Half the battle with fish is people wrecking it before it ever hits the plate. They crank the oven, walk off, and come back to something with the texture of a beach thong. Sea bass doesn’t need that kind of treatment. It’s a clean, firm fillet with enough backbone to sit under a big-flavoured sauce without falling apart, which is exactly why it works here.
This one is an Asian-inspired number we’ve run in the Golden Door Living kitchen for years. The sauce does the heavy lifting: sweet, sour, salty and a bit of chilli heat, all leaning on lemongrass and coconut. Christmas lunch, a Tuesday, a dinner where you want to look like you tried harder than you did. It covers all of it.
A quick note before you start. The recipe was written for snapper, and snapper is lovely, but sea bass or any firm white fish of your choice slots straight in. If you’ve made our snapper version of this sauce, you already know the drill.
Ingredients
Lemongrass and coconut sauce
- 3 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped long red chilli
- 1 lemongrass stalk, crushed and chopped
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped coriander
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
- 1 tablespoon crushed garlic
- 350 ml chicken or vegetable stock
- 3 tablespoons Thai spice
- Finely grated zest and juice of 1/2 lime
- 1/3 cup organic maple syrup
- 450 ml coconut milk or coconut cream
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fish
- 6 pieces (about 150 g each) of fresh sea bass, snapper or fish of your choice
To serve
- Brown rice or quinoa
- 2 bunches bok choy, chopped
- 2 bunches asparagus spears, halved on the diagonal
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
- To make the sauce, sauté the lime leaves, chilli, lemongrass, coriander, ginger and garlic in about 100 ml of stock in a saucepan over medium heat for approximately 4 minutes or until soft. Continue cooking, adding more stock gradually until all the stock is used up.
- Add the Thai spice and simmer for approximately 3 minutes. Reduce the heat, add the lime juice, maple syrup and coconut milk and return to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes, then remove from the heat and stir in the lime zest. Allow to stand covered for 10 minutes to allow flavours to develop. Add sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste.
- Preheat oven to 175°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Place fish and vegetables on lined tray and sprinkle with lemon and salt and pepper. Cover with a layer of baking paper then foil and bake for approximately 8 minutes. Allow to stand for 2 minutes.
- Place fish on a bed of brown rice or quinoa and serve with steamed asparagus and bok choy. Serve with the lemongrass and coconut sauce.
Serves 6.
Serving, make-ahead and a few swaps
The sauce is the make-ahead hero. Build it a day early, cool it, and keep it covered in the fridge. The lemongrass and ginger actually settle in overnight and taste better for it. Warm it through gently before serving; don’t boil it hard again or you’ll dull the fresh lime you worked to keep.
On the plate, I lean toward quinoa over rice when I want the meal a touch lighter, though brown rice soaks up the sauce like it was built for the job. The bok choy and asparagus are non-negotiable in my book: they keep the whole thing feeling like a proper feed rather than fish swimming in a bowl of cream. If asparagus is out of season, green beans or snow peas do the same job.
Heat is yours to dial. One teaspoon of chilli is polite. If you like your dinner to bite back, add a second. Coconut milk gives you a lighter finish, coconut cream a richer one, so choose based on whether it’s a weeknight or you’re feeding people you want to impress. Fish is a solid part of a balanced diet, and if you want the plain-English version of why, Better Health Victoria lays it out well, as does Nutrition Australia. For more fish to keep in rotation, our poached salmon with fennel and barbecued whole fish with coriander are both worth a look.
– Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen
