Home Cooking

As promised, here's the spring recipe I was telling you about. It'sthe sort of one-dish meal I love preparing on weekends. Though far easier than my restaurant creations, it's just as delicious. I start with a bed of shaved fennel in my roasting pan, the one I use for Thanksgiving turkey, and lay a whole black bass on top. I then blanket the fish with lemon slices, cherry tomatoes, and parsley. After half an hour in the oven, dinner's ready.

Of course, I employ a few tricks that make this sounds-too-simple-to-be-great recipe really amazing. The first is obvious: use the freshest ingredients you can find. Go fishing and catch a bass. If you can't do that, go to a reliable fishmonger. Whether at a farmers' market or neighborhood grocery, choose fennel bulbs that are firm and smell strongly of licorice, cherry tomatoes that look like they're ready to burst through their taut skins, Meyer lemons that are heavy for their size and emanate a heady citrus perfume. To make prep a breeze, use a mandoline or a Japanese-style hand-held slicer. Unless you're a chef with impeccable knife skills, you can't get paper-thin slices of fennel and lemon otherwise.

Throw in a few secret ingredients. I sprinkle fennel seeds over the fresh fennel slivers for a layer of anise-scented complexity. A glass of really good dry white wine poured into the pan mingles with all of the natural juices to become an amazing sauce. The key to roasting a whole fish and keeping it moist is making sure the flesh is cooked through, but not overcooked. The best test is poking the fish with a paring knife; the blade should slip easilythrough the flesh. When the tip of the blade hits the bone, pull it out and feel it—it should be warm to the touch. Take the pan out ofthe oven and set it aside for 20 minutes. Whenever you're cooking fish on the bone, let it rest so that the juices disperse evenly through the flesh. That's all it takes for a really good fish dish. You can serve it on its own, but I ate mine with steamed white rice and caramelized artichokes with ramps and spring garlic.

The simplicity of this fish recipe is quite different from the complexity of some of my restaurant dishes, like the vanilla-rhubarb "noodles" Johnny Iuzzini makes for his spring rhubarb tasting menu.

The concentration of pure rhubarb juice in slick pink strands is really delicious, but this dessert is impossible to recreate unless you have this machine at home.

For another pure taste of spring, just try this recipe:

Roasted Whole Sea Bass With Fennel, Meyer Lemons, and Cherry Tomatoes
Serves 4 to 6

Any fish on the bone works here; whole red snapper and salmon steaks are good choices.

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 fennel bulbs, cored and shaved into paper-thin slices

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 whole black sea bass (about 4 pounds), gutted and scaled

2 Meyer or regular lemons, sliced paper-thin

1 box (1 pint) cherry tomatoes

A handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 glass dry white wine

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Coat the bottom of a large roasting pan with the oil. Arrange the fennel in an even layer that covers the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the fennel seeds, salt, and pepper over the fennel, and place the fish on top. Cover the fish with the lemon slices, tomatoes, and parsley. Pour the wine around the fish, and season everything with salt and pepper.

Roast until a knife pierces through the flesh with no resistance,about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let rest for 20 minutes. Serve warm.