What Fish Goes Well With Pesto?

Short answer
You can pair any seafood with pesto, but the sauce's robust flavour means the most significant rewards come when paired with delicate white fish such as whiting or pollack, which are not overly flavoursome on their own.

Long answer
You can pair pesto with literally any fish you like. We've developed successful recipe pairings for everything from low-cost tilapia to mid-priced hake to top-dollar Dover sole.

Most of the time, though, when we've saved up enough to treat ourselves to a fresh monkfish tail, a whole John Dory, or a bunch of newly foraged razor clams, we prefer to cook them with little more than a sprinkling of sea salt, a knob of butter and a squeeze of lemon juice.

From time to time, we'll pair our pesto with hand-dived scallops or include it in a crab roll. However, our general rule is that if we're about to spend upwards of £50 on a whole turbot, a Newlyn lobster, or some sashimii-grade tuna, we want to taste the meat in its full, unadulterated glory.

Pesto comes into its own with delicate white fish like pangasius and catfish, which are at the cheaper end of the spectrum. Because these fish don't boast much flavour, you can treat them as a blank canvas and whip up a tasty and affordable pesto dinner in minutes.

One particular pairing that we think trumps all others, though, is pesto with mussels. For us, it's the ultimate culinary example of when the results are worth more than the sum of their parts.

We won't always add a dollop of pesto to our moules mariniére cooking liquor before serving with French fries and chilled Pinot Grigio, but it is a powerful weapon in our fish-cooking repertoire.