Orange Roughy with Gobo

This might be one of the simplest recipes I've done in a while. There's almost no cooking involved but it tastes fantastic! The decoration with the thinly sliced zucchini makes for a good "ahhhhhh, beautiful!". Instead of the Gobo, which is somewhat exotic and hard to find, you could serve a simple white rice.





for 2 people:

the fish:
2 pieces of Orange Roughy
1 shallot, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4-6 tablespoons olive oil
1 can of tomatoes (about 15 oz)
1 handful of fresh dill, chopped
freshly ground salt and pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 zucchini, very thinly sliced
extra dill sprig and lemon slices for garnish

the gobo dish:
about 8-12 gobo roots (burdock), peal scraped off and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup cheap white wine
juice of 1/2 lemon
1-2 tablespoon soy sauce (optional)
extra dill sprig and lemon slices for garnish


Instructions:

Start by heating up half of the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the shallots and sauté over medium heat for about 5 minutes without burning them. Stir in the garlic and sauté for another minute. Pour in the tomatoes (for this dish, I prefer canned tomatoes over fresh ones), add the sugar and mix well. Simmer the tomato sauce for about 5-10 minutes to blend the flavors, then stir in the dill.

Move the whole sauce into an oven-proof dish that is also big enough to hold your two Orange Roughys next to each other. Spread the sauce evenly in the dish and let it cool out a bit.

Preheat the oven to 425 F (220 C)

Lay the Orange Roughy onto the tomato sauce, season with freshly ground salt and pepper. Arrange the sliced zucchini on top of it to make it look like fish scales. Or be creative and do your own decoration here!

Put the whole dish into the preheated oven and bake it for about 20 minutes, depending on how thick your fish is. In the meantime, prepare rice in a rice cookeror do the gobo dish.

There's many ways to prepare gobo. For this particular dish, I went for a simple stir-fried version in the wok.

Heat the other half of the olive oil in a wok or big skillet over high heat. Add the gobo and sauté for about 3 minutes. Add the white wine and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste. I like it when the gobo is still crunchy inside. This simple side-dish should be done within about 5-8 minutes. Make sure you don't burn the gobo, otherwise it will get bitter. If you want to, you could also add a bit of soy sauce for extra flavor.

Serve the fish directly from the oven-proof dish because it will look nice with the zucchini slices on top! Garnish with some extra dill sprigs and lemon slices. Enjoy!