Lavraki me ntomates (sea bass) in parchment paper

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Last Tuesday when I went to the farmers’ market, I bought lavraki (sea bass) as I wanted to make a recipe I had bookmarked some days ago from Nancy Gaifallia’s blog in About.com. (Unfortunately she is no longer writing there).

When I read the ingredients and the way of preparation, I knew this would be a great hit for my family and I was not wrong.

Nancy’s recipe is perfect just as it is but you know me by now that I can’t stick to a recipe and made just a couple of changes. That day I had bought some fresh mint from the farmers market and added just a few leaves, to test if it would match with the other flavours and it turned out to add a lovely extra flavour, if you like mint. I did not add oregano, not that I do not like it but merely because I forgot to add it 😛 and the third change was to add all the liquid ingredients on the fish.   Nancy mentions 5 cloves of garlic. I added two which sometimes could be equivalent or more as we get some huge garlic cloves, here in Greece.

The fish turned out perfect with wonderful flavours and lots of juices from the tomato, oil, lemon and wine which formed a lovely dressing for the fish. This I will definitely make again and it will also be great with other types of big fish as well. Certainly this makes a great presentation when you have company and can be prepared in advance and once it’s in the oven, you don’t have to be in the kitchen all the time.

I am submitting this recipe to Ruth, of Ruth’s kitchen experiments, for her event Bookmarked Recipes.

Lavraki me ntomates (sea bass) in parchment paper

Adapted from Nancy Gaifallia’s recipe.

Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 5 sea bass,160 grams each
• 1/4 cup fresh mint, finely cut
  
• 1/4 cup fresh parsely, finely cut
  
• 2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 4 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 5 large tomatoes (1 tomato per fish) cut into slices
  
• 4 tablespoons white dry wine

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Ask your fish monger to gut and scale the fish (leaving heads on), and rinse well. Pat dry. Lightly salt inside and out.

Combine parsley, finely chopped mint, garlic, and a little more salt and stuff the stomach cavities.

Add slices of tomato on top of fish and pour wine, lemon juice and olive oil on top.  Season again with salt and pepper.

Wrap in parchment paper.

Bake for about 45 minutes. To test for doneness, press the paper with your hand. The fish should be soft.

I served this dish with  Healthy, lemony potatoes wrapped in parchment paper (Patates sti Ladokolla). When the potatoes were done, I left them wrapped in the parchment paper and cooked  the fish for 45 minutes.

If you liked this recipe you may also like:

Perka (Grouper) me marathoriza sti ladokolla

Whole Grouper in Salt

Fish and Mayonnaise
Grilled Marinated Salmon

Bakaliaros with Skordalia

Gavros tiganitos (Fried anchovies)

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