Zander baked in sour cream with onions
Zander is the leanest of the large predatory fish of our waters, and in that lies the whole difficulty of baking it. The fat that saves a carp or a catfish is almost absent here, so any extra five minutes in the oven turn tender flesh into dry cotton wool.
The solution in this recipe is a simple one: the fish is laid not on the baking tray but between two layers of fried onion. The bottom layer keeps the underside from burning, the top one covers the fish and gives it moisture while it cooks. The onion here does the work of the fat that the zander does not have.
The sour cream is added at the end, and that is the main thing in the recipe. Poured on at the start, over half an hour at 200 °C it separates into whey and grains, and instead of a sauce you get a grey coating. Ten minutes is exactly enough for it to heat through and set without having time to curdle.
The same zander goes under sour cream and grated cheese in zander fillet with cheese, while zander baked in pieces with carrot and onion skips sauce entirely and keeps to four ingredients.
Caloric content: 160kcal
Slice the onions
Fry the onions
Rinse the zander
Cut off the fins and the head
Lay it out on the baking tray
Bake it and add the sour cream
Serve
Notes
- The onion is fried first, not put in raw. Raw onion will not have time to become soft over half an hour in the oven and will stay crunchy in the finished dish, while fried onion has already given up its water and works as a cushion.
- Sour cream — 20 % fat and above. Low-fat sour cream curdles even in ten minutes: there is too little fat in it to hold the protein together at 200 °C.
- Do not throw the head and the backbone away. In zander they give a clear, strong broth — jellied zander is made from exactly those, and there a cloudy stock would spoil everything.
- Fish seasoning is not compulsory. Zander has a clean taste of its own, and a shop-bought mix can easily overpower it. Salt, pepper and onion manage on their own.
- Doneness is checked with a knife at the backbone. The flesh should come away easily but still hold together in a piece: if it is already falling apart into fibres, the fish has been kept in too long.
Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.
