Sea Bass, Lemon Roasted New Potatoes & Fennel

This Sea bass with lemon roasted new potatoes & fennel dish is a really simple and easy recipe however that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in flavour.  Just a few ingredients mixed together, baked in the oven and they are transformed.  Zesty lemon and sweet aniseed from the fennel, combined with garlic and olives makes for a really flavour packed fish dish.

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Sea bass, Lemon Roasted New Potatoes & Fennel

Prep Time25 minutes mins

Cook Time1 hour hr 10 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr 35 minutes mins

Course: Dinner

Servings: 5 people

Ingredients

• 5 Sea bass fillets depending on the size of the fillets
• 1.2 kg small new potatoes scrubbed clean
• 3 fennel bulbs thinly sliced
• 3 slim leeks sliced thickly at an angle
• 2 ½ lemons or 90 ml lemon juice
• 3 garlic cloves chopped
• 80 ml olive oil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 70 g pitted kalamata ol
• 10 g butter
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 190Cfan. Begin by thickly slicing the new potatoes. Place them in a single layer in a roasting tin. Add the lemon juice, chopped garlic and olive oil. Add 250ml water. Season with salt and pepper and add the oregano. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the oven and add the fennel, leeks and olives. Give it a good stir to coat all the vegetables. Place the baking tray back in the oven and bake for a further 35 minutes, increase the oven temperature to 200C in the last 10 minutes. The potatoes should be golden and the liquid evaporated.
• Have a large frying pan heating on the stove to high with a little olive oil. Cut the fillets in half if they’re large. Season with salt and pepper on the skin side and place skin side down in the pan. Don’t crowd the pan, cook in batches if necessary. Add a small nob of butter to the pan and lower the heat to medium high, continue to cook until you can see the thinner part of flesh looks cooked. In other words cook the fish 80 percent of the time on the skin side.
• Flip the fillets over and turn the heat off. The residual heat will cook them through perfectly. Remove the vegetables from the oven and place on a large plate. Place the fish fillets on top and serve immediately.

Tips:

• Replace the leeks with a medium finely sliced onion, combine with the potatoes at the first stage.
• Substitute the fennel with 2 thickly sliced courgettes.
• Sea bream or mackerel would work equally well as an alternative.