Cooking fish is amongst the most beautiful things: few minutes to cook and few simple steps to follow to compose a restaurant-like plate, home. Pairing fish and vegetables in the same plate (a north European habit), works perfectly with mediterranean ingredients too.
This combination mixes a mediterranean inspired gratin with eggplants thai style. The two world work very well together also because they share ingredients familiar to both food traditions.
The decoration in the picture is made with a soy sauce and sugar reduction (you can find it ready to go in supermarkets).
Serves 4
Ready in 30 mins
4 fillets of monkfish 250 grams each (circa 2 cm thick)
50 grams of breadcrumbs
100 grams panko Japanese breadcrumbs (if unavailable 150 grams of plain breadcrumbs)
grated zest of 1 lemon
juice of half lemon
1 garlic clove minced
2 tbs capers minced
20 grams minced parsley
water (as needed)
salt and pepper
50 ml extra virgin olive oil
Eggplants Recipe here: Eggplants Thai-Style
Pre-heat oven to 250°C-
Place the fish onto a dripping pan, coated with parchement paper and lightly oiled with a few drops of olive oil.
In a container mix well all ingredients above unitil you reach a moist yet crumbly mixture (add water if necessary). Season with salt.
Top each slice of fish with the mixture above making sure it sticks to the fish (careful not to press too much though, otherwis you will loose the crunchyness).
Cook 15/16 minutes in hot oven. Take out from oven and let it rest for 2 minutes before putting i tinto the plate (the wait is important to avoid release of unaesthetic watery juices into the plate. When the fish cools down the water will be kept inside and not released anymore).
Put the eggplants into the plate and posiotion the fish on top of the eggplants. Serve.
