Caribbean Mahi Mahi with Pak Choi and Potato Gratin

The easiest way to make Caribbean cooking complicated is to arrive with a rigid shopping list. The easier way is to go to the market, look at what is genuinely fresh and build dinner from there. This meal aboard Aurelia Blue started exactly like that at the market in Port of Spain.

Fresh fish, Pak Choi, ginger, garlic, vegetables and herbs came back to the boat with us. The result was Mahi Mahi with quickly cooked Pak Choi and a proper potato gratin — a combination that is not trying to be traditionally Trinidadian, French or German. It is simply the kind of dinner that makes sense when good ingredients are sitting in front of you.

Start with the gratin

The potato gratin takes the longest, so it goes into the oven first. Lightly grease a baking dish, peel and finely slice the potatoes and layer them in the dish. Season the layers with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Aboard we often use cooking cream rather than heavy cream because it is practical and keeps well in the Caribbean. European-style heavy cream works perfectly too. Mix the cream with finely diced garlic and grated cheese — Parmesan is excellent, but another good melting cheese is fine — pour it over the potatoes and finish with another layer of grated cheese. That top layer also helps protect the garlic and cream from becoming too dark.

Depending on the oven and the thickness of the slices, allow roughly 45 to 60 minutes. The gratin is forgiving, which is useful because the Pak Choi and fish are not.

Pak Choi: stems first, leaves later

Do not throw away the thick stems. Separate them from the leaves, cut the stems into pieces of about one centimetre and slice the leaves into strips. Finely dice an onion and fry it together with the stems until they take on a little colour.

Then add finely diced ginger, some garlic, salt, pepper and a small amount of curry. The leafy Pak Choi follows only at the end, together with a little dark sesame oil and teriyaki sauce. Cook it quickly and take it off the heat while it is still fresh and slightly crisp. The residual heat will continue cooking it on the way to the table.

The fish goes last

The fish was bought fresh at Port of Spain market and filleted there, skin on. Portion the fillets and check carefully for bones. Season lightly with salt and pepper and dust with only a very small amount of flour. This is not a coating or batter; the flour simply helps with the surface in the pan.

For this meal I cooked the flesh side first for roughly three minutes, then turned the pieces onto the skin side for another few minutes. Exact timing depends on thickness and heat, so the clock is less important than the fish itself. The target is cooked through but still moist, perhaps just slightly translucent in the centre. Six or eight minutes on each side would turn beautiful fresh fish into something dry very quickly.

The timing is simple: the gratin can wait a little, the Pak Choi can wait only briefly, and the fish should go from pan to plate.

Serve it family-style

A warm shallow serving dish works well: Pak Choi underneath, the fish laid over it, and the gratin alongside. It is less formal than plating every portion in the galley and far more appropriate for a relaxed dinner aboard.

The real luxury is not decoration. It is buying a fish while it is genuinely fresh, choosing vegetables that still look alive, cooking them simply and then eating together while the boat is still part of the evening.

A cool avocado-lime cream to finish

After fish, Pak Choi and a creamy gratin, dessert should bring the temperature and weight of the meal back down. Avocado sounds unusual in a dessert until lime and coconut arrive. Then it makes perfect sense.

• 2 ripe avocados
• juice of 2 limes
• finely grated zest of about 1 lime
• 2–3 tablespoons condensed milk, honey or sugar syrup
• about 80–120 ml coconut milk
• a small pinch of salt
• a little vanilla, optional
• fresh mango, pineapple, passion fruit or berries, if available

Blend the avocado with the lime immediately, then add coconut milk, sweetener, salt and optional vanilla. The texture should sit somewhere between mousse and thick cream. If it is too firm, add a little more coconut milk. If the flavour feels too mild, add lime before adding more sugar. Chill for at least an hour and serve cold with fresh tropical fruit.

Of course, avocado cream is only one possible ending. Some evenings call for fruit and lime, others for ice cream, coffee or something decidedly less restrained. Our Cockpit Bar Desserts collection moves between the galley and the bar, with simple classics, tropical combinations and a few recipes that developed aboard Aurelia Blue.