Baked Sea Bass with Peppers and Pine nuts
You should be able to find sea bass fillets in any supermarket or fish shop. They make a lovely low-calorie meal and only take a few minutes to cook. If you feel a bit nervous about cooking fish, this is a great recipe to start with as everything gets chucked onto a tray and baked in oven, so there are no tricky methods or timings.
Ingredients
- 4 sea bass fillets (each around 150g)
- 2tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 2tsp extra virgin olive oil
- ground black pepper
For the Stuffing
- 25g pine nuts
- 6 spring onions, thinly sliced
- 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
- 20 basil leaves, (roughly 10g), shredded
- finely grated zest of ½ lemon
- 50g dried coarse white breadcrumbs (or panko breadcrumbs)
- 170g roasted peppers in oil (from a jar), drained well in a sieve
- pinch of flaked sea salt
- ground black pepper
Method
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To make the stuffing, first toast the pine nuts in a large non-stick frying pan for 3–4 minutes, turning regularly or until lightly browned. Tip them into a large bowl and add the spring onions, garlic, basil, lemon zest and breadcrumbs.
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Put the peppers on a board and chop them into roughly 2cm pieces, if not already chopped. Add to the pine nut mixture, season with a pinch of salt and lots of black pepper and stir well. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Fan200°C/Gas 7.
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Slash each fish fillet 3-4 times with a knife through the skin. Spoon the pepper mixture onto a large baking tray in four piles and spread until roughly the size of a sea bass fillet.
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Place a fish fillet on top of each pile of stuffing and tuck any loose bits of stuffing underneath so it doesn't burn. Drizzle the fish with the lemon juice and the olive oil. Season with black pepper and bake for 15 minutes or until the fish is lightly browned and cooked through and the stuffing is hot. The fish is cooked when the flesh feels soft when pressed with your finger towards the head – the thickest part.
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