Nigella Lawson’s fish finger bhorta cooks onions, chilli, ginger and garlic down soft, then folds oven-crisped fish fingers through the pan with English mustard, spinach, lime and coriander. The fish fingers bake at 220°C for 20 to 25 minutes, and it serves two with leftovers.
The recipe isn’t hers by invention, and she says so plainly in Cook, Eat, Repeat (2020). She found it in a 2019 tweet by the journalist Ash Sarkar, played with the idea, and made her own version. Her one addition is the pink pickled onions on top.
The make-or-break is the fish fingers. Nigella has you bake them longer than the packet says, 20 to 25 minutes, so the coating goes genuinely crisp. They get mashed into a wet pan at the end, so anything less and they collapse to mush.
Nigella Lawsonb Fish Finger Bhorta
Course: Dinner, LunchCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy2
servings15
minutes25
minutes430
kcal40
minutesA comfort supper from Cook, Eat, Repeat (2020), adapted by Nigella from Ash Sarkar’s viral tweet and made for the BBC2 series. Storecupboard fish fingers turned into something spiced, sharp and properly moreish.
Ingredients
- For the pink pickled onions:
½ red onion
red wine vinegar or lime juice, to cover
- For the bhorta:
2 regular onions (approx. 300g)
2 red chillies
2 fat cloves of garlic
1 x 15ml tbsp finely grated fresh ginger (approx. 50g chunk)
12 fish fingers
3 x 15ml tbsp cold-pressed rapeseed or vegetable oil
2 x 15ml tbsp English mustard (from a jar)
2 tsp sea salt flakes (or 1 tsp fine sea salt)
125g young spinach
1 lime
3 x 15ml tbsp roughly chopped coriander, plus more to serve
Directions
- Pickle the onions: As far ahead as you can, at least 2 hours and up to 24, cut the red onion into fine half-moons. Pack into a jar or a bowl you can cover, pour over red wine vinegar or lime juice until they’re just immersed, press down, cover, and leave to steep.
- Prep and heat the oven: When you’re ready to eat, heat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan (425°F). Slice the regular onions into fine half-moons, deseed and finely slice the chillies (or leave the seeds in), peel the garlic, and grate the ginger to give 1 tablespoon.
- Crisp the fish fingers: Spread the fish fingers on a baking sheet and cook for about 20 to 25 minutes, a little longer than the packet directs, so the coating turns really crisp.
- Soften the onions: Meanwhile, warm the oil in a large frying pan or wok-shaped pan and cook the sliced onions over medium-low for 20 minutes, stirring regularly, until pale gold and soft.
- Build the base: Add the chillies and stir for 3 minutes, then stir in the ginger, grate or mince in the garlic, and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in the mustard and salt, add the spinach and let it wilt for 2 to 3 minutes, then squeeze in the lime juice.
- Fold in the fish fingers: Take the pan off the heat. Break the fish fingers up a bit with a spatula, add them to the pan, and toss everything together, breaking them up further. Scatter over the coriander.
- Serve: Top with the pink pickled onions and more coriander if you like.
FAQs
What fish fingers work best?
Standard breaded cod fish fingers, cooked from frozen, and you want the full 12. Sarkar’s original tweet referenced Bird’s Eye, so that’s the spiritual home of the dish, but any decent breaded fish finger does the job. The point is breaded, not battered.
Battered fish fingers go soft and greasy when they meet the wet pan, where breadcrumb coating holds its crunch. Don’t defrost them first; they crisp better straight from the freezer at that high heat. This is the one place the dish leans on a shortcut ingredient, so don’t feel you need anything fancy.
What are the pink pickled onions, and can I skip them?
They’re half a red onion sliced into fine half-moons and steeped in red wine vinegar or lime juice, anywhere from 2 to 24 hours, with longer giving a deeper pink and a softer bite. Nigella keeps a rolling stock of them in the house, and suggests using a whole onion since you’ll find other uses.
She calls them not mandatory but something she’d be unwilling to go without, and I’m with her. The sharp, bright onions cut through the rich, mustardy pan and stop the whole thing feeling heavy. Start them first, before anything else, because they’re the only part that needs waiting time.
How spicy is it, and can I tone it down?
There are two heat sources, not one. The 2 red chillies bring fresh heat, and you can deseed them or leave the seeds in depending on how fierce you want it. On top of that, 2 tablespoons of English mustard from a jar add a sinus-clearing sharpness that’s different from chilli heat.
For a milder version, deseed the chillies and drop the mustard to a single tablespoon, tasting as you go. You lose some of the punch that makes this dish what it is, so I wouldn’t go lower than that. If you like this kind of chilli-warmed savoury cooking, gemelli with anchovies, tomato and mascarpone works the same fast, punchy weeknight territory.
Do I need mustard oil or a wok?
No to both. Sarkar’s original described the fish fingers fried in mustard oil, which is the traditional bhorta fat, but Nigella takes a different route: plain cold-pressed rapeseed or vegetable oil for the cooking, with jarred English mustard stirred in later for that mustard hit. It’s a clever swap that keeps it a true storecupboard supper.
Any large frying pan works, though Nigella uses a wok-shaped stir-fry pan because the sloping sides make the final tossing easier. You’re mashing 12 fish fingers into a pan of soft onions and spinach, so width and room to move things around matter more than the exact shape.
Does it really make leftovers, and how do they keep?
It does, and Nigella treats the leftovers as the whole point rather than an afterthought. This is our testing rather than hers: covered in the fridge, it kept well for two days, and like a lot of spiced dishes it tasted better on day two once the flavours had settled into the onions.
Eat it cold straight from the container or warm it gently in a pan; both work. Sarkar reassured Nigella that eating it late at night out of the Tupperware was the authentic way, and that cold-from-the-fridge appeal is real. For another quick dish that reheats happily, pasta risotto with peas and pancetta is a good midweek companion.
Can I make it without fish fingers?
Not really, and still call it this dish. The fish fingers are the whole conceit: a familiar frozen convenience food turned into something new, which is exactly the point Nigella makes about honest borrowing and recipes evolving. Take them out and you’ve made a different thing.
That said, breaded veggie or plant-based fish-style fingers slot straight in if you don’t eat fish, cooked the same crisp way. Traditional bhorta is often built on vegetables or dried fish, so you’re in keeping with the spirit either way. If you want a meat-free comfort dish in the same quick, spiced register, Turkish eggs scratch a similar itch.
