Cooking At Home: Sea Bass in Salt

My favorite way of preparing fish is to encrust it in salt or other media. Salt encrusting a fish you are going to bake assures you that the flesh will remain moist, and it takes only a hint from the salt itself. It also regulates the oven temperature, acting like an adobe oven just the size of the fish.

Sea Bass, and there are dozens of variety of sea bass, lend themselves well to baking whole. They have a simpler bone structure than many other fish, so when served, the server isn't picking around a lot of skeletal pieces. Also, the
flesh of any of the sea bass family is naturally flavorful and needs very little help from sauces or marinades.

Choosing a fresh fish at the fish monger's is important, the fresher the better. Unless you are an expert and understand how to examine the eyes and gills to gauge the freshness, you should rely upon the fish monger to steer you to the freshest sea bass on the bed of ice. The fish should be cleaned of innards, but otherwise intact.

Baked Sea Bass in a Salt Crust

Ingredients:

A 2.5-3 kg Sea Bass, cleaned

3 boxes of Guerande sea salt, 1kg each

4 Egg whites

1/2 cup of water

5 sprigs of fennel

2 sprigs of parsley

1 lemon, sliced thin

1 orange, sliced thin

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 230C degrees

Prepare the salt in a large bowl, using 1 kg of salt per kg of fish. Incorporate the egg whites and water in the salt, mixing with your hands until you have a rough paste.

On a large baking dish form an 1/2 mound of salt slightly larger than the bass. Place the bass on the salt base. Stuff the interior of the bass with the fennel, parsley and sliced citrus. Form a dome of salt over the fish, pressing gently until you have totally covered the bass.

Place the baking dish in the oven and bake for about 40 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the bass is at 60C degrees.

Remove from oven and allow to stand for five minutes. Crack the salt dome around the side and it should life off intact. Remove skin and the flesh from the top, lift the tail and pull out the entire bone structure.Remove the rest of the flesh.

Bon appetit!

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