Sea Bass with Mango Chutney and Red Pepper Essence

Imagine this: James Martin in his early twenties. Comes home late. Hungry. Darn, empty cupboard, empty fridge. The only things left are some fillet of fish, some sprouts, a lonely lime, some sesame oil and some mango chutney. Never mind, he’s hungry, so he’ll just fry the fish, warm up the mango chutney to make it work as a kind of sauce and eat it with the sprouts.

That’s approximately how this dish must have developed “ warm up some ingredients without combining them and see if you can eat the result together. To me, that's not cooking, that's warming up. Worse, the ingredients are a mismatch both in taste and in style “ no, you can’t just pair off Indian mango chutney with rather Chinese sesame oil just because both are from Asia...

Sea bass is a very nice fish, but it was boring because nothing was done with it. The sprouts were okay “ more about that in a moment. The warmed up (!) mango chutney was just blech “ it might have been the warming up, it might have been the brand (or even the fact that it wasn’t home-made, but let’s not exaggerate).

I admit that I didn’t make the red pepper essence, as it seemed such a waste to me. Instead I cut the (mixed) peppers into cubes, grilled them shortly and added them to the sprouts, along with some toasted sesame seeds. The sprouts were in fact quite nice (apart from the fact that we had bought them too early and then froze and defrosted them), but they missed extra zing. Toasted sesame seeds were a good idea, but I’m also thinking about adding some grated ginger and perhaps some lemon grass next time (and then serve it as a side dish along with something completely different from this).