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Love that Saturday Kitchen. Theo Randall’s Baked sea Bass with fennel and porcini mushrooms

This recipe from Theo Randall was on this weekend’s Saturday Kitchen. I made it last night and we both thought it was delicious. Because you make the foil parcels in advance it would be a great recipe for a dinner if you didn’t have too many people coming over or if you have plenty of oven space to lay the parcels out in.

 Ingredients

70g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
2 sea bass or bream fillets, about 175g each
1 fennel bulb, core removed, sliced and blanched
Handful dried porcini mushrooms - soaked in hot water and then drained
2 fresh thyme sprigs
100ml oz dry white vermouth
400g rainbow chard, trimmed and washed
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
100g cooked Umbrian lentils (lentils de castellucio), to serve

Method

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6. Fold two sheets of kitchen foil into two large squares and grease the tops of the squares with butter.
2 Place a fish fillet, skin-side up, in the middle of each square of foil. Top each fillet with the fennel, mushroom and thyme. Season with salt and pepper.
3 Fold the sides of the foil up around the fish and pour the vermouth over each fillet. Seal up the foil edges to create a parcel. 
4 Set the foil parcels on a baking tray and bake for 10–12 minutes. Check to see if the fish is cooked by carefully opening the parcel and piercing the fish with a toothpick. If it goes in with no resistance, the fish is ready. 
5 Meanwhile, bring a saucepan of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the rainbow chard to the pan and cook for 2 minutes, or until wilted. Drain in a colander and squeeze out the excess water. Season the chard with salt and pepper and drizzle with the olive oil. 
6 Strain the juices from the fish parcels into a saucepan and set the fish aside in the foil to keep hot. Bring to the boil, reduce by half and then add the butter.

7 Top the seabass topped with the butter sauce and serve with the chard and cooked lentils alongside.

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