Oven-Roasted Sea Bass With Oranges, Tomatoes & Olives

When I cook fish, my hands move faster than my brain.  I automatically grab a handful of cherry tomatoes, a pack of olives, a bottle of capers, a bunch of parsley, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil & white wine.  These ingredients have permanency in my kitchen.  They go very well together so the aspect of thinking is not a requisite. 

When I am feeling unimaginative and running after time, I go for oven-roasted fish.  I just put all the ingredients together, pop the baking pan in the oven and I am free for the next half an hour....to free our floor from suffocating with toys covering it.  You see, aside from cooking, the other thing that occupies most of my time is to put back toys in their proper places only to find them on the floor again as soon as I turn my back.  Sigh.

Back to the fish.  It's still orange season and I have some beautiful Sicilian blood oranges in the fruit bowl so I cut up a couple and put them in the baking pan too.  This is the first time I cooked fish with oranges and won't be the last because the combination came out agreeably well. 

Oven-Roasted Sea Bass With Oranges, Tomatoes & Olives

Ingredients:
Serves 2

• 2 medium sea bass
• seasoning mixture for fish composed of salt, dried rosemary, garlic, sage & pepper (they are readily available in the shops here but if you can't find it, it can easily be mixed at home)
• 2 blood oranges or any other kind of orange, sliced horizontally
• 1 blood orange or any kind of orange, juice
• 6 - 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup olives, green or black, pitted & halved
• bunch of parsley, chopped coarsely
• 2 tablespoons capers soaked in vinegar
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup white wine

Directions:

1. Rub the fish with the seasoning mixture of herbs & salt.  Put them on a baking pan.  
2. Add the tomatoes, olives, capers, oranges & parsley.  Drizzle with the juice of 1/2 orange (use other half later) & extra virgin olive oil.
3. Roast at 180 degrees C for 20 minutes.   
4. Take out the fish after 20 minutes of cooking.  Pour the remaining juice of the 1/2 orange & the white wine.  Cook for another 10 minutes or until cooked through.
5. Clean the fish.  Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil before serving.