crunchy herbed fish and potatoes

I love finding new fish recipes. We have the most amazing barramundi here and it is so great finding recipes that compliment the fish. Barramundi is a great fish as it doesn’t really have that strong fishy smell or taste. It is also nice and firm, which makes it easy to cook with.

We get our barramundi flown in from a fish factory down south. The fillets can be enormous. Last time we got a box, they forgot to individually wrap the fillets and let me tell you a ten-kilogram box of barramundi fillets isn’t what you want arriving in one big chunk. One Saturday we defrosted it just enough for us to pull the fillets apart, all on the kitchen bench. It’s a good thing barramundi isn’t too smelly!

The recipe is incredibly simple and tasty; my husband loved it and said that I could make it again! I served it with a nice green salad. You can find the recipe is on page 70 of Donna Hay magazine, issue 51.

Here is what you need: potatoes sliced thinly, I didn’t have potatoes, so I used sweet potatoes instead; olive oil, lemon thyme leaves, salt and pepper. No fresh lemon and thyme leaves available unfortunately but I used dried thyme and it tasted fantastic. So you toss all those together and put it on a baking tray and into the oven. When the potatoes are a bit golden you place the fish on top. Next you combine fresh breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley, I used dried parsley for this as well. Crumble it all over the fish and put it back into the oven until the fish is cooked.

Now just a quick note on the cooking. I found that you really need to make sure the potatoes are done pretty well before you pop the fish on top, the fish causes the potatoes that are directly underneath it not to cook as fast as the rest of them. I ended up with some still quite crunchy potatoes, which wasn’t ideal.