Sea bream with roasted artichokes and cherry tomatoes

 

This is a very quick and pretty simple. As usual with fish, the key thing is getting the best quality and freshest fish; that makes more difference than the recipe or technical ability.

Ingredients

• 10 artichokes preserved in oil (that’s normally two small jars)
• 20 cherry tomatoes
• 2 sea bream fillets
• 1 tbsp capers preserved in vinegar
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 50g butter
• 100ml Noilly Prat

Serves 2

Preheat an oven to 220°C. Wash then halve the cherry tomatoes and put on a roasting pan. Drain and halve the artichokes, and put on the same roasting pan. Place in the oven. Roast for about 20 minutes.

Set two serving plates to warm.

Salt and pepper both sides of the sea bream. Put aside. Zest the lemon and divide it into two halves. Wash the capers under the tap to remove most of the vinegar.

 

The fish will take five minutes, so wait until you have about five minutes to go on the artichokes and tomatoes.

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan over a medium heat. Add both pieces of sea-bream skin down and set a timer. If they start to curl up, flatten them gently with a spatula, but otherwise don’t move them about or the skin will come off. After two minutes, turn them both over and add the butter. Push the butter around the pan so it melts but don’t move the fish about.

After a further one minute, add half the lemon zest and the capers.

After a final one minute, serve the fish with a spatula skin side up (leave as much of the lemon zest and capers as you can in the pan) onto the pre-warmed plates. Add the Noilly prat to the pan and turn the heat to maximum. While it reduces, serve the tomatoes and artichokes. Now serve the capers and a bit of the pan sauce over the fish. Garnish with the remainder of the lemon zest.