Fried Fish with Cumin & Tahini Sauce | Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean

Claudia Roden wrote about this fried fish with cumin and Tahini sauce in her cook book. Her inspiration was from a restaurant in Tripoli, Lebanon. Meanwhile, this is how she described her flashback to her childhood in Alexandria, Egypt. The crisp fish with a delicate lemony tahini sauce, the smell of the sea and the gentle breeze took her back to a restaurant dish there.

In the age of globalized trading, the sources of our food, produce and spices come to us from far and wide. As a result, we don’t need to be in North Africa to experience the taste of a Lebanese fish dish.

The last time I check, the distributor of tahini sauce in my fridge is Soom in Philadelphia. The wild mountain cumin is hand-picked by foragers in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan; the marketer is Burlap & Barrel. There you have it: cookings in the old world live on in our kitchens, no matter where you are.

The fried fish with cumin and tahini sauce may not have evoked childhood memories or our travels. There are bustling seaports and fishing villages along the Mediterranean coastline with a mixed ethnic ancestry. Genoese, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Tunisian… I want to keep making these vibrant dishes to celebrate the unity and diversity of the food we can all sit around the table and enjoy.

Print Recipe

Fried Fish with Cumin & Tahini Sauce | Claudia Roden's Mediterranean

Ingredients

• 4 firm white fish fillets, such as bream or sea bass, skinless
• 3 tbsp plain flour
• 1 – 1 1/2 ground cumin
• 2 tbsp olive oil, for frying
• 1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 lemon, quartered, to serve
• Salt
• FOR THE TAHINI SAUCE:
• 3 tbsp tahini
• Juice of 1/2 – 1 lemon, to taste
• 1 small garlic clove, crushed

Instructions

1

For the tahini sauce, stir the tahini in the jar before putting 3 tbsp in a small serving bowl. Gradually add the lemon juice and 2 – 3 tbsp water, beating vigorously with a fork and adding just enough water to get the consistency of a runny cream. The paste with stiffen at first and then become light and smooth. Add a little salt and the garlic.

2

Season the fish with salt. Put the flour, cumin and a pinch of salt on a plate and mix well. Turn the fish fillets into this to coat them all over, then shake vigorously to remove the excess flour.

3

Heat a small amount of oil in a non-stick fry pan. Put the fillets in and cook over a medium-heat, turning them over once, for 3 – 10 minutes depending on their thickness, until crisp, lightly browned and just cooked through.

4

Serve the fish with a sprinkling of parsley and the lemon quarters. Serve with the tahini sauce.