Steve Hatt fishmongers posted this hilarious picture of Jason with a giant halibut on their Facebook page this morning. So it seems like a good time to remind you of this halibut recipe so that you can pop out to Essex Road, buy all your ingredients and settle down for some yumminess.

We have a few more boxes of Essex Road Recipe cards left; you can buy them in the shops on Essex Road (Steve Hatt, James Elliott the butcher and the Market Garden), directly by messaging me here, or through Amazon.

Warning, please don’t even think about wearing white while preparing this…..

Pan fried Halibut with grated roast beetroot and fennel seeds.

2 large halibut steaks on the bone

4 medium sized raw beetroot – peeled and halved, stalks and roots removed

1 tbsp fennel seeds

salt and pepper

1 tsp sumac

1 tsp smoked paprika

Large pinch of sea salt

juice of ½ a lime

About an hour before you want to eat, mix the salt, sumac and smoked paprika with lime juice in a large shallow bowl and dip each side of the halibut steaks in this mix. Leave the halibut to marinate until you are ready to cook it.

Also at least an hour before eating, preheat your oven to 200ºC

Heat some vegetable oil (I use olive) in a roasting tray. Sprinkle the fennel seeds and some salt and pepper into the hot oil. Place the halved beets in the seasoned oil and stir them around so that they are well coated.

Roast the beets in the oven for 20+ minutes, or until you can pierce them with a sharp knife.

Remove from the oven and leave the beetroots to cool.

Once they are cool, grate or finely slice the cooked beetroot in the roasting dish or a bowl. Make sure that you keep the fennel seeds in with the grated beetroot.

(This is a messy and time-consuming business, but so worth it.)

In a large frying pan, heat enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan.

Fry the grated beetroot on a high heat for 5 minutes, stirring all the time, then add the halibut steaks on top of the fried, grated beetroot and cook the fish, still on a high heat, for 3 minutes on each side

Turn down the heat a little, cover the pan and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Squeeze a little lime juice over the fish before dividing each steak in 2 and serving on a bed of beetroot.