Branzino with Citrus Sauce Maya Corrigan #Recipe

Branzino is a European sea bass, a white fish with a delicate flavor. I first tasted it fifteen years ago in Italy and loved it, but I couldn't find it in the U.S. until recent years. It's usually sold as a whole fish weighing a bit over a pound, but when I saw branzino filet (or is it fillet?) in the supermarket today, I snapped it up. No bones to deal with--yay! 

Branzino (plural: branzini) is a sustainable farmed fish low in mercury. A sign at the fish counter where I bought it said it came from the Greek island of Kefalonia. 

Ingredients 

1 branzino filet, 8 to 9 ounces

1 small lemon

1 orange

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Freshly ground pepper

Red pepper flakes

Optional: finely chopped fresh parsley or dried parsley 

Serves 2

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Line a rimmed baking sheet with with foil and light cover the foil with olive oil. Put the fish on the foil and drizzle some olive oil on it. Lightly season the fish with salt and black pepper. Bake until the fish is flaky, 10-12 minutes.  

While it's baking, grate the zest of the lemon and half an orange. Put the zest in a small bowl and with a pinch of salt and of red pepper, several grinds of black pepper, and the juice of 1/2 the lemon and 1/4 of the orange. Add 1 teaspoon olive oil and stir to combine. 

Slice the remaining lemon and orange to use as a garnish.

Take the fish out of the oven after 10 and check if cooked. The fish should be flaky and not translucent. If it needs more time, put it in for another minute and check it again. Return it to the oven for an additional minute if needed. 

Serve the fish on a platter with the citrus sauce over it. Garnish it with lemon and orange slices on top of or surrounding the fish.

Unlike fish sauces like almondine, this citrus sauce contains no butter, just a bit of olive oil, making it lower in fat. I liked it so much that I plan to make it again for other mild fish like rainbow trout or red snapper.  

Are you a fish eater? If so, do you have a favorite type of fish or way to prepare it?

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit a mystery fan fest in the latest Five-Ingredient Mystery

Val and Granddad attend a mystery fan fest that features a bake-off between contestants playing the roles of cooks to fictional sleuths. As Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef, Granddad competes against Sherlock Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson, played by Cynthia Sweet. Granddad blames her for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook newspaper column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. When she’s found dead in her hotel room with a whistling teakettle next to her, he and Val sort through the festival-goers to find the one with the biggest beef against Ms. Not-So-Sweet.

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