Sea bass with sizzled onions, ginger and chilli

From BBC Goodfood
Serves 6

Ingredients
6 x sea bass fillets, about 140g/5oz each, skin on and scaled
about 3 tbsp sunflower oil
large knob of ginger , peeled and shredded into matchsticks
3 garlic cloves , thinly sliced
3 fat, fresh red chillies deseeded and thinly shredded
bunch spring onion , shredded long-ways
1 tbsp soy sauce

Season the fish with salt and pepper, then slash the skin 3 times. Heat a heavy-based frying pan and add 1 tbsp oil. Once hot, fry the fish, skin-side down, for 5 mins or until the skin is very crisp and golden. The fish will be almost cooked through. Turn over, cook for another 30 secs-1 min, then transfer to a serving plate and keep warm. You’ll need to fry the fish in 2 batches.

Heat the remaining oil, then fry the ginger, garlic and chillies for about 2 mins until golden. Take off the heat and toss in the spring onions. Splash the fish with a little soy sauce and spoon over the contents of the pan.

My mom taught me how to cook this Chinese dish a long time ago. I have forgotten all about it until I chanced upon this recipe on the BBC website. Really simple dish to make, but full of flavour.

Baked sea bass with tomato confit and black olives

From I Know how to Cook – Ginette Mathiot
Serves 2
Ingredients

1 garlic clove
1 sea bass, about 800g, gutted and cleaned
100ml olive oil plus extra to serve
50g butter
12 sun-dried tomatoes
12 black olives, stoned
pepper
salt
12 basil leaves, chopped

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Rub an oven proof dish with the garlic clove, and place the sea bass in the fish. Pour in the olive oil, lemon juice and 100ml water over the fish, and dot with the butter. Bake for about 16 minutes, basting frequently. To check whether the fish is cooked, insert a wooden toothpick: it should pass easel through the thickest part of the fish. If it does not, cook for a further 5 minutes before checking again. Just before the fish is cooked, add the tomatoes and olives to the dish and return to the oven.

When the fish is cooked, drain the cooking juices into a small pan, place on a high heat and simmer until half the liquid has evaporated. Add a splash of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. To serve, return the reduced sauce to the oven proof dish with the sea bass and garnish with the basil.

This is a Franck Raymond recipe, the head chef at Mon Plaisir at Covent Garden, London. Have to admit I wasn’t a huge fan of that restaurant, I went there once and I thought it was alright, nothing really fantastic. But I suspect my impression of that dinner was marred by the fact that I was sat right next to the cheese board. I actually didn’t know what the smell was until someone unveiled the cheese board by removing the cloth that was covering it.

Anyway, this is a good simple recipe for sea bass. I used sea bass fillets rather than the whole fish. I am now tempted to go back to Mon Plaisir to get a second opinion on the food there!