Brill with roasted tomatoes

Saturday night found Dave and I alone for dinner, a very unusual but relaxing circumstance. I was craving fish, which is not often the case. When I say fish I mean white not too fishy tasting fish. My favourite is halibut, or on the very rare occasion that fresh fish has been caught up at Pender Harbour big enough to eat, then it is really hard to beat fresh caught ling or rock cod. So I headed down to
Inlet Seafoods in Newport Village If I am going to cook fish I want it to be fresh and Oceanwise, and so I go to seafood specialists and stay away from supermarkets.

There were a couple of options available one of them being my favourite halibut, but there was also Brill, this is actually Petrale Sole, which is called Brill on the west coast, it is a type of flounder similar to sole.  I bought two beautiful looking fillets.

I like my fish cooked simply so as not to lose the mild fresh flavour but like a kick of something to compliment that mildness.  I decided to make a topping of roasted tomatoes.



2 fish fillets (your choice what ever is fresh and available)
1 container of cherry tomatoes (I had multicoloured but all red would be fine)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of capers
2 or 3 large leaves of basil shredded (you could substitute parsley)
Juice of 1 lemon

Slice the tomatoes in half and put them in a small baking dish in a single layer, sprinkle with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil and fresh ground pepper and salt.

Ready for the oven

Bake them in a 300 oven for about 3/4 of an hour. They should be collapsed and soft, but not too brown.  This really intensifies the flavour of the tomatoes.

Tasty little morsels of flavour

Just as you pull the tomatoes out of the oven cook the fish, this only takes minutes so you want to be sure that any vegetables should be ready, we had baby potatoes and green beans.

Heat about 1/2 tablespoon of oil and the butter in a large non stick frying pan when the butter is melted and foaming add the fish.  Brown on one side about 3 minutes then turn and brown the other side about 2 minutes.  If you were using a thick fish like halibut you would have to cook a little longer, but this fillets were thin and did not take long at all. Just before plating sprinkle some lemon juice on the fish.

Yumm

Mix the tomatoes with the capers and basil

 and spoon over the fish

Ready to eat

This was very tasty and fulfilled my vision and brill might be my new favourite. We had a nice glass of chardonnay that I had bought down in Seattle last weekend in a gas station! I don't know of anywhere else in the world that you can go to a gas station that has a happy hour in the convenience store, it just did not seem like a good idea to me.