Braised Fish: Bream with Onion, Carrot and Tomatoes

Name: Braised Bream with Onion, Carrot and Tomatoes
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 3 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Bream (1.5-2 kg) 1; Carrot 4-5; Onion 3-4; Ripe tomato 1 kg; Vegetable oil 50 ml; Sugar 1 tsp (5 g); Flour for dredging; Salt, black pepper to taste

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3 h

I still remember from childhood: braised fish with vegetables, cooked in a well-heated stove, was held in high esteem at my grandmother’s. As a rule it was a large river fish: carp, pike, silver carp or bream. Or, if big frozen cod carcasses were brought from the city, they were thawed and stewed in a big cast-iron pot with carrots, onion and tomato.

Braised fish with vegetables hardly has a precise recipe tied to any particular cuisine of the world. Thanks to its simplicity and how widespread it is, this dish can fairly claim to be international.

The cooking technique called braising means a rather long heat treatment of food in a very small amount of liquid, or none at all. In the literature you sometimes find it defined as gentle simmering of food with spices and seasonings in a sauce. Very often the food is browned before braising.

Food is braised for quite a long time over the lowest heat. It is an excellent way to turn, say, tough meat into a tender and delicious dish that even gourmets will not ignore. English-speaking countries have a whole category of dishes called stews. In essence, a stew is a ragout cooked in a small amount of liquid, a combination of all sorts of ingredients that give up their juices, aromas and flavor to the dish as it cooks. A stew is similar in consistency to chili con carne, thick soups, yakhni and so on. A classic example of a stew is Irish stew.

If you plan to braise fish, the best choice is a large river bream. By the way, Kyiv fishermen who go after Dnipro bream on purpose very rarely call this fish “leshch.” The most common local names are “lyash” (Ukrainian) and “vasya.” Bream up to a kilogram are also called “podlesh.” Still, I know fishermen who call fish up to two kilograms “podlesh.”

From experience: braised fish, or rather braised bream, is tastier the bigger the fish is, unlike hake. Large adult fish keep their shape better during braising, the flesh does not fall apart after long cooking, and the flavor is much better. Large fish is usually cut into pieces, and, as my grandmother used to say, the size of the pieces is “so they fit in the pot.”

8 ingredientsTo the recipe

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Ingredients

4-6 servings

Bream (1.5-2 kg) 1
Carrot 4-5
Onion 3-4
Ripe tomato 1 kg
Vegetable oil 50 ml
Sugar 1 tsp
(5 g)
Flour for dredging
Salt, black pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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Fish and cookware

Bream, or common bream, is a widespread and affordable fish. Large ones are not rare. By the way, large carp or silver carp, pike and sea cod are also excellent for this dish.
Scale the bream thoroughly, gut it and remove the gills.
Prepare a pot with thick walls and bottom: braised bream cooks for a long time over low heat. A cast-iron pot, a duck roaster or, like mine, a thick-walled ceramic pot that holds heat superbly and distributes it evenly, will be perfect.
Cut the fish into large pieces together with the rib bones and backbone. At this stage you can roughly estimate the volume of the pot the fish will be braised in.
Put the fish pieces in a bowl, then salt and season with black pepper. Do not use any other spices.

Vegetables and tomato sauce

Peel the onion and cut it into thick strips.
Fry all the onion in vegetable oil over medium heat until golden. Actually, fried onion is very tasty on its own, and, if well fried, even sweet. In childhood a piece of fresh bread with fried onion was the main treat.
Grate the carrot and fry it in vegetable oil too, until soft.
Scald the ripe tomatoes with boiling water, peel them and remove the seeds.
Finely chop the tomato flesh with a knife or blend it.
Mix the chopped tomatoes with 1 tsp sugar (5 g), then add salt and pepper to taste. The fish will be braised directly in the tomato sauce, so the seasoning in the sauce largely determines the flavor of the finished dish.

Frying the fish and layering it

Dredge the fish pieces lightly in flour.
Heat the remaining vegetable oil in a frying pan, add the fish pieces and fry over high heat on both sides until a golden crust forms. The fish does not need to be cooked through, only crusted.
Put 2-3 tbsp of fried onion and carrot on the very bottom of the pot or duck roaster in which the fish will be braised. Level it so the bottom is covered.
Lay the fried fish pieces on top, leaving gaps between the pieces.
Cover the fish with a layer of fried onion and carrot, and pour tomato puree over it.
Continue layering the fish pieces, fried vegetables and tomato puree. Pour all the remaining tomato over the fish and vegetables on top.
With a spoon, gently separate the fish and vegetables from the pot walls so the tomato runs down into the gap along the wall.

Braising and serving

Now comes a long cooking process, until the fish is completely done.
Put the pot with the fish on the heat and bring the liquid to a near boil.
Turn the heat under the pot down to the lowest you can manage and cover with a lid. Do not turn the heat up, or the dish will simply burn.
Braise the fish under the lid for 2 hours. There is no need to stir the fish and vegetables. But you may need to add liquid and keep an eye on the dish, especially if you cook in an unsuitable pot. After 2 hours the fish will be completely done: the flesh comes easily off the bones. Be careful with longer cooking times, since the fish may start to lose its shape and fall apart.
Place the cooked fish in portion-sized pieces on plates and pour over the sauce that formed during cooking from the onion, tomatoes and carrot.
It is best to serve braised bream with onion and carrot right away, without waiting for it to cool. Usually the fish contains only large rib bones and the backbone, while small bones may “overcook” into softness. Besides, in a large enough fish the small bones are not really small and are easy to pick out of the dish.

Calories and macros

530 kcal

Serving ≈ 580 g

Protein47 g37% of kcal
Fat26 g46% of kcal
Carbs21 g16% of kcal

100 g91 kcalProtein 8.1 gFat 4.4 gCarbs 3.6 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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