Zander baked in pieces with carrot and onion

The simplest way to cook zander and the hardest one to get wrong. Four ingredients, two actions: cut it up and cover it. All the work here falls to the foil and the vegetables — they hold the steam in, and the lean meat of the zander cooks in moisture rather than in dry heat.

The carrot and onion go on top of the fish, not underneath it. Underneath they would give their juices to the baking dish; on top, to the fish. It is the same logic as in more elaborate recipes with sour cream or cheese, only without them.

Thirty-five to forty-five minutes at 180 °C is longer than the fish itself needs and exactly as long as the carrot needs. If you want it quicker, cut the carrot into thinner rounds. A richer version of the same dish is zander fillet with cheese — that one has sour cream and grated cheese on top.

The same zander goes under sour cream with grated cheese in zander fillet with cheese in the oven, and under sour cream with onions in zander baked in sour cream with onions.

Caloric content: 120kcal

Notes

• The foil is not optional. Without it a dish of four ingredients turns into a dry bake: there is neither fat nor sauce here to hold the moisture in.
• Cut the carrot into rounds and the onion into thin half-rings. The difference is not decorative: carrot is harder and needs more contact area, while the onion has to soften and give up its juice.
• Make the pieces small, portion-sized. In the same time a thick chunk of fillet will still be raw inside and overcooked outside.
• Go easy on the spices. Zander has a clean, almost neutral taste, and in a dish without sour cream or cheese there is nothing to cover it — too much seasoning shows at once.
• There will be no browning in this recipe. The foil stays on until the end; if you want a crust, open it ten minutes before it is done, but then you will have to watch that the fish does not dry out.

Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.