Roast With A Difference

I love fish, sometimes more than I do meat. Sainsburys had a special offer on sea bream not so long ago, and I instantly snapped them up.

I had steamed the bream in a foil pouch with a black bean sauce before, so I wanted to do something different, whilst still keeping the flavours light to fully appreciate the flavour of the fish. I decided to roast it with some Chinese flavours, not surprising seeing that I seem to lack inspiration for anything European style, recently.

Roasting fish isn't something I do often so timing was key. Judging by the size of the fish, 20 mins at 180 degrees was my guestimation, and thankfully I was right. Nothing worse than over-cooked fish, after all.

This is a very easy dish, not really worthy of writing out a recipe for it. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius. Simply enough, using a white fleshed whole fish, cut some deep slits into the flesh about an inch apart (I made 4 each side).

Place the fish in an oven-proof dish. Stuff the slits with a slice each of ginger, spring onion and chilli. Stuff the cavity of the fish with slices of lime. Splash a tablespoon each of light soy sauce, Shaoxing cooking wine, and vegetable oil over the fish, turning it over once.

Roast the fish for roughly 20 minutes per 500gr. The fish is done when the flesh is opaque and flakes away from the bone easily. Take care not to over-cook it.

I served this with just greens (bitter melon, in this case but spinach or broccoli would be great) stir-fried with fermented white tofu and a little oyster sauce, and of course a bowl of white rice to soak up the flavours.

The fish was delicious; the soft flesh was lightly flavoured with the stuffings and it fell apart from the bone. Usually with steaming, I scrape back the skin as I dislike the texture of it, but this wasn't necessary as the skin was crispy from the roasting.