Due spigole su tagliere, vista dall'alto

Sea bass with Vernaccia

Difficulty Easy
Preparation Time 1 h

Description

Sea bass with Vernaccia is a typical dish from the Cagliari area . It’s a tasty fish main course made with sea bass (or sea bass, as it’s called in Sardinia) seasoned with black olives and Vernaccia, a typical local wine.

If you love fish dishes, try bringing this typical Sardinian dish to your table. Here’s how to prepare it.


Ingredients

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Servings
  • Bass 2000 g
  • Garlic Cloves 2
  • Dried tomatoes 4
  • Black olives 70 g
  • Vernaccia 150 ml
  • Parsley q.b.
  • Salt q.b.
  • Extra virgin olive oil q.b.

Instructions

  • 1 To prepare sea bass with Vernaccia, you must first scale, gut, and wash the fish thoroughly. If you're short on time, you can always ask your fishmonger to do it for you.
  • 2 Line a large baking dish with parchment paper, lightly salt the sea bass belly, and stuff it with the sun-dried tomatoes, minced garlic, and parsley. Place the fish in the dish.
  • 3 Spread the olives in the baking dish, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, and close the paper to form a parcel.
  • 4 Bake the sea bass in a preheated oven at 180°C (350°F) for 45 minutes. After about 10 minutes of baking, open the foil and pour in the Vernaccia, then close it and return the sea bass to the oven. Once ready, arrange the Vernaccia-wrapped sea bass on a serving platter and serve hot.

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Did You Know?

Sea bass with Vernaccia is a simple recipe that combines
multiple flavors
: the delicate taste of sea bass brings to mind the taste of the
fresh sea
and pairs perfectly with the Mediterranean flavors of olives, potatoes, and dried tomatoes, as well as the
scent
of Vernaccia, which
blends
beautifully with the fish.

This typical Sardinian dish is
often cooked for the holidays
and its recipe calls for baking, en papillote, or pan-fried. It’s a fish dish so delicious that Sardinians don’t throw anything away. In fact,
The tail of the sea bass is also eaten
.


Furthermore, in

Sant’Antioco
, a town in the Sulcis area, in the south-west of Sardinia, there is the largest sea bass farm .


Perhaps not everyone knows it, but the traditional wine used for this dish is

Vernaccia di Oristano
, the first Sardinian wine to be recognized as DOC in 1971 .

The name
Vernaccia
It comes from the association of two word segments. The first is from the Latin ”
ver
“, which means “Spring”, while the second is
“vitis vernacula
“, meaning “at home”. This information is reported by the Latin writer Lucius Columella in his work “
De re rustica
“.

This wine is characterised by its
full-bodied and robust flavour
, which makes it a perfect match with sea bass, with its delicate yet decisive flavour. This wine not only pairs well with the sea bass with Vernaccia recipe, but in Sardinia it is traditional to use Vernaccia as a typical wine to accompany all baked fish second courses .

Other recipes for fish main courses

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Eel pie called Panada, a traditional Sardinian dish, top view
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