OK, I’m just playing with words ! . . . ALLIUM is the family of onions, garlics, shallots, chives and leeks & CAPSICUM is the family of sweet and hot peppers and CITRUS of course you already know. By the way, sea breams, also called gilt-head bream, are part of the SPARIDAE family and are marine fish (at least you learned something new today) . . .
I remember eating these oven-baked fish often when we were kids and they were called TSIPOURA. Usually, when they’re prepared in the traditional Greek way, all you use is some lemon slices and lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and oregano. So simple and yet so perfect, and served with a green salad with onions and lots of vinegar.
It’s funny how we hated eating this dish as kids, not because it wasn’t tasty enough, but because as kids, you don’t really know how to correctly eat a whole fish, all those bones everywhere, never knowing when you’re going to harpoon your throat and choke and die, and always wondering if you eat the skin, fins, tail, head parts, which is why we loved fish sticks ! At some point, my parents gave up and fed us those frozen and breaded fish (or sort of fish) sticks which are the marine and seafood version of terrestrial hotdogs. Those MYSTERY MEATS and us DUMB KIDS !
*short quick story for a quick meal that is ready under 60 minutes :
Yesterday was market day in my neighborhood, right in front of my place. I found these 2 beautiful sea breams weighing a bit over 500 grams each for a total of 10€. I already had and/or bought some different types of peppers and onions and lemons & limes so I pretty much had everything or could adjust the recipe according to what I had at home.
The preparation is simple enough. For 1 kg of fish, you’ll need 1 kg of vegetables or to be more precise, half or 500 grams of peppers and half or 500 grams of onions and 250 grams of citrus fruits like lemon, limes (and even part an orange if you have one) for the juice.
Scale and clean out the fish (if it hasn’t already been done for you), slice up the vegetables, toss them with the lemon juice, then salt, pepper, dried herbs, then add the oil, partly oven-bake the vegetables first (because they take longer and you don’t want to dry out your fish), then add the fish on top that you’ve stuffed with the partly-cooked vegetables and bake some more. VOILAAAAA !
BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP (I think that’s the sound that fishes make when they swim and breathe) & CHOMP-CHOMP-CHOMP (that’s the sound that we make when we eat them and when they eat other smaller fish too) . . . :)
