Fishy Fishy

Today we had an early start doing a library tour - what fun - so on our way home we ventured to the fish market to get some for tonight's dinner. I love fish and I worked in a fish restaurant for 4 years so I'm no stranger to big ugly fish complete with eyes, heads, bones, you name it. I'm terrified of crabs, because one of the chefs once placed a large snow crab on my shoulder when I had my back turned, but fish are fine and I've seen fish a lot uglier than the ones I bought today. The girls on the other hand, remained a safe distance from the fish counter and were not overly keen when I wiggled the fish in their faces at home.



The man at the counter asked if I wanted him to de-scale the fish, which in hindsight would have been a good idea, as although I successfully managed to remove all the scales I did not manage to keep them contained in the sink. While at the fish counter, I noticed that they had fish like mackerel and gurnard - but they have a lot more bones and are harder to fillet, so I chose the Bronzino fish because it looked most like a fish I was familiar with - a bream. When I got back, I used the most important website for a history student (Wikipedia) to find out what it actually was and it turns out that it is a Mediterranean sea bass!


For dinner tonight I think I'm going to bake them whole and then fillet them before presenting them to the girls, as they had made it clear that they don't want to see a head or any eyes. I like filleting stuff though, we used to have to do it in front of guests at the restaurant and I like to show off!!

I stuffed the bass with slices of lemon and baked for 20-30 minutes on 180C and after removing the unappetising parts of the fish, I served the fillets with sliced potatoes and green beans which I sautéed until the potatoes were cooked (par boil the potatoes for five minutes or so first). Finally I added the juice of 1 lemon to a large cube of melted butter and served on top of the fish.

After dinner we decided we needed a pudding and as we have been healthy by eating lot of fresh fruit we thought we needed a treat. Emily ran to the shop to grab some eggs and a kilo (yes...a kilo) of Nutella and I whisked up some pancakes, you can't go wrong with Nutella but Emily had honey on hers and sugar and lemon is also yummy. I've had to hide the Nutella from the girls in a place only I can reach as there was talk of eating it from the jar with a spoon...