Recipe for :

This recipe for Italian Grilled Sea Bass comes from professional Chef Lee Mexter. Lee has being a chef for thirteen years, working at the Ritz London and the Churchill Intercontinental. Then as a head chef in a restaurant in Leicestershire. He now has his own catering company, Fine Dine In. His company specialises in preparing and serving dinner parties for people in their own homes.

Lee enjoys putting together recipes and as well as publishing them on the web he also writes recipes for a local paper and will soon be writing his own cookery book.

If you want to know more or would like Lee to help you with your dinner party you can find out more from www.fine-dinein.co.uk

If you like fish then Sea Bass is the fish to be reckoned with, it has a wonderful bright white meat, and a lovely silvery skin. It is very versatile, and can be sautéed, shallow fried, deep fried, grilled, oven baked, steamed, poached and you could even slap it on the BBQ.

For this dish we are going to be grilling it, this is the quickest and healthiest way to cook fish.

Ingredients for Italian Grilled Sea Bass

4 fillets of Sea Bass
4 fresh Basil leaves
1 lemon (squeezed)
50ml red wine vinegar
1 onion (finely diced)

Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

How to make Italian Grilled Sea Bass

• Place the finely diced onion, the basil leaves, the red wine vinegar and the juice of one lemon in a food processor and add a good long pour of olive oil and blitz for about a minute until the ingredients have mixed well together now place to one side.

• Now rinse the sea bass fillets, pat dry and score several times on the skin side of the fish.

• Place the sea bass fillets on a flat oven tray skin side up and spoon over a generous amount of the lemon oil mixture.

• Cook for five minutes then carefully turn the fish over, spoon over the remaining lemon oil mixture evenly between the fillets and cook for a further 6 - 8 minutes on this side.

• Serve immediately with your choice of potato and vegetables or salad. Sautéed potatoes and Mediterranean vegetables such as peppers, red onions and courgettes suit this dish well.

Tips and Variations:

This dish can also be cooked by marinating the sea bass fillets in the lemon oil mixture and then sautéing it in a pan. However this is not the healthier option of the two.

When buying sea bass fillets it is best to get them from the fish counter in any big supermarket rather than the ones you get pre-packaged on the shelves. When buying sea bass you need to look for sea bass that has moist and translucent flesh and believe it or not it should not smell fishy. Do not be afraid to ask to look at the fish and touch it before you buy it.

When storing fish, rinse it well and pat dry then wrap it in cling film, never let fish sit in its own juices as this will just shorten its shelf life.

Serves 4

Chef Lee Mexter
www.fine-dinein.co.uk