Baked Fish

Last weekend, my brother-in-law went fishing. Usually, he gives away whatever fish he catches since my sister doesn't like fish. Hoping he'd score some redfish on his most recent trip, I asked my sister if we could possibly get some. Us being family and all, of course she said yes. Now, we didn't get any redfish but my BiL did get some croaker (which I had never heard of before that moment). It's a fairly nice fish, though I'll admit I don't know much about fish at all.

Since we were all pretty unfamiliar about preparing croaker, I did some searching online. Turns out you can prep croaker just about any which way you want. Since hubby doesn't like fried foods (egads!!) and I didn't want to try to filet fish my first time cleaning fish, I decided to bake them whole. I didn't want to overwhelm the fish's own taste, so I just used common, simple ingredients. Now, I'm not going to explain cleaning the fish. If you want or need to know, google is a great pal to have.



Baked Croaker

• 1-2 croaker per person (depending on size), scaled, cleaned, and deheaded
• 2 lemons, sliced into rounds
  
• 2 pats of butter per fish
• 1 1/2 cup white wine (I used chardonnay)
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 1 onion, cut in half then thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 350F. For each fish, place 1 pat of butter, 1 onion section, 1 lemon, and a few sprigs of parsley in the cavity (you know, the one you cleaned out). Place in a baking dish alternating head to fin to help them all fit. Place a pat of butter and an additional lemon slice on each fish. Sprinkle with left over parsley and onions. Pour wine over the fish. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until the flesh is white and flakes when touched with a fork.



I didn't want anything too overpowering as a side to the fish, so I just sauteed up some brussels sprouts and roasted a variety of potatoes in olive oil. I picked up a mix of yellow, red, and purple potatoes at the store, which I thought was fun. I absolutely adore purple potatoes! Here's a gratuitous photo: