Blackened Sea Bass with Cayenne-Dusted Leek Rings and Heirloom Cherry Tomato Salad with Balsamic Reduction Drizzle

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Plan Z Phase: This is a Z2 (ZReduction) recipe and is the current winner for recipe with the longest title!

Servings: Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 2, 6-8 oz pieces of sea bass
• blackened fish seasoning
• 2 large leeks cleaned and cut into quarter-inch rings. White part and very light green part only.*
• olive oil spray
• cayenne to taste (optional)
• 2 cups of quartered cherry tomatoes (the heirloom ones are just more colorful)

Instructions:

For the Balsamic reduction**

Set oven to 400 degrees.

Take your cut leek rings and separate them into individual rings. The last bits in the middle get difficult to separate so just put those on the sheet as a bit of a blob. That’s fine. Lightly spray a large cookie sheet and place the rings on top. Scatter them around and grate sea salt over the top. Roast the onion rings for 15 minutes or until the edges begin to blacken on the outermost ones. Remove from oven and every so gently sprinkle with cayenne to give them zip.

While the onion rings are roasting…

Dust your sea bass pieces with a nice coating of blackening spices on the flesh side only.

Heat a cast iron pan (if you have one, or other high-heat resistant sauté pan) with a light spray of olive oil. Put the fish in the pan spice side down. Sear on medium high for 2 minutes. Gently turn the fish over. At this point, if you DO NOT have a pan that can handle a 400 degree oven, transfer your fish to an oven-proof baking dish. Otherwise you can transfer the fish in the cast iron pan to your oven.

Roast the fish in the 400 degree oven for 8 – 9 minutes or until the fish easily flakes off of the bottom skin and does not have any translucency left.

While the onion rings and the fish are roasting you can assemble your salad.

Place the quartered tomatoes on a plate and grate with sea salt. Drizzle on some balsamic reduction instead of salad dressing. If you do not have balsamic reduction you can use any Plan Z approved salad dressing. Just a couple of tsp will be enough.

Special Notes:

*Cleaning Leeks. Messy devils they are. They always come with mud attached. Rinse the leeks. Then cut off the white roots. Now, take a sharp knife and slice vertically through the top later of leek and separate it from the rest. You’ll probably see mud. Then rinse the whole leek thoroughly. Cut your rings and discard the green parts. DO NOT put the leek garbage in your garbage disposal. If you do, it won’t be long before you will be calling a plumber.

**Balsamic reduction. Balsamic reduction is very easy (yet tricky) to make. All you need to do is put a bottle of balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan. Gently boil it down until only syrup remains. The balsamic vinegar will become thicker. Stop and let it cool. I’ve made the mistake, at the end of the process, of looking away and then burned it. If you spent $12 on your vinegar that will really aggravate you, so be careful. The results are well worth it! I use a bit of a drizzle on so many things. It’s a rich taste.

For storage, I buy one of those old-fashioned bottles with the pointy top and cut it off. Sort of like an old ketchup bottle that you see at restaurants. The easiest place to pick one up is a hair care/beauty supply store. Stylists use them for dying hair. They are nice because you can cut just a bit off the closed top so you have a very narrow drizzle and can control the amount. If you are not that into cooking, and this looks like a craft project instead of cooking, just ignore me and use dressing. This stuff stores very well in your refrigerator for quite some time. Just don’t put it in the bottle until it’s completely cool or you’ll melt the bottle.

When ready to plate your food:

Dieters get one half cup of cherry tomatoes and a heaping helping of onion rings. Or a larger portion of cherry tomatoes and very few onion rings. My dining husband LOVES the onion rings. Extra onion rings can be saved and re-heated. Cherry tomatoes can be saved, too. Everyone gets to eat a full portion of fish.

Enjoy!

Cheers,