
4. Add some chopped dill and any green bits from the fennel.
5. Squeeze some lemon juice over the salad.
6. Add enough olive oil to coat the salad pieces and mix together. Leave to marinate.

Cooking The Fish

Heat a griddle pan up and make sure it stays hot throughout the cooking. If you don’t do this the fish just sticks to the surface and its hopeless to remove.

With the skinside of the mackerel uppermost, smear the devilled butter spice mix over the skin with a flat-bladed knife.

Carefully lay the buttered skin side of the fish onto the griddle pan surface. It will need a few minutes of cooking. The butter will hiss and bubble away as well as thoroughly brown. Be careful in handling the fish as this skin will break as soon as look at it. 

Smear the flesh side as it cooks with any remaining spice butter mix.

Turn the fish over gently and cook the fleshy side on the griddle. 

Using a spatula transfer the butterflied mackerel flesh side up onto a plate.

Dress the dish by placing some of the salad alongside in a decorative heap, along with a separate heap of mayonnaise (a tablespoon should be enough). Garnish the mayo with a sprig of dill or some of the fennel ends. Add some ground black pepper to finish.