Classic Norwegian mackerel with cabbage and sour cream sauce

For me, this is one of the ultimate Norwegian summer classics. Fresh caught mackerel with crispy seared skin, creamy, tangy sauce, butter steamed early green cabbage – and a metric shitload of dill.

This is a 10 minute dish, provided the fish is filleted. Serves 4. If you’re very hungry, add a few boiled potatoes.

Ingredients

• 4 medium Atlantic mackerel
• 1 medium-large cabbage, divided in 8 pieces
• juice from 1/2-1 lemon
• 1 cup sour cream
• butter, oil, salt, pepper

Method

Cook the cabbage a few minutes until slightly tender, yet still has some bite with a liberal amount of salt, and a knob of good butter.

While the cabbage is cooking, season with salt and fry the fish in some oil in a carbon steel or non stick pan on medium-high heat, skin side down, until skin is nice and crispy.

Add a good knob of butter to the pan, let it melt, tip the pan, and spoon the butter over the meat side of the fish. This is to make sure the fish cooks very gently. It’ll become very dry is you flip it over to fry both sides of the fish.

Transfer the fish to a plate, then add the sour cream to the pan, and stir. Season the sour cream sauce with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Plate with cabbage first, then sauce and fish. Top with shitload of dill, or equally liberal ammounts of finely chopped chives.

Beautiful with a glass of crisp white wine!