Rob Carson: Hi, I am Rob Carson. This is my kitchen and today I have a special guest Paolo Buffa from Bice Ristorante in Bethesda Maryland, also a worldwide chain of great Italian restaurants, correct? Today we are making a delicious fish, why don't you tell us about it?
Paolo Buffa: This is Mediterranean Sea bass called branzino.
Rob Carson: Branzino.
Paolo Buffa: Branzino comes from the Mediterranean in the Aegean sea nearby in Greece and it's well known in Europe and late in the past five years also in the United States of America. This is an excellent fish with lot of protein, omega-3, you name it.
Rob Carson: And it tastes good.
Paolo Buffa: And it tastes very good. Of course you buy your fish fillet all ready, but this is just to show the way it looks. Okay beautiful fish, okay. The ingredients that we need that - our fillet, these are the fillets which are totally boneless, so that's the way you buy it and quickly sauté vegetable including bell pepper, red and yellow, zucchini and yellow squash and cut them all out and I love this, fresh thyme.
Rob Carson: Nothing like fresh herbs, cool. Alright and you would like to sauté these in some olive oil, you don't want to overcook them?
Paolo Buffa: Never, just quickly sauté it with a little bit of oil, very high fire and like for about a minute or minute and a half.
Rob Carson: Okay cool.
Paolo Buffa: That's all we are going to need to do.
Rob Carson: Okay as far as tools are concerned, we obviously need a cutting board we need a good chef's knife.
Paolo Buffa: Yes we do.
Rob Carson: Okay.
Paolo Buffa: And then we need this, that's all you need is parchment paper, oven paper. This is all of our parchment paper, what you want to do is just going to fold it like this so you can find exactly, where you are going to put the fish right in the middle. So we are going to start with olive oil. The first ingredients will be a little bit of olive oil, not too much, just a thin slap of olive oil and little bit of our salt. Next we are going to put some of the vegetables. Let's do, let's alternate one zucchini –
Rob Carson: One summer squash, okay.
Paolo Buffa: One squash, one zucchini, one squash. Little bit of the peppers. Very healthy dish, not to worry, good, very healthy only vegetables, olives, olive oil, it looks beautiful. Once we have done that we are going to put the fish, skin down, skin down, alright?
Rob Carson: Yes.
Paolo Buffa: One and two.
Rob Carson: I can already tell this for instance, right now this is going to be really nice. It would be great to have when you have your guests over to put this.
Paolo Buffa: Absolutely. Then one more time, always little bit of salt.
Rob Carson: Little more salt, okay.
Paolo Buffa: One more time and there we go again. There are your vegetables you can go crazy, you can put any kind of vegetables that you want, very nice. So let's do these, all right, one more time, little bit of vegetable, not too many. Alright, one more time you are going to put a little pepper, now the olives. You can just lay down the olives over here one, two, three, four, five how many you want?
Rob Carson: That's fine, six. I am good. Make seven. One more. I always overdo it in the kitchen.
Paolo Buffa: Alright, get it, little bit of olive oil on the top, nice extra virgin, little bit of white wine. So not too much you are not going to show off all this, it's very simple. It's very simple. Back and we reach on this position and now you can see your fish and now you can better see it and here we start. We are going to fold in this angle like that one and there we go with the second one, see, and good. We are going to go all over.
Rob Carson: Now Paolo once you get this all done, how you long you are going to roast the fish and in what temperature?
Paolo Buffa: Well, I like to cook the fish at 375, just about 375 for no more than 15 minutes. You don't want to overcook your fish. It's going to totally fall apart.
Rob Carson: Sure.
Paolo Buffa: Which is not nice?
Rob Carson: Alright so 15 minutes.
Paolo Buffa: 15 minutes at 375 and of course it depends how think is the fish. If you are using a grouper that is like two inches thicker, I don't want fillet, you probably want 18-20 minutes. Well, we are going to stay with our Mediterranean Sea bass, 15 minutes, no more than that. Okay now see I am folding the last part twice so it seals everything and that's the way it's going to go in the oven.
Rob Carson: This is beautiful. So we are going go ahead and place this on a baking pan and we will place this on a baking pan, 375 for around 15 minutes. Let's go and take it over to the stove.
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