Pan-Fried Sea Bream

The Missus and I had friends (Sles and Jac) round for dinner last night. I did prawn, chorizo and haloumi kebabs with rocket and a red chilli dressing followed by pan-fried sea bream with roasted Anya potatoes (which are, incidentally, my favourite potato), carrots, courgettes, sweet red peppers, red onion and garlic, finishing with Eton Mess, splendidly created by The Missus.

Anyway, here is the sea bream.

Get a fishmonger (and all decent supermarkets should now have one) to fillet, skin and bone your bream - one whole fish per person. You can do it yourself, and I did yesterday, but it's a messy stinky job and, well, if you can get someone else to do it, why the hell not?

Dunk each fillet into plain flour seasoned with salt and pepper, patting off any excess so the fish just has a fine coating. Put them on a plate, cover with cling film and put into the fridge until you're ready to cook.

Next, prepare your veg. Really, you can throw in anything you want. I par-boiled my potatoes for 10 minutes and the carrots for about 5 minutes then cut up the peppers and courgettes into two-inch chunks. Cut the red onion into wedges and chuck the whole lot into a large roasting dish with a handful of garlic cloves.

Drizzle the whole lot with a healthy dose of olive oil and season well with sea salt and ground black pepper.

Incidentally, if you hop over to my Twitter page @blokeinkitchen, the background image you see is the very dish from last night!

Put the dish into a pre-heated oven at 220 degrees (gas mark 7) for about 20-25 minutes. Just keep an eye on it. When it's ready it'll be nicely singed around the edges.

Take the fish out of the fridge when your veg has about 10 minutes to go.

When the veg is almost ready, get yourself a decent sized frying pan and drizzle in a little olive oil. Get it nice and hot then add your fish fillets and fry for just 1 minute on each side.

That's pretty much it. Plate it up and serve it up. Simple but very tasty and impressive.

If anyone wants any advice on filleting, skinning or pin-boning or want the recipes for the prawn kebabs or Eton Mess, just let me know.


The Bloke