Ingredients
For the fish
1 Fish From Greece Meagre, roughly 1.5-2 kilos
60gr of butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon of cayenne powder
1/2 teaspoon of ginger powder
1/4 teaspoon of sweet paprika
1 teaspoon of dry coriander
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of mustard powder
2 teaspoons of vinegar
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper
For the raita
150gr of whole Greek yogurt
1 small cucumber, peeled and chopped
Chervil
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Method
We wash and descale the fish very well, dry it off with some paper towels and put it in a sheet pan that’s covered with parchment paper.
We preheat the oven at 190 degrees Celsius (fan mode).
Using a sharp knife, we make some cuts into the flesh of the fish on both sides.
In a bowl, we add butter and the rest of the spices, vinegar and lemon, and using a fork, we mix them well.
We then wear a pair of gloves, as the mixture is very spicy and we don’t want to accidentally touch our eyes. We spread it on the fish as well as we can, especially inside the cuts we’ve made.
We place the sheet pan inside the oven, and bake for 30 minutes, or until we can easily remove the bones off the fish (we may check for that wherever we’ve made cuts into their flesh).
In the meantime, we prepare the raita, which is nothing more than tzatziki sans the garlic. This recipe includes cucumbers, which we can otherwise replace with carrots or turnips.
We peel the cucumber, chop it up and place it inside a bowl with Greek yoghurt, some salt, pepper and chopped chervil (my all-time favorite spice).
We may add some lemon juice, some lemon zest or vinegar. We mix, taste it, and serve it as a side to our fish.