Sweet Date and Sour Tamarind Sea Bass Recipe, by Noor Murad
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Easy
I adore sweet and sour flavours together but especially the combination of dates and tamarind, which is a match made in (food) heaven. This is a wonderfully easy dish to make, with super-punchy flavours. Serve as a light lunch with some lightly dressed greens, or with the Tomato, Potato and Saffron Rice for a more substantial meal.
Recipe extracted from Lugma: Abundant Dishes & Stories from My Middle East by Noor Murad (Quadrille, £28). Photography by Matt Russell (food) and Matt Wardle (location).
Ingredients for Sweet and Sour Sea Bass
- 60g tamarind pulp (from a block)
- 220ml boiling water
- 60g pitted Medjool dates (about 3)
- 1 small red onion, very finely chopped
- 1 small green pepper, stem and seeds removed, finely chopped into 0.5cm cubes
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1–2 green chillies, finely chopped, seeds and all (depending on your heat preference)
- 30g coriander leaves and soft stems, finely chopped
- 3½ tbsp olive oil, plus extra to serve
- 4 medium unskinned sea bass fillets
- 1 tsp mild curry powder
- ½ lime
- fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
How To Make Sweet and Sour Sea Bass
- Preheat the oven to 210°C fan/230°C/450°F/Gas mark 8. Line a shallow baking dish (roughly 30 x 20cm) with baking paper.
- Place the tamarind in a small heatproof bowl and pour over 120ml of the boiling water. In a separate small heatproof bowl, add the dates and the remaining 100ml of the boiling water. Set both aside for 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, in a medium bowl mix together the onion, green pepper, garlic, chilli, coriander, 2 tablespoons of the oil, ¼ teaspoon salt and a good grind of pepper.
- When ready, remove the dates from their water and place them in the bowl of a small food processor along with 2 tablespoons of their water, then blitz until the dates are finely chopped and you have a paste (you can also do this with a hand-held blender).
- Use your fingers to loosen the tamarind pulp from the seeds, then pour this through a fine-mesh sieve set over a separate bowl. Push down on the solids to extract as much of the tamarind liquid as possible, scraping at the bottom of the sieve as well. Discard the solids and then mix in the date paste.
- Pat dry the sea bass fillets and place them, skin-side down, in the lined baking dish (don’t worry if they’re slightly overlapping). Sprinkle the flesh all over with the curry powder, ¾ teaspoon salt and a good grind of pepper. Spoon over all the tamarind and date mixture, using your fingers to coat the flesh, then pour over the remaining 1½ tablespoons of oil. Lastly, spoon the onion and pepper mixture down the fillets. Bake for 17–20 minutes, or until cooked through and lightly coloured. Transfer to a plate, squeeze over the lime and drizzle with some extra olive oil.
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