Name: Hake in Brandy (Merluza en Coñac)
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Spain
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley; 3-4 tablespoons Spanish brandy; 3 or 4 saffron strands, crushed; 1 wineglass dry white wine; 4 × 175g (6oz) hake cutlets; 24 mussels, well scrubbed (throw out any damaged ones or ones that remain closed when tapped); 1 onion, finely chopped; 4 tomatoes, skinned and chopped; Salt; 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped; Freshly ground black pepper; 4 tablespoons olive oil

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Floyd on Spain

By Keith Floyd

Published 1992

About

Hake, which is in the same family as haddock and cod, is probably Spain’s most popular fish. And there are lots of them off the Mediterranean coast and in the Bay of Biscay. Or rather there used to be. But now, because of the global warming thing everyone is wittering on about, hake are migrating further north and, much to the consternation of British and Irish fishermen, the old hake have upsticked and taken residence in the Irish Sea, which has become warmer.

But to go back to the