Name: Aromatic Sauté of Fresh Fish (Zarzuela)
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Spain
Ingredients: 1 dried red chilli pepper, seeded and finely chopped; 150ml (¼ pint) fish stock; 150ml (¼ pint) olive oil; 6 × 175g (6oz) fish steaks — choose from two types, for example, hake, monkfish, cod, halibut; A few strands of saffron; Croûtons and chopped fresh shives, to garnish; 2 large tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped; 1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley; 3 cloves of garlic, crushed; 6 small squid, cleaned and cut into rings (see the notes on page 205); 12 mussels, well scrubbed (throw out any damaged ones); 12 king prawns, with the shells left on; 1 medium onion, finely chopped; 250ml (8fl oz) dry white wine; Freshly ground black pepper; Salt; 1 bay leaf; 2-3 tablespoons brandy (Spanish, of course); 1 teaspoon paprika

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Floyd on Spain

By Keith Floyd

Published 1992

About

Every cookery book mentions without fail that the Spanish name of this dish, zarzuela, actually means ‘a satirical light opera’, though the connection between the music and the dish is, to say the least, tenuous. I once asked the humorist Miles Kington to write a rather different introduction to my zarzuela recipe and he produced a side-splittingly funny spoof about it being the signature dish of a well-known island slightly south of Gibraltar and north of Algiers. It was name