Something fishy

Yesterday's roast butternut turned out so well that I decided to try more roast vegetable dishes. I also wanted to try my hand at fish seeing as I have already made chicken and meat (yes I know it was only one time each but I get bored easily!)

Today's menu: Baked fish and roast sweet potato

I love Woolworths. If I could marry Woolworths I would

The Complete South African Cookbook gave a very simple recipe. Essentially the recipe is: 1) season, 2) bake. South Africa - 3, Greece - 1. This cooking story is actually so easy, why did it take me this long to get into it??

First the fish: I greased the baking tin (although I'm fairly certain I don't need to because it is Le Creuset *snob face*, but I'm not taking any chances), then I drizzled some olive oil over the fish and topped it with salt & pepper and some origanum.

Hey look at that, I remembered the garlic! Dammit I'm getting good at this cooking story!

Then I covered it in foil. The rule for foil and all shiny stuff (like carbon paper) is hou die blink kant bo.

Then I put it in the oven at 200 degrees for 20 mins, flipped the fish, added more of the seasoning and left it for another 20 mins. I took the foil off and put the fish back in the oven for 10 mins on each side. Voila one hour later, baked fish! Super simple and really yummy. Yay me!

Let's go back to when I first put the fish in the oven. That's when I started with the sweet potatoes.

Am I the only one obsessed with what a pretty colour they are?

I decided not the grease the pan (such a daredevil I know!) Then I stared at the sweet potatoes. I didn't know what to do with them.

My recipe books are very limited when it comes to sweet potato options. Magdaleen's recipe included mace. Mace? The stuff you scare a potential attacker with? *googles* oh, okay mace is kinda like nutmeg, but not, you can substitute nutmeg to your recipe instead of mace but if you do it will change the flavour, eeeerrrrr. I'm confused. And I'm getting bored. I'm gonna wing this one (living on the edge here people!)...... I drizzled olive oil over them, aaaaand done! I say drizzle because that's what the recipe books say, in real life it's me trying to carefully and evenly pour the olive oil but it just lands up pouring out way too fast and not looking drizzly at all. I assume I will get better at this with practice.

That was it. No other seasoning at all. I figured sweet potatoes taste good no matter how they are made. I put them into the oven at 180 degrees, uncovered. At 4o mins they started smelling really good but were still a bit hard. At 60 mins they were perfection on  a plate!

And look, I got much better at not poking hundreds of holes into them!

After the fish and sweet potatoes were done I switched the ovens off and left them inside (we have two ovens, one on top of the other, awesome because I can cook both dishes at the same time and not spend my entire day in the kitchen). When I dished up about 20 minutes later the sweet potato skins had started getting a bit crispy, I thought they were perfection before, but NOW they really were perfection!

This meal was done in an hour and the preparation time was a few minutes. Adding this to the regular menu for sure!