Here’s a fish recipe that is so quick and simple, it’s amazing it works. That is, it’s quick if you get the fish already cleaned and scaled. Which Mrs J, thankfully, did.

This is a whole fish dish. It’s significantly cheaper than buying fileted fish. Plus, the taste of a fish cooked together with its skin and bones is better (just like meat and chicken on the bone, more flavour that way).

If you don’t know how to eat whole fish without stabbing yourself in the mouth, Mrs J suggests to take a deep breath and try it. Carefully. Maybe ask someone to show you? You just need some practice. And, seriously, it’s worth it.

Start by preparing the vegetables. Peel and slice a yellow onion into rings. Peel and slice one clove of garlic. Cut 1/2 red and 1/2 yellow bell pepper into slices, removing as much as possible of the white inner walls in the process.

Also, cut 250g fresh tomatoes into medium/large pieces. Mrs J doesn’t remove the skin of the tomatoes (unless she’s expecting royalty), but she suggests to remove as much as possible of the seeds and the liquid around them.

Set your oven to 200°. Then take the stone out of some good black olives. Try to keep the olives as whole as possible. This may be difficult. That’s how you’ll know you’re using good (greek style) olives. You need about 50g after the stone is removed.

Toss all your veg and olives in a large oven proof dish together with 2 tbsp of olive oil, some black pepper, 1/3 tsp of dried sage, 1/3 tsp of dried rosemary and 1/3 tsp of dried thyme. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, score the meat of your fish about 1-1.5 cm apart on each side. Mrs J used bream. A whole bream weighing in at about 300g minus the nasty bits and the scales easily serves a hungry fish-loving person.

The veg here is enough to go with 2x300g fish, serving two. You can use bigger fish, but then you can’t serve it whole on the plate for each person, which is kind of the idea here.

Massage the inside and the outside of the fish with a little bit of black pepper and olive oil. You can also add some more dried herbs on the fish itself if you want a stronger taste.

Add salt both inside and outside of the fish.

Mrs J’s rule of thumb with fish is to always use twice as much salt as you originally intended. It works for her. 

Place the fish on top of the veg in the dish and pour in about 1.5 dl of good rosé wine. If you plan on serving wine with the fish, use the same kind.

Put it all back in the oven for 20 minutes. Spoon some oil/liquid over the fish halfway into the cooking. It’s done when the fins come loose easily when given a little tug.

Serve immediately with the vegetables and some fresh white bread.

Fish-i-licious!