Gilt Head Bream

We spent another weekend in Kent and visited Broadstairs on Saturday. The weather was good and we enjoyed honeycomb, hazelnut and mango ice-creams from Morellis, a lovely old-fashioned ice-cream parlour overlooking the beach.

Broadstairs doesn’t have a working harbour unfortunately so, on the way back to my mum’s, we stopped off in Whitstable to pick up some fish for dinner. While we were deciding what to have, we sat on the seafront and ate whitebait while drinking beer and enjoying the last of the sun, we didn’t want to leave.

We did however have to get our fish into the oven so, armed with two large gilt head bream, we made the short journey home and began making some verde and a potato salad. Unfortunately, the potatoes ended up very over-cooked so we ended up with mashed potatoes instead of the afore-mentioned salad. They actually worked very well, especially with some of the salsa verde stirred through.

The fish was cooked quite simply, drizzled with oil and stuffed with parsley, bay leaves, lemon slices and garlic before being roasted in the oven for 30 minutes. A little too long actually (20-25 would have been sufficient) but it didn’t really matter as the fish stayed moist and tasted brilliant.

We used Rick Stein’s recipe for salsa verde, copied below.

Salsa Verde

15g flatleaf parsley leaves, chopped
5g mint leaves, chopped
3 tbsp capers
6 anchovy fillets in olive oil, drained
1 clove garlic, crushed

Combine the parsley and mint leaves, capers, anchovy fillets and one garlic clove. Mash together with a pestle and mortar to form a coarse paste and season to taste with a little salt.