Jane Grigson’s Fish Book

"Jila: Delia Smith is another one I like. Her books are so easy for home cooking. You don’t need to go through incredible steps to make nice food. The big Delia collection is very useful and helpful. I always cook Christmas from her – her turkey and all the trimmings. “My mother comes from the south of Iran and the fish recipe in our book is very popular in southern Iran. They always cook fish with stuffing in it and they used to cook them in clay ovens outside in the garden” Shahrzad: Like Jila, I started cooking western food when I came here. Fish is difficult for us because we don’t have many Persian fish dishes – and there is a huge variety of fish that is available here and not in Iran. The book I always found particularly helpful was Jane Grigson’s Fish Book . She has recipes for Dover sole and all the fish we have here in England. Her approach is very straightforward, takes you all the way through from preparation to cooking and you are assured of a good result at the end. It’s very simple and practical. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Jila: Fish is very interesting because it’s always very important to have recipes that won’t go wrong. I like Rick Stein’s fish books. He’s not too ‘cheffy’ in his approach. Jila: My mother comes from the south of Iran and the fish recipe in our book is very popular in southern Iran. They always cook fish with stuffing in it and they used to cook them in clay ovens outside in the garden. Of course, I grill or bake it. It’s got coriander, garlic, onions and chilli with dried lemon powder and turmeric as a stuffing, and you can do it with trout, sea bream, salmon… For New Year we always have fish with herb rice and it works very well with salmon. It adds layers of aroma to the fish."