Today’s Best Italian Recipe is mashed potatoes, black cabbage and spicy mackerela second good and sustainable mandate from Gaia Cozziwho wrote to us: «I work in marketing for a large hotel chain and I am in love with the United States, where I lived during university and where I return on vacation as soon as I can. I live in Florence with my husband and two small children. I have always cooked: my family ran a historic specialty food shop in the heart of Florence for many years and for a while I also worked as a pastry chef. Recently, I have become passionate about plant-based cuisine and have stopped eating meat, for an increasingly conscious approach to cooking. This recipe of mine uses two vegetables that I love very much, omnipresent in Tuscan cuisine, potatoes and black cabbage, and combines them with mackerel, considered one of the most sustainable fish.

The recipe: mashed potatoes, black cabbage and spicy mackerel

Commitment: easy
Time: 45 plus 6 hours marinating
Styling and cooking: Joëlle Néderlants

Ingredients for 8 people

• 800 g white potatoes
• 8 black cabbage leaves
• 4 fresh mackerel
• 2 untreated lemons
• chili powder
• caster sugar
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• White pepper

Method

1. Fillet the mackerel and marinate the fillets in an equal quantity of sugar and salt, flavoured with grated lemon zest and a sprinkling of chilli pepper, for at least 6 hours.
2. Rinse the mackerel fillets under running water, then make small incisions on the skin side and quickly sear them in a non-stick pan, placing them skin side down.
3. Peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water; drain and pass them through a fine-mesh food mill while they are still hot. Blend the potatoes with 100 ml of oil and some of their cooking water until you obtain a puree; season with salt and pepper and keep the puree warm.
4. Remove the central rib from the black cabbage leaves, brush them lightly with oil and bake them at 70°C, until they become crispy.
5. Divide the puree, piping hot, onto the plates, place a fillet of mackerel on top, garnish with a crispy black cabbage leaf and serve.

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