Tonight’s recipe

Sea bass with confit fennel and blood orange

Serves 2 Ingredients

1 large fennel

2 blood oranges

1tsp fennel seeds

1 bulb of garlic, halved horizontally

200ml olive oil (or more, depending on the size of your oven dish)

1tbsp cider vinegar

2 sea bass fillets

1 small bunch parsley, roughly torn

½ lemon, to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C/gas 2.

Trim the stalks off the fennel and cut the bulb into slim wedges from root to tip. Place the wedges in a deep baking dish (choose one that allows the fennel to sit tightly in one layer). Remove the skin and pith from the blood oranges by slicing top and bottom, then use a small knife to cut neatly from end-to-end.

Add a few strips of the orange skin to the baking dish, along with the fennel seeds and garlic. Pour over the olive oil and leave in the oven for an hour, turning the fennel occasionally. When tender, remove from the oil and set aside.

While the rest of the fennel is in the oven, finely slice the fennel stalks and leave in a bowl with the juice of half a blood orange and the cider vinegar.

Set a frying pan over a medium heat and add a splash of the confit oil from the baked fennel dish. Season the sea bass fillets and fry, skin side down, for two minutes before flipping and cooking for a further minute or two.

Slice the blood oranges and lay on a plate with the confit fennel. Place the sea bass fillets on top, scatter over the pickled stalks, plenty of parsley and a drizzle of the confit oil. Serve with lemon wedges.