Mark Hix recipe: Cuttlefish, green tomato and chilli broth

Serves 4

Cuttlefish, green tomato and chilli broth (Jason Lowe)

I'm going to continue writing cuttlefish recipes until I am blue in the face because, frankly, we aren't eating enough of it – and the majority of ours gets shipped abroad, which is a shame. Fishmongers should be promoting it, but they seem to only want to stock squid, erroneously thinking that's all we want.

A good fish stock cube dissolved in a litre of boiling water
1 small leek, halved, roughly chopped and washed
10 black peppercorns
4 lime leaves
The trimmings from the cuttlefish (not the back bone)

To serve

A small piece of root ginger (about 30g) scraped and finely grated
1 small cuttlefish, weighing about 400-500g, cleaned (keep trimmings for stock)
2 large or 4 small green tomatoes, cut into rough chunks
1 green chilli, thinly sliced
4 spring onions, trimmed, thinly sliced
15-20 leaves of Thai basil, torn if large

First, make the broth. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil, season and simmer gently for 30 minutes; then strain through a fine-meshed sieve into a clean pan; season if necessary.

Cut the cuttlefish into rough 2cm squares and then score a criss-cross into them with a sharp knife. Cut the tentacles down into four pieces. To serve, put all the ingredients into the broth, except for the basil. Simmer for 2-3 minutes, season if necessary, stir in the basil and serve immediately.