Oven-Baked Fish with Vegetables (Saury Recipe)

Name: Oven-Baked Fish with Vegetables: Saury Recipe
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Fish (saury, mackerel, lakedra, sea bream) 2; Zucchini 1; Ripe tomatoes 2; Young potatoes 2; Garlic 2 cloves; Olive oil 3 tbsp; Salt, black pepper and allspice, coriander, dried aromatic herbs, lemon to taste

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1 h 30 mins

Oven-baked fish is a perfect example of how to cook sea bream, mackerel or saury deliciously. It’s especially good in the season of young vegetables, which can be baked together with the fish. In a city apartment, home cooking mostly happens on the stove or in the oven, or, say, grilled fish.

Of course, fried fish needs a fair amount of oil, which sharply raises the calories of a dish, and many people don’t like that. That’s why, for example, fried flounder is baked with fruit and vegetables, which reduces the amount of fat. A fish like saury in the oven needs an order of magnitude less fat for cooking, literally a thin film on the surface, just so you get a pleasant golden baked crust.

Cooking food with dry heat from a heated source is usually called baking or roasting. It uses a stove or oven, not radiant heating. It’s a surprisingly simple way to cook. Baked fish recipes, for example, involve just a few simple steps. Literally: clean the fish, sprinkle it with spices, brush it with a little fat (or don’t even do that) and bake it in the oven until done.

Everyone surely remembers from childhood the rather hard-to-find canned fish “Saury in its own juice”. I remember that at home we often made saury Mimosa salad, and it was very tasty. We happened to buy a few frozen saury, and after thinking a little, decided to bake them with vegetables on a clay platter.

By the way, for some reason I always thought saury was a relative of sardines. It turns out it isn’t. Saury (Cololabis) is a Pacific fish of the family Scomberesocidae, and it is important as a commercial fish.

7 ingredientsTo the recipe

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Ingredients

2 servings

Fish (saury, mackerel, lakedra, sea bream) 2
Zucchini 1
Ripe tomatoes 2
Young potatoes 2
Garlic 2 cloves
Olive oil 3 tbsp
Salt, black pepper and allspice, coriander, dried aromatic herbs, lemon to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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As I said, oven-baked fish with potatoes and other vegetables can be made with any fish. But preference should go to sea fish with firm flesh, for example baked mackerel, saury is also an excellent choice, sea bream in the oven, or lakedra. The recipe allows quite wide variations of fish and vegetables. Ideally, one fish is the right size for one serving. Then you don’t have to cut the fish, and it’s served whole. Small fish should be baked fairly carefully, because of their size they lose moisture quickly and start to char before the vegetables are done.
For this recipe it’s best to choose “seasonal” vegetables. At the beginning of summer there are plenty of young vegetables, so young zucchini, ripe tomatoes and young potatoes fit the baked fish recipe perfectly. I think carrots, broccoli and whole cloves of young garlic would also work well.
Prepare a spice mix for the fish in advance. To bake two fish, take one third of a teaspoon each of black or mixed peppercorns, coriander seeds and dried aromatic herbs: basil, oregano, mint. Mix with 0.5 tsp sea salt (3 g) and 1-2 allspice berries. Grind the spices in a mortar to a powder and sift. By the way, you don’t have to use all of the mix, it’s entirely up to your taste. This mix works well not only for fish in the oven but for most fish dishes.
Scale and gut the fish and remove the gills. Don’t cut off the fins or the head. Rinse the fish thoroughly under running water and pat dry with a paper towel. Sprinkle the fish with the spice mix: a little on the outside and quite generously inside the cavity and inside the head. Peel one garlic clove, grate it finely and rub the garlic inside the cavity of the fish. Leave the fish with the spices to dry-marinate while you prepare the vegetables for baking.
For baking fish it’s best to use a ceramic or clay platter rather than a metal baking sheet. So the delicate fish doesn’t stick to the ceramic, just as insurance, lay a few very thinly sliced lemon rounds on the bottom of the platter. The lemon won’t add flavor to the dish, but it will keep the fish from sticking. Still, I always like to squeeze lemon juice over both baked and fried fish.
Cut a young zucchini with a nice bright green skin, unpeeled, into rounds 1.5-2 cm thick. Fry the zucchini in a little olive oil on both sides until a golden crust forms. There’s no need to fry the zucchini all the way through, as you would for fried zucchini as an appetizer; a golden crust is enough. Cut each round in half.
Peel the young potatoes and boil them until done. Then cut them into slices about 2 cm thick.
Around the edge of the ceramic platter, arrange the fried zucchini, the boiled sliced young potatoes and the sliced ripe tomato, alternating them. Peel the second garlic clove and grate it finely. Brush the garlic over the vegetables and sprinkle with a little of the prepared spice mix, literally a couple of pinches.
Lay the prepared fish on top of the vegetables. Ideally the fish shouldn’t touch each other. With a silicone brush, coat the fish and vegetables with olive oil, just a tiny bit, to form a thin film.
Put the platter with the fish and vegetables in an oven preheated to 200°C. Fish takes more than 30 minutes in the oven. Since it takes some time for the food to heat up, in practice the fish bakes for about 45 minutes. In any case, check for doneness.
When it’s done, take the fish out of the oven and serve. Don’t forget that the ceramic platter with the fish is very hot, so use oven mitts, and it’s better to set the platter on a wooden stand.
The baked fish is served at the table on the same ceramic platter it was baked on. Since the fish is baked with vegetables, you most likely don’t need a side dish. As a bonus you can add some fresh herbs, fresh bread and a slice of lemon.