The Easiest Dinner You're Not Making: Baked Whole Fish!

I was reluctant to start sharing recipes on my blog, for two main reasons. The first being that I'm absolutely awful at giving recipes. Every time someone asks me how I make something, I cringe. I can be extremely ADD in the kitchen, throwing things together and having no idea how it happened in the end. My idea of a recipe includes a lot of "some" and "a bit of" and little tangible measurements like "cups" and "tablespoons". In fact, I don't even own a set of measuring cups. The second reason I have no business food blogging is that as we move every year into someone else's kitchen, I'm usually left working with whatever plates, utensils and pots and pans they've left available to me. Do not be mistaken, they are never glamorous and I usually struggle to find any two things in the kitchen that actually came from the same collection. So here is my forewarning, my pictures are from my iPhone and I would never pick out the heinous plates and tablewear you will see in the subsequent photos. (Side note: If you do want to look at a real, professional, fabulous food blog with gorgeous photos, you should check out my sister-in-laws here.

The best type of meals are the ones that look super impressive to your guests, but actually take little to no effort whatsoever. I'm a huge seafood fan, we eat fish in our house at least 3-4 times/week. However, up until our move to Spain, I was always too intimidated to prepare a whole fish. In our town in Northwest Spain, in what is called the Galician region, seafood is King. You can get incredible quality seafood for really great prices. My new favorite easy dinner meal here is Baked Whole Dorada, a whole white fish that also goes by Dorade and Sea Bream. I think Dorada is only available on this side of the Atlantic, so a whole Sea Bass or any flaky white fish would also do. Served with your veggie of choice, I use zucchini here but asparagus and potatoes are also great (the potatoes will need to cook a bit longer ahead of time). I typically prefer the fish left completely whole, with the head on, but struggled to communicate that to the woman working in the seafood department so you can do as you wish. 

Ingredients:

2 Whole Dorada Fish, ask them to clean it and butterfly it for you (or do it yourself if you're into that)

1/4 cup olive oil + 1 tbsp for drizzling

A head of garlic

Fresh Rosemary

Fresh Thyme

1/4 Cup Parsley

1 Lemon, sliced thin

1 Lemon, juiced

1 Cup, cherry tomatoes

1 Zucchini, sliced or a bundle of Asparagus

1/4 Cup white wine (+ more for you to drink while preparing)

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 400 degrees (200 C) 
• In a blender or food processor, blend olive oil, lemon juice, 3 sprigs rosemary, 3 sprigs thyme,  1/4 cup of parsley, 3 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper into a paste
• Pat your fish dry with a paper towel and sprinkle all over with salt and pepper
• Score (slash across the skin) each side of the fish a few times.
• Rub mixture all over your whole fish, the outsides and inside. Stuff each fish with 2-3 slices of lemon, a couple springs of the fresh herbs, and a few cloves of sliced garlic. Leave in fridge for 2 hours to marinate (if you're pressed for time, you can go ahead and cook it, but I recommend marinating)
  
• Lay fish on a piece of parchment paper and scatter cherry tomatoes and your vegetable of choice around the fish. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, whole garlic cloves and a few sprigs of herbs. Pour in white wine.
  
  
  
  
• Cook fish for 15-20 minutes depending on your preference, taking the fish out about half way through to baste with the white wine sauce. Depending on your oven, you may want to turn it up to 450 for the last few minutes or so to crisp up the skin.
  
• Serve with pan sauce spooned on top of fish
   
  

Other Variations of this Recipe:

• The first time I cooked this, I omitted the rub and just drizzled each fish with olive oil and laid the herbs in the middle. It was also delicious if you're in a rush and don't have time to make the marinade!
• Add black olives and fresh mint and serve with tzatziki to make a greek style fish

  

  My first attempt at a whole fish, with the head left on.

  

  If serving with potatoes, let them bake first for 20 or so minutes before adding the fish

I couldn't have been more wrong about the complexity of cooking a whole fish and it has now become an easy weekday staple in our house! Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Life Lately!

My past four New Year's Resolution lists have all included the desire to write more, and sensibly each year I seem to write less and less. Between running my own business, attempting to learn two languages and feeding an XL human full-time, I rarely have down time here to sit and blog but again, I will attempt to do better this year!

Spain has been amazing so far! The food, the people, the culture, I absolutely love it all. Since my erratic brain seems to jump from subject to subject, here are some highlights (and lowlights) from our past two (I can't believe it) months here!

• This is the first year we've joined a team that one of our friends currently played on and this has been such a blessing. Four years ago during our first season abroad I met Indre, the twenty year old girlfriend of one of D's Lithuanian teammates when we played in Vilnius. She was my first friend on the team and we have stayed close ever since. I am SO excited that her now husband is one of D's teammates again this year! She has been so helpful to me, driving me everywhere, introducing me to the best places, babysitting Tucker, forcing me to join her in Spanish Class.. the list goes on and on but she's just an all-around rockstar of a friend. I love her and am so grateful for her!
• Aside from Indre, I'm equally obsessed with all the other wives and girlfriends on the team. There are seven of us that are here full time including two other Americans, a Swede, and a bunch of Spanish girls. We hang out all the time and it's so much fun being on a team with so many awesome gals to hang out with.

  

  The girls on Thanksgiving!

• This is also the first year where the majority of the team lives in the same building! This has been super fun and convenient as we can walk to each other's houses to hang out. It's also terrifying as I often look like a blind, homeless, crystal meth addict when I take Tucker out in the mornings. So far no run-ins but it's bound to happen.
• Speaking of our apartment building, it has one extremely odd characteristic. We live on the second floor of our building, but our laundry room is separate, on the fourth floor attic. It's not a communal space, as every person in the building has their own locked room on this floor specifically for laundry. You're only allowed to use the room between 10 am-10 pm and it makes doing laundry an even bigger pain in the ass than it is already. The room is huge and obviously extremely creepy and I am 100% positive it's inhabited by one of the monsters from Stranger Things. The good news is, I could easily through a few air-mattresses in there and rent the place out on Airbnb. Will keep you updated.
• The hardest thing to adjust to so far has been our change in schedule here. DD and I usually have the sleeping patterns of an 80 year old couple: early to bed, early to rise, but we've had to drastically change that this season. The Spaniards are definitely in no rush to get their days started, and D's "morning" practice is usually at 11:45. His evening practices start around 7-7:30 and he often doesn't get home until after 10. This forces us to eat dinner around 10:30-11 and then we stay up for a few hours so that we don't gain 300 lbs. Additionally, grocery stores are all closed on Sundays, which of course I never remember until it's Saturday evening and I'm staring at an empty fridge. 
• I'll be the first to admit my Spanish is not progressing the way I had hoped. After taking Spanish for several years growing up (and learning the colors, months and days of the week over and over again), I thought it would be pretty easy to get back into.  I had no idea how much more difficult it would be to try to throw a third language in the mix whilst learning Lithuanian. It's so hard for me to switch my brain into Spanish when my brain speaks English, and then Lithuanian first. I spend most of the time in my class wondering why on earth some of my classmates possibly consider themselves "beginners" when they are able to carry out full blown conversations with our non-English speaking teacher for ten minutes. I'm bitter...and jealous.. and wish they would bump up to the advanced class where they belong while my adorable, gay little chorizo of a Spanish teacher teaches me how to say the colors and order wine. Until then, I'll continue to be devastated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening when I pull up to my class and the building isn't engulfed in flames.
• We had an amazing Thanksgiving at one of D's teammates houses. Cooking for 20 people, most of them being oversized and eating for 2, is never an easy task, but through a foreign country into the mix and shit really hits the fan. Between translating recipe terms into Spanish, converting recipes with cups into grams, and having to substitute at least 2-3 ingredients in every dish, it can be a bit of a nightmare. It's all worth it when you get to experience a bunch of European's First Thanksgivings, where they spend the evening asking questions like "so I don't get it.. you just eat? That's the holiday" and "wow this is weird", regarding sweet potato casserole. 
• This is the first year I won't be going home for an early Christmas with my family. My heart will be so heavy being away from them but my Mama always does the best job of making sure we all feel together, regardless of how far apart we may actually be. Christmas will come a day late for me this year when three of my best friends head to Spain to visit! I cannot wait!
• Speaking of Christmas, I can't tell you how nice it is to see Christmas decorations out in stores and hear songs playing in public places! Living in Turkey last year, December felt like any other month. It's definitely Christmastime in Santiago and I'm pretty stoked about it. D even had the honors of turning on the Christmas lights at the Mall here, which was hilarious because apparently Santa's elf didn't get the memo that he didn't speak Spanish and kept trying to give him the microphone in front of the crowd to make a speech :) 
  

More updates to come! Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays!