063/18 – Vine Baked Sea Bass:
I have cooked quite a few dishes from Feasts by Sabrina Ghayour lately. Great book with some cracking recipes in. Next up was Vine Baked Sea Bass.
The Fish:
4x 100g Sea Bass fillets from our local fishmonger: £10. This was Wild Sea Bass, watch out in the supermarket as it’s usually farmed stuff.
The Ingredients:
Everything should be easy to get except for Pul Biber – (Aleppo Chilli Flakes) – with the current situation in Syria it seems people are selling all sorts of chilli flakes as Aleppo chilli flakes so be careful what you buy. I got mine from Amazon – 100g for £2.79.
I had to buy brined vine leaves off Amazon as well. They are meant to be in the supermarkets but maybe they don’t stock them in these parts! £12.81 for 400g drained which is meant to be between 110 to 120 leaves.
There was some fresh tumeric left over from a previous cook, not seen it in the supermarkets for a while but greengrocers tend to have it. Mine was from an online Thai food store.
The Charcoal:
Oxford Charcoal Hardwood Blend. Stacked up high, lit in 4 places and a nice hot fire after 20 minutes.
The Prep:
Mixed in a bowl: Grated fresh coconut, grated lime zest, coriander, red chilli, garlic, fresh turmeric, rapeseed oil, Maldon sea salt and black pepper.
The vine leaves were squeezed, unwrapped then laid out to overlap. A sea bass fillet was placed on top then covered with 1/4 of the topping mixture placed on top. The leaves were wrapped over to form a parcel.
The Cook:
The cast iron griddle pan was used again and had been heating up for 10 minutes when I put the fish parcel on. The 2 on the left were the first ones I wrapped. The 2 on the right were the last two to get wrapped. What I found was that rolling them over onto the leaves helped create a tighter package so that’s why the 2 on the right look better! I added a chunk of Smokewood Shack Grapevine as well.
The recipe says to cook for 12 minutes at 240c. The Big Joe was running at 250c so after 8 minutes I flipped them over to try and make sure they cooked evenly. The smell from the topping mixture was lovely!
Time to Plate Up:
After 12 minutes total cooking time I took them off to plate up. Just some basic white rice to go with it.
Time to Eat:
The vine leaf parcel was carefully unwrapped which unleashed a big waft of steam that smelt of coconut and lime.
Summary:
As I have said in previous cooks I haven’t cooked a lot of fish as I have never been a massive fan of it. However, the fish dishes I have cooked lately have been fantastic and this one totally blew me away!
The fish was nice and soft, tasted really fresh but the topping mixture when eaten with the fish was incredible. I ate two fish parcels and could have carried on eating them! Will definitely make this again, easy to prep and cook but so tasty.
| Cook Difficulty: | 1/5 |
| Cook Duration: | Quick: 1/5 |
| Cook Equipment: | Kamado Joe |
| Cook Method: | Direct / Griddle Plate |
| Charcoal: | Oxford Charcoal Mixed Hardwood |
| Smoking Wood: | Smokewood Shack Grapevine |
| Cook temperature: | 250c+ |
| Cook time: | 12 minutes |
| Internal temperature: | Unknown |
| Notes: | 1: When wrapping the parcels roll them over onto themselves to make a tight package. |
THE BOOK:
If you like the look of this recipe you can buy the book from Amazon (£6.99) by clicking the picture below: