There is something about East Asian cooking, and Thai food in particular, that is light and fresh and seriously good!
I think it is that they use less heavy dry spices than the Indians, and that some of their recipes are very light-touch. They like using fresh chilli and lime leaves and so on, which have a fruity zestfullness and compliment rather than dominate.
This is a great one for summer and is dead easy.
- 2 Sea Bass or Sea Bream - scaled and cleaned.
- 1 inch cube fresh ginger
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 lime leaves
- 1/2 lemon grass
- handful of coriander leaf
- 4 hot, green chillies
- 1/4 red pepper
- 1 tbs Light Soy
- 2 tbs groundnut oil
- 1 tbs lemon juice
- 2 spring onions
Put everything except the fish into a blender and blitz till you have a chunky paste.
Score the fish deeply on each side. This is why you scale fish, you lazy bums! The chances are that your fish supplier didn't, so it is up to you.
Rub the paste all over the fish and inside. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Heat up a grill nice and hot and grill the fish, including the paste, on foil till nicely browned.
Serve them up drizzled with chilli oil.
And that is that. In the photo I served mine with just a salad. Standard sort of ingredients, but dress with sesame seed oil, lemon juice and sea salt.
Now, how simple can you get?
This goes very well with a crisp, chilled Sauvignon blanc, and lots of it!
(Well, there is so little washing up on this recipe, that you might as well go for it...)
