Barbecued Balinese spiced fish in banana leaves

We had a brilliant bank holiday weekend in West Wales. Wind, flat lagoons, a new kitesurfing spot, fun with friends and SUNSHINE! It was all rounded off perfectly with the first back garden barbecue of the year.

Secret spot (click images to see large)

Last week I made a trip to Wing Yip in the city. Wing Yip is a chain of Oriental supermarkets with large shops nationwide. I went a bit mad and came home with sushi rice, sake, shrimp paste, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and banana leaves. It was the banana leaves that I was really after.

I'd tried a recipe of Shelina Permaloo's last week, she being the talented Mauritian winner of Masterchef last year who won the show with her outstanding dishes of Mauritian Octopus Salad and Mutton Curry.

The dish I made was King Prawn Rougaille (Spicy Creole sauce) with saffron and cumin rice. The recipes can be found here and I really do recommend you check them out. I'm afraid I balked at the 30 ingredients necessary for the octopus however. I don't think Filipa would appreciate the washing-up for that one.

The Rougaille was gorgeous and with summer flirting, my mind started with ideas for tropical tones and lush spicy flavours. I'm not going to give you the recipe for barbecued Balinese spiced fish in banana leaves. It's not my recipe, it's Rick Stein's from his Far Eastern Odyssey and although it takes half an hour to make the spice paste, its definitely worth it.

However, I can show you how easy it is to barbecue a fillet of fish on a barbecue using this dish as an example.

serves 4

4 fillets of firm fish such as haddock, monkfish, snapper, cod etc
(or lovely whole fish scaled, gutted, slashed and simply cooked for longer)
8 tsp of spice paste
8 kaffir lime leaves (frozen are better than dried) finely shredded into strips
Banana leaves (frozen and defrosted) or kitchen foil

Light your barbecue and let the flames die down. You want your coals still to be glowing and giving a good heat.

Place your fish fillets in the middle of your banana leaves or foil. Put a teaspoon of spice paste on each side and season with salt. Scatter the shredded kaffir lime leaves on top.

Fold the edges of the banana leaves together and secure with cocktail sticks soaked in some water. If using foil then simply scrunch up the edges so that steam can't escape.

Cook your parcels on the barbecue for 10 minutes turning once. Serve on warmed plates with Thai jasmine rice and maybe some asparagus and sugar snap peas cooked on the barbecue in the same way for 5 minutes. Amazing.

P.S. Don't do like we did and nearly incinerate the cats when the paint on your £5 bucket barbecue ignites. Remember that and you'll be grand :)