Two of Everything: Pan-fried Hake with Chorizo and Bean Stew

This appeared in my 'Meal Planning Monday' post this week and it turned out really well, so I thought I'd put it on here. It's based on a meal I had in a restaurant a few weeks ago; they used butter beans in their version, whereas I have used haricot beans (Baked Beans beans...). The hake goes really well with it, it's quite a meaty fish with enough flavour to stand up to the smoky chorizo. This serves two adults and two toddlers.

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
60g chorizo (you can always add more if you're not watching salt levels)
couple of sprigs fresh thyme
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
400g tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 jar passata
1 tin haricot beans, rinsed and drained
3 fat hake fillets, about 150g each

Method
Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, add the onion and saute until it is translucent. Add the garlic, chorizo, thyme and paprika and continue to saute until the chorizo begins to release its oil.

Add the tomatoes and passata with a good grinding of black pepper. Bring to the boil, pop the lid on and then turn the heat down as low as you can (I used a diffuser mat). Leave to simmer, really gently, for a couple of hours.

After this time, add the beans then continue to cook for a further 45 minutes.

When it's nearly time to eat, heat a frying pan until it's really quite hot (I didn't get my pan hot enough so no crispy skin this time!) Fry the hake, skin side down first, for about 5 minutes each side (although this depends how thick your fish is).

We had this with homemade pitta breads, and I had planned to add a handful of chopped up spinach to the sauce at the end, but I forgot...