SOLTuesday: Cooking Fish

            Last night I cooked a whole fish, I think for the first time in my life. Sometime, years ago, I learned how to filet a cooked fish, which is supposed to be so hard. So I thought, why wait for a restaurant meal to do the whole thing myself.

            I bought a branzino (spelled by my local fish place “bronzino”), not quite a pound. Of course the store did the gutting and removing of gills. I washed it off when I got home and did the following: put about a tablespoon of olive oil on a baking sheet. Placed the fish on top. Cut a slice of lemon in half and put the two halves inside the cavity, along with a couple of sprigs of dill. Ground black pepper on top, and added another teaspoon of olive oil. Baked in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

           Then for the “hard” part. I carefully scraped away the skin on the top, from the head down to the tail. I used a cake spatula to carefully lift the filet away from the backbone. It didn’t come off neatly in one piece as it does at a restaurant, but I didn’t care. I just kept peeling the flesh away from the bone and onto a plate. A few bones came with it, but they were big enough that they were easy to dispense with.

            After eating my dinner, which was delicious, I went back to the remainer of the fish. Cut the backbone close to the tail and carefully lifted away from the filet on the other side. Then peeled away the strip of tiny bones (maybe these are called pin bones?) along the spine, and voila, there was the second filet. There are still some largish bones where the fish innards were, but I can get them out while eating my lunch today. 

           I guess I'm still not in the digital generation, because it didn't occur to me to take a picture. Oh, well, next time.

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