A simple salmon tea and maybe a mackerel...

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught.

Here's what we had for tea last night: I mention it only because it's a super quick supper. My auntie J would refer to this as salmon "devilled up", I think. So I'll call it

Bedevilled salmon with rice.

Right: allow one salmon steak per person (and frankly, use the cheapest cuts of raggedy salmon you can find). Into an oven dish the salmon goes (medium hot oven) and you sprinkle over olive oil, crystals of sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, lots of unpeeled smallish garlic cloves, a handful of capers (you can soak them, as I do, in a mixture of milk and water to debrine them a little) and, say, ten cherry tomatoes. I like chilli -- so I would also add a whole dried red chilli, torn into shreds. Yes -- you could use a fresh one, but you get a lovely smoky hit if you make it dried for this recipe. Into the oven and bake for about twenty minutes -- but flake a tiny bit off before then to try because you want the fish to be succuclent and not dry.

In the meantime, cook as much rice as you think you will eat each, cover it with as much water in volume again (long grain rice or basmati -- I'm assuming white, though), bring it to the boil, stir, salt, lid on tightly and then bring the heat down to the lowest possible setting. Will be done in 12-15. Actually, if you've kept the heat in, you could turn the heat off altogether. When it's cooked, fork it up. You could add some torn-up spinach leaves to the rice as you put it in the pan, too.

Mound of rice on each plate, salmon steak on top and don't miss the juices in the pan. That was easy, wasn't it? Spritz of lemon juice is good. And the garlic? Well, I love roasted garlic, so I tend to munch it skin and all. But you could squeeze the rich garlic paste out and put it on your salmon.

An another favourite tea down our way? One mackerel each, head on, tail on if you please, but gutted. I just rinse, pat dry and then roll in a light dusting of seasoned flour, sprinkling a little on the inside of the fish. I might make a kind of stuffing with chopped tomato, spring onions, a little olive oil and couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs per fish. They go into a hot oven, turned once and should be done in about 30 minutes. We devour these inelegantly with bread and butter. Great for camping, too. Accompaniments of any other sort seem wrong. If you want a salad, have it first or afterwards. You need to make sure these fish crisp up -- and I hope you don't think we're a bit savage if I say that we munch the tails, too.