Baked Sea Bream with Tomatoes and Coriander

The potatoes were undercooked, the herbs and spices hardly noticeable, and the whole thing just didn't combine together well. A very ill conceived recipe.

Let's start with the potatoes. I was aware that this could happen, and sliced them very very thinly - ca. 2mm. Additionally, I boiled them for several minutes instead of draining them immedeately. You can probably cook them for 8-10 minutes without worrying. However, even if they had been cooked well, it would have been a shame that they were wet, being covered in white wine. I would have wished them to become crisp chips, baked in olive with sea salt and rosemary!

Then the spices. As I said, you hardly tasted them. A tiny bit of garlic here, one bite with a hint of saffron there... not what I would have expected. But had they been stronger it probably wouldn't have helped as the combination of flavours was just too much. Fish with white wine and saffron - yes, I get that. Fish with lime and coriander - good idea too. Tomatoes with saffron, fish/seafood and, err, rice - Paella. But fish with all of the above? And then I'm not yet even mentioning the pine nuts (which I omitted anyway). And if this weren't bad enough - even if the ingredients would have worked together, if they had been strong enough to be tasted then the sheer mass of them would have eliminated any taste of fish.

The fish in itself was fairly nice (though slightly bland if a fish can ever be bland), but I'm afraid that was a happy coincidence.

PS: Oh, and the pancetta... white wine, coriander, tomatoes, saffron, pancetta, lime, pine nuts... hmm...