Italian fish stew – a one pan mid-week treat

First up, this is not a fish stew with all sorts of shellfish, tenticles and gubbins in it. I do love those French stews, but they are a lengthy, expensive process and more likely to turn off the squeamish amongst you. This is definitely in mid-week dinner territory, although I’d be pretty delighted to have it served to me for a dinner with friends too.

One meal for the whole family

As always with my recipes, this is a meal the whole family can eat. The fish stew base can even be made ahead and frozen to make it an even speedier supper. It also works well if people in the family are eating at different times as the almost-finished fish stew can be divided and the fish added just before serving to whoever is eating that portion. The sauce flavours are familiar and Italian enough that even the fussiest of children shouldn’t take issue with the odd nugget of fish, nor does the sauce taste fishy so, if need be they can pick the fish out. No drama.

The addition of potatoes to this fish stew means there is no need to prepare any extra sides – although a hunk of buttered crusty bread is pretty dreamy for dunking in the juices. The other loveliness about adding the potatoes to cook in the sauce is that they soak up all the flavours as they cook and slightly thicken the sauce.