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The recipe of sea bream parchment baked is an example of how genuine, simple, easy and tasty the Italian Riviera cuisine can be. Rosemary, sage, pine-nuts, olives, cappers and garlic are the sparring partners of sea bream in this recipes. All of them are small pieces of a mosaic that represent perfectly the Italian Riviera flavors.

I love recipes where you infuse all your love and passion investing time and efforts, you know. But I really appreciate as well those recipe where the main ingredient is consumed in the simplest way. Those preparations where its freshness and essential flavors are just slightly enhanced by few ancillary ingredients. If the recipe is effortless even better!

Since the COVID quarantine began I started planning my weekly menu more wisely and organizing my pantry, fridge and freezer more efficiently. We started having our food delivered at home, not from the biggest supermarkets but from the small local shops in the area, the very same where I used to buy daily before Covid. I also planned to eat fish at least four times a week and one of these time is baked fish, so I’m cooking different recipes every week.

Fish is not the ingredient I cook better, probably this is why we were not eating it so often. In particular I always had problems with the cooking timing of baked fish until I discovered the cooking thermometer, a game changer! So now baked fish is in my weekly menu, on Tuesday night. And sea bream parchment bakes is one of the must go recipes!

Parchment baked sea bream

What you need:

• 2 fresh sea breams of ab. 400 g each
• 2 cloves of garlic, cut in halves
• 2 springs of rosemary
• some leaves of fresh sage
• 1 tablespoon of salted cappers, soaked in fresh water and drained
• 1 tablespoon of black olives, pit removed
• 1 tablespoon of pine-nuts
• 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

How to cook it:

1. Preheat the oven at 200°C/390°F.
2. Clean the fishes removing the entrails and the scales. Cover a pan sheet with parchment paper leaving some exceeding from the borders. Lay the fishes. Fill the belly of each fish with half clove of garlic, some rosemary leaves, some sage leaves and few cappers. Sprinkle the remaining ingredients over the fishes, including the pine-nuts. Gently pour the extra-virgin olive oil.
3. Cover the fishes with another layer of parchment paper and seal rolling and bending the borders of the paper below the first layer.
4. Bake for ab 25 minutes (remember fish generally bake 15 minutes every 500 grams) or if you have a thermometer until it reaches 67°C/152°F.