Sea Bream in Foil with Vegetables

Name: Sea Bream (Dorado) in Foil with Vegetables and Herbs
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 15 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Sea bream (dorado) 2; Medium red tomatoes 2-3; Garlic 2-3 cloves; Onion 1; Cilantro or parsley (to taste) 4-5 sprigs; Olive oil 4-5 tbsp; Lemon 1; Salt, mixed peppercorns, coriander, dried aromatic herbs to taste

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1 h 15 mins

This sea bream in foil recipe is a nice illustration of slow cooking with dry heat, better known as baking or roasting, which is just as widespread as frying or boiling. You can bake in a very hot oven or in a regular oven. Often it is an open grill, over coals or gas.

For a while we used a portable electric grill. It baked all kinds of food well: fish, meat, vegetables and even bread. Then we switched to a grill pan, which does the job just as well, takes up much less space and, on top of that, is easy to wash.

For some reason, cooking shashlik is considered frying. I have always thought that frying implies some intermediate medium between the heat source and the food, most often fat. A grill cooks food with heat alone. Then again, I may be wrong, as I am not strong on the fine points of terminology.

Baking food wrapped in a shell is a very interesting and fast method. The most convenient wrapper is aluminum foil. The word comes from the Latin folium, meaning leaf. Foil is essentially a very thin metal film, almost paper. Aluminum foil can be anywhere from a few micrometers to a fraction of a millimeter thick. When people say “foil”, they usually mean aluminum, since tin foil has its own name, as do gold leaf and tinplate, which is made from iron.

Cooking food wrapped in foil keeps all the juices inside, and nothing leaks out. Cooking time is also much shorter. At home, for example, we bake boiled-style pork (buzhenina) in foil. Although I remember my grandmother baking meat in a wood-fired stove, wrapped in plain dough. Sea bream bakes beautifully in foil with herbs and spices.

Today we improvised: we lightly stuffed a sea bream with vegetables and herbs, wrapped it in foil and baked it. Sea bream is a tasty fish however you cook it. In Bulgaria it is called “tsepura” and it is on the menu of every bistro and restaurant, prepared in many different ways. Still, it is tastiest grilled or baked in foil, and there is also a great recipe for mackerel in foil. The basic recipe for this fish is sea bream in the oven.

More with dorado

Oven-Baked Sea Bream (Dorada)

1 h

Grilled Dorado

1 h 15 min

Sea Bream with Vegetables

1 h 40 min

Oven-Baked Fish with Vegetables (Saury Recipe)

1 h 30 min

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Ingredients

2 servings

Sea bream (dorado) 2
Medium red tomatoes 2-3
Garlic 2-3 cloves
Onion 1
Cilantro or parsley (to taste) 4-5 sprigs
Olive oil 4-5 tbsp
Lemon 1
Salt, mixed peppercorns, coriander, dried aromatic herbs to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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Fish, onion and spices

If the fish is frozen, thaw it.
Scale it thoroughly.
Remove the guts and gills. Clean the belly cavity of any fat, membranes and cartilage in the head.
Peel the onion and cut it into thin strips.
Pour 2 tbsp of olive oil into a frying pan and fry the onion over medium heat until golden. The softer and sweeter the onion, the tastier the dish.
In a mortar, grind the peppercorns (black or mixed), coriander, dried herbs and salt into a powder, in equal parts.
The amount of the mix is up to you. Use some of it for the sea bream, to taste. The rest works for any other fish.
Make diagonal cuts on the sides of the fish every 3-4 cm. Keep them shallow, about 5 mm.
Rub the belly cavity and the sides of the fish with the spice mix. Set aside while the onion fries and the filling is prepared.

Filling

Scald the tomatoes with boiling water, peel them, remove the seeds and dice the flesh.
When the onion is almost done, add the tomatoes. Salt lightly and simmer under a lid for 2-3 minutes.
Fill the belly cavity and the head of the fish with the onion and tomato.
Tuck 1-2 thin lemon slices inside each fish.

Baking in foil

Place the prepared fish on a sheet of foil.
Peel the garlic and slice it thinly.
Brush the fish with olive oil and arrange the garlic slices on top.
Sprinkle with chopped cilantro or parsley. Squeeze over 1 tbsp of lemon juice.
Wrap the fish tightly in two layers of foil, making sure it is sealed, and put it in a heatproof dish with a rim.
Put the dish with the fish in an oven preheated to 220°C for 35-40 minutes.
After that, unwrap the foil, carefully pour off the liquid and bake the sea bream for another 10 minutes.