Merluza con Almejas
Hake is a very common fish in Spain and can be found in most fishmongers and supermarket fish counters. Often the whole fish is for sale and the fishmonger will slice it into cutlets for you. The head is usually included and boiling it is a great way to get fish stock when required.
This dish is my favourite way of cooking hake and as I love clams I tend to add a lot of them. You may not want as many as I have suggested so I leave this to you to decide but you probably want to have at least 12 large clams or 16 to 20 baby clams.
Ingredients
Serves 4
- 4 x 175g hake cutlets
- 2 tablespoons plain flour
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper to season the flour
- 3 table spoons olive oil
- 1 large onion
- 2 wineglasses of white wine
- 1 wineglasse of cold water
- 500g clams
- 100g peas
- 3 tablespoons of chopped parsley
Cooking Method
Scrub the clams and throw out any damaged ones.
HINT: Soak them in cold, salty water which may make them open and get rid of any grains of sand that are inside them.
Start by washing the fish and then patting it dry. Season the flour with salt and pepper and then roll the hake cutlets in the flour.
Heat the oil in a large frying pan that has a lid and fry the onion slowly until it goes transparent. Add the hake cutlets to the frying pan and cook gently for about 2 to 3 minutes before turning them and cooking them for a further 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the wine and water, bring to the boil and add the clams and peas. Put the lid on the pan (this creates the heat which will help the clams to open) and cook for about another 5 minutes or until the clams open.
Transfer the fish and the clams to a warm serving plate (throw away any clams that haven’t opened) and keep warm.
Add about 2 spoons of the chopped parsley to the liquid in the pan, stir well and check the seasoning. Pour the sauce over the hake and clams, sprinkle the rest of the parsley over the dish and serve immediately.
You could serve this with boiled potatoes or, as we like, with mashed potatoes.
NOTE: If you don’t like the flavour of parsley then you can miss it out.