Baked seabass with wild fennel

I have so much wild fennel sprouting up in the garden I had to cook with it.  It reminds me of our honeymoon in Sicily.  It grew on every verge and almost up every cliff face.  Such a wonderful intense flavour.  Delicious with fish but I think I might have to try making some cheese crackers with it too.

I went to Golbourne Fisheries to get hold of the fish.  I must say I don't think I ever want to shop there again.  They sell baby hake, baby red mullet in such small sizes that all you can wonder if how long will it be before all the babies are eaten and there are none left at all?  I don't know why this isn't made illegal to sell fish at this size.  Apparently the government are making the holes in nets bigger now so that small fish aren't caught like this but if they don't get on with it we really won't have any fish left.  I was trying not to be a batty old woman warning customers off buying such small fry and berating the fishmongers for selling them, but then again, if they are caught someone should eat them?  So tricky...

Anyway I came out disturbed, but with a couple of sea bass ready for the oven. 

Here is the recipe for baked seabass with wild fennel. It took about 10 minutes to pull together and half an hour to bake.  Now that's what I call an easy supper!

2 seabass

2 fennel bulbs

a punnet of cherry tomatoes

3 cloves garlic

a large bunch wild fennel (or use thyme, marjoram etc)

extra virgin olive oil

1 lemon

pernod or absinthe

salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 200C

First slice the fennel very thinly and lay out into a baking tray.  Season well with salt and pepper, scatter with the chopped garlic cloves, some chopped wild fennel and a good drizzling of olive oil.  Put in the oven for 5 minutes to start the fennel softening before hiking out and adding the cherry tomatoes.  Drizzle with a little more olive oil, a touch more salt and pepper and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

In the meantime season the bass inside and out with salt and pepper and stuff with the rest of the wild fennel.  Slice the lemon into thin slices and place the slices into the bass cavity.

(this is not the actual bass but some trout we caught in the lake but I forgot to take pictures of the bass...)

Remove the baking fennel and tomatoes from the oven and place the bass on top.  Scatter with 3-4 tablespoons of Pernod or Absinthe some more olive oil and put back in the oven and bake for a further 20-25 minutes until you can insert a skewer all the way into the fish without any resistance.

I baked some spuds to go with the fish too.  Thinly sliced layers of potatoes, onions and chopped garlic dotted with anchovies, soft black olives (I buy those squidgy ones with the stone in that are so soft they practically fall apart when you even look at them), marjoram and thyme from the garden and masses of olive oil between each layer...

And the result was this....

A simple, seasonal supper that was rather delicious. 

A great slab of young pecorino and another one of gorgonzola and biscuits followed and some raspberry granita from the freezer, and some of my chilli chocolate truffles, and a little tequila, although I didn't have any of that sadly.

Happy weekend,

tommi xx